The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 43: June/July 2019 | Page 23

THE TECHIES AWARDS 2019
The Winners
MOST INNOVATIVE TECH SOLUTION AWARD WINNER
Kids Covered of Swindon
Kids Covered is an app created by tech creative Paul Harding who
was born and brought up in Swindon. It helps childminders and
childcare providers manage their activities, paperwork, bookings and
payments and, in turn, helps working parents manage the logistics
of sorting out childcare. It’s a one-stop secure shop for these two
groups of people.
Paul, whose company is called Cotswold Apps, came up with
the idea when he got fed up of the amount of paperwork and
organisation required to book his own children into childcare
sessions. Both he and his wife Samantha work and they have two
young children.
He said, “I am truly delighted to win in this category as I
personally believe this is innovative. To realise that people who I
don’t know looked at it and have seen this too is very humbling. The
judges saw this as a clever solution to a problem many of us face.
For me and my wife, that’s amazing.”
Kids Covered will soon be supported by a new website providing
high quality content and information for parents and childcare
providers, allowing them to access activities or to suggest activities
for children’s down time.
Other finalists in this category were
Evo-Soft and Appsbroker
DRIVEN BY DATA AWARD WINNER
Infinite Group of Swindon
This Swindon-based company won this award for the way
it uses data to allow blue-chip clients to sell. The company
excels in well-planned product and service placement across a
range of selling environments.
Infinite Group is a specialist field marketing company
founded in 2000 by CEO Hugh Meredith from Haydon Wick.
It provides services including promoter programmes,
merchandising, experiential marketing, data analytics and
mystery shopping.
Hugh’s first big contract was with pet food brand Friskies.
His team have since gone on to work with major brands
including Sony, Ubisoft, Fuji, EE, TomTom and Universal.
Kirsty Owen, Support Services Manager, said, “It was fantastic
to win the Driven by Data award! Our team are hugely enthusiastic
about new technology and data analysis. It was exciting to engage
with local businesses that are as passionate about technology
as we are. We always continue to improve our processes for
delivering data, reports and insights through technology.”
Other finalists in this category were Appsbroker
and Purple Lime
SOCIAL IMPACT AWARD WINNER
Groop of Corsham
Groop’s vision of bringing together volunteers through its
community platform captured the imagination of judges. The
company’s practical and technical approach offers solutions to
problems faced by the third sector nationwide.
Its recent success in securing investment to raise brand
awareness and drive growth was also inspirational.
Groop was the idea of CEO Sally Higham who, in her previous
professional life, was an active volunteer in the community.
Six years ago she had a lightbulb moment of seeing a gap
in the market when she realised tech could solve the huge
communication problems which exist in managing groups of
people with a similar interests, pastimes, sports or charities.
Groop was created as a volunteer management platform
which provides an admin system, governance, booking abilities
and much more. Thanks to recent investment the team, based
at Hartham Park in Corsham, are now scaling up.
Sally said, “The Groop team have worked so hard and
achieved so much and this award really reflects their
commitment. We are all delighted.”
Other finalists in this category were Blue Frontier &
OJO Solutions.
TECH TEAM OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER
GEL Studios of Swindon
GEL Studios won the ‘live vote’ award of the night. Guests
viewed videos from the two finalists and had to vote who they
felt deserved the title for 2019. Digital marketing agency, GEL
Studios, was founded by Graeme Leighfield in his bedroom
six years ago. As the team has grown, they’ve become known
for their bright green branding and for their ethical behaviour
in the Swindon business community.
In entering this award, Graeme personally filmed his team
and talked about an incident in 2018 which highlighted the
strength of each team member and their commitment when
everything went wrong. Their studio, at a previous business
address, was broken into and their hardware was stolen.
Thanks to tech, and the team’s commitment to executing
the company’s disaster recovery plan, there was no loss of
service. Graeme said, “We have won awards before for the
work that we do – and that’s fantastic. However, this award
is truly special because it recognises the amazing individuals
who make up our team.”
The other finalist in this category was Foregenix.
THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2019
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