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How much of an advantage can software give you? To fi nd out we scoured the land for companies putting one over on the competition by using technology. The results emphatically prove that whether you make nickel alloy casings or valet cars, if you get the technology right your rivals don’t stand a chance.

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Britain’s Digital Elite

In association with

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Execution is king. Naïve entrepreneurs may believe that a great

idea is what they need to create a business, but old hands always

emphasise that delivery is far more important.

Felix Dennis, creator of a £600m publishing empire, puts

it like this: “Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. Specially

adapted plimsolls may be a good idea. But the goal is still to

win, and sports shoes don’t win. Athletes do. And yet I have lost

count of the number of men and women who have approached

me with their ‘great idea’, as if this, in and of itself, was some

passport to instant wealth. The idea is not a passport. At most, it

is the means of obtaining one.”

In today’s world, the secret to great execution is technology.

Knowing what you sell, service with a smile and no-quibble

money-back guarantees are no substitute for slick back-

end operations. To demonstrate this point Real Business and

Microsoft® present Britain’s Digital Elite. We’ve scoured the

land looking for firms who are superb at using technology to

deliver their product. We spent months looking for companies

who were destroying their competition – not because of what

they do, but the way that they do it.

Four judges – including two entrepreneurs who made their

names using technology to shake up industries – sifted through

the deluge of entries. In all ten categories we found the same

pattern: by investing in technology, small, aggressive firms could

dominate larger rivals. Speed of service is raised. Costs lowered.

In some cases, the software was being used so imaginatively the

very sector the firm operated in was being altered.

The companies featured in this report are not inherently

“technology” firms, but they are all companies who use

technology to achieve their goals in remarkable style. For some,

this attitude took a while to acquire – proving that it’s never too

late to introduce technology into your operation.

In every case, these firms are the best of the best at using

technology to execute their ideas. Not lightly do we call them

Britain’s Digital Elite.

Report author: Charles Orton-Jones

The FinalisTs:Consumer interactionWinner: ZebtabHighly Commended:MooTailgate

Back-office automationWinner: GallowglassHighly Commended: MotorcleanAccess Displays

M&aWinner: ManifestHighly Commended:Taylor Nelson Sofres, using PLC DiligenceProject Fusion

MobileWinner: Ace FixingsHighly Commended:BlykJB-Eye

R&DWinner: A Swarm of AngelsHighly Commended:Cambridge Cell Networks

Marketplace analysisWinner: Thompson IntermediaHighly Commended:SciemusBrainJuicer

education/information exchangeWinner: Direct Path SolutionsHighly Commended:Prime PrincipleMusic Factory Entertainment

logisticsWinner: ViaPostHighly Commended:Hazchem NetworkMarshalls

Taking on the Big GuysWinner: WebmartHighly Commended:CoolroomZubka

Performance analysisWinner: Wall ColmonoyHighly Commended:JT DoveTenUK

The Judges:Simon Hughes, director for medium-sized businesses at Microsoft UKSarah McVittie, founder of Texperts, the mobile question and answer serviceJay Bregman, founder of eCourier, the revolutionary delivery firmCharles Orton-Jones, PPA Business Journalist of the Year 2006

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©2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, the Microsoft logo, Windows Vista, Dynamics Nav, Dynamics CRM, Business Server 2003, Windows Mobile, Windows Media and Windows Server 2003 are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

The turbo-charged widgetCustomer Interaction

Winner: Zebtab Cricket fans are big users of widgets. The BBC produces a little scoreboard that sits on your computer desktop and keeps you up to date with the Test Match. It’s less obtrusive than a browser window and keeps refreshing

automatically. There are hundreds of other widgets on offer – from clocks to train timetables. Windows Vista has a sidebar built specifically to host them. But what is the next stage in the evolution of the widget? It might just be Zebtab.

The Zebtab widget hides at the side of your screen, only to

emerge when you summon it with a click. At ten by 15 centimetres, it is larger than current widgets and has significantly more functions. Like a pre-loaded tabbed browser, it stores the latest information from whichever websites you subscribe to. For gambling addicts, it stores the latest odds and fixtures from

Widgets with the works: (from left) Zebtab’s Julian Guppy, Richard Edwards, Damon Oldcorn and Rob Eberstein

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AtTheRaces, or for boys’ toys you can check out the latest deals from Firebox.com. Each separate channel can be accessed with one click, making it the first all- in-one widget. Even better, unlike RSS content, Zebtab streams pictures and “rich” media to your desktop. By blending RSS with Ajax and .NET, Zebtab makes browser-based aggregators such as Newsgator look dated. For content providers, it is a chance to provide targeted content direct to users’ desktops. So far, Zebtab is the only such product on the market.

Launched at the end of 2006, Zebtab has already signed up 25 content partners. There are two price models for partners: £5,000 a year with revenue share, or £20,000 a year non-revenue share.

Visits to gambling site AtTheRaces has been upped by 45 percent, with page impressions increased by 77 per cent since signing up in January. “Zebtab’s desktop alert system has undoubtedly been a key factor in the significant increase in visits to our site,” says James Singer, AtTheRaces’ head of marketing. “We’re excited about future opportunities, including integrated video content and delivering more tailored services direct to our users.” Closet gamblers and cricket addicts will be pretty chuffed, too.

Highly Commended: MooEven your gran’s probably got a digital camera. You can’t go to a party, school play or, if you’re an England cricketer, the local strip

joint without flash bulbs going off. But what to do with the pics? Moo.com prints your snaps onto stickers, business cards and dinky little minicards.

Being a Web 2.0 sort of firm, Moo allows you to do all the ordering over the internet. To ensure the ordering process is part of the fun, Moo has created applications within Flickr, Habbo Hotels and Second Life so you can order pictures of your avatar as well as normal snaps. You can even insert your own speech bubbles into photos – all part of Moo’s strategy to get as close to the user as possible so that established rivals such as Boots and Prontaprint don’t get a look in.

Highly Commended: TailgateRetail websites worry incessantly about drop-out rates. A consumer

starts to order, wanders off to make tea or opens a new window to do more product research, and their basket never gets to the checkout page. Tailgate’s interactive advertising banners address this problem by letting consumers buy direct from inside the banner. All it takes to buy is a quick bit of form-filling and then two clicks and hey presto – the deal is done without ever leaving the page the ad is located on.

Tailgate’s patent-pending technology is as secure as any web cart and offers the fastest purchasing experience on the web. “For impulse buys or low-cost purchases, this is extremely convenient,” says judge Simon Hughes. Navman Sat-Navs and Boots are already using Tailgate’s banners to ensure that their online ads are as capable of closing a deal as wooing the customer.

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“Like a pre-loaded tabbed browser, the Zebtab widget stores the latest information from whichever websites you subscribe to”

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Putting integrated software in the mix: Richard Thompson, Darren Throwley and Nick Grecian from Gallowglass

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Winner: GallowglassVisit Birmingham’s NEC to see the Kaiser Chiefs play and you’ll see the handiwork of Gallowglass. This Acton firm supplies a crew of 71,000 to 8,000 rock and pop shows every year, making it the music industry’s largest supplier of muscle power.

The company has grown fast . Founded in 1998 by brothers Paul and Nick Grecian, by 2003 it had 250 crew and today it has twice that number. Turnover has more than doubled to £7m over the past four years, but through the installation of clever software the firm has avoided the growing pains normally associated with such rapid expansion. Tellingly, the firm’s finance and admin team is no larger than it was in 2003, despite the massively increased workload.

The firm’s original paper-based set up would never have coped. They realised in 2003 they needed an integrated system to control every aspect of booking and finance. The answer was Microsoft’s Dynamics NAV, installed and enhanced by TVision Technology, costing £16,100 for an annual licence and £25,000 for the tweaking, training and switch over by TVision.

When a job is created, the Dynamics NAV automatically checks for good credit. If there are any issues, such as an overdue invoice or insufficient credit, the operator is alerted at the time and a new job cannot be raised for them. Pro-forma invoices are created for each job, and a crew cannot be booked to a job until the client purchase order

number is entered against it. These simple controls were difficult to manage and enforce without an integrated system.

When a booking is confirmed it appears on an interactive whiteboard. Details such as venue, number of crew, number of hours and any special requirements are clearly visible. A simple traffic-light colour coding provides an “at a glance” view of the jobs that have been crewed and those still needing crew confirmed. This ensures that each job is promptly filled to the client’s instructions.

Individual management of each crew member is made possible through Dynamics NAV. Their availability and even their visa status can be flagged during the booking process. This is a vital development, replacing an ad hoc system that required enormous manpower. Feedback from clients is fed into the system together with job histories, so the Grecian brothers can keep an eye on productive – or unproductive – performers.

Nick Grecian says Gallowglass would have struggled to grow so fast without Dynamics NAV. “There is no doubt that it has contributed significantly to our growth by radically increasing efficiency and reducing the administration overhead. “

Highly Commended: MotorcleanCar valeting is a ruthlessly competitive business. Motorclean is the industry’s second-biggest player, with a £19m turnover and clients such as BMW, Pendragon

and Inchcape. To gain an edge over rivals, it replaced its paper dockets in 2005 with a touch-screen based reporting system created by Vali-data. The system allows each dealership to schedule jobs by date and time, and to analyse workflow using a simple interface. The valeters use the touch-screen terminals to take orders and report progress. The system has saved Motorclean £15,000 per dealership, with over 300 dealerships switching to it.

Highly Commended: Access DisplaysSupplying display stands to large exhibitions, Access Displays was founded by Peter Bowen in 1990. It now offers 3,000 product lines to 12,000 customers. Until April this year, Bowen and his 20 staff relied on primitive back-office processes. A single £100 order required 12 separate pieces of paper, including an invoice, order, job sheet and delivery note. So Bowen turned to IT consultancy Alliance Systems, which installed Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Now sales people can provide a quotation instantly, even while they are on the phone to the customer. This means that enquiries are converted into orders more quickly and consistently. The system even lets them attach pictures of items to the quotes. Needless to say, the paper dockets have been binned.

“What differentiates us from our competitors is not price,” says Bowen, “it’s about speed of response and giving customers what they want, when they want it.”

Job management software that rocksBack-office Automation

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Winner: ManifestFinding voters for your annual general meeting isn’t easy. They may be on the other side of the world. There may be thousands of major shareholders to contact. And voters may be hidden behind five or six layers of intermediaries such as custodians, sub-custodians and fund managers. If a firm needs authorisation for something urgent, such as a takeover bid, any delay can hurt.

The current system involves bounty hunters, like Georgeson or Sodali, who hunt down the voters. When they’ve tracked down shareholders, they supply voting materials, but things don’t get any easier. When a vote is cast you’d think that it would be transmitted direct to the issuer. No chance. Instead, the vote is passed back along the chain of intermediaries, leaping from one electronic voting platform to another. “It can look as if the vote is travelling around in circles,” says Cas Sydorowitz, director of American proxy voting giant Computershare. Worse, around eight per cent of votes are lost as they travel along the chain.

One small British firm is hoping to end all this confusion by introducing a simple way of voting. With Manifest’s voting platform, beneficial shareholders need only make two clicks of the mouse within a web browser to transmit their vote direct to the issuer. Manifest’s clients, which include HBoS and Hermes, can track, review and, if necessary, alter their decisions before the vote is cast.

Essex-based Manifest was founded by Sarah Wilson and Tim Clarke in 1995. The platform they have developed uses a ColdFusion front end and a PostgresSQL database. “We also have Microsoft Business Server 2003 to connect workers in remote locations,” says Wilson.

Wilson and Clarke’s impact on proxy voting has been profound. They have successfully lobbied for the creation of a single European voting regime: a new EU directive on shareholder rights is due to come into force in 2009. And with 30 per cent of shares in European firms held by non-nationals, this development is long overdue.

“Their system looks terrific,” says judge Jay Bregman. “At eCourier we’ve had situations where we’ve frantically tried to contact shareholders in other continents, or faxed materials to Canada just to get a signature.” With Manifest’s new approach, the era of voter-hunting, low response rates and lost votes will become a thing of the past.

Highly Commended: Taylor Nelson Sofres, using PLC DiligenceThe traditional due diligence process is paper-based, requiring a large room stacked waist high with documents. Couriers ferry documents from party to party. This tortuous process has been turned on its head by TNS with the adoption of PLC Diligence, a virtual document exchange produced by the Practical Law Company. This indexes the documents, places them online so they can be seen by all parties and provides a chart so participants can track the progress.

The system is particularly good at keeping juniors focused on the task – many see due diligence as dull and unworthy of their time.

Highly Commended: Project FusionProject Fusion’s virtual dataroom service helps any company engaging in complex financial transactions make the leap to a paperless system. Uniquely, Project Fusion’s service is leased on a monthly basis, making the service affordable for even the smallest transactions, typically costing a client engaged in M&A between £1,200 and £6,000.

Leeds-based law firm Lee & Priestley uses Project Fusion for its M&A work. Head of IT Mark Smithson says: “It’s a user-friendly system, and the granular levels of access mean that we can tailor each dataroom to our clients’ specific security needs.”

Cast your vote by proxyM&A

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Winner: Ace FixingsAce Fixings is a Ballymena-based supplier of tools, fi xtures and fi ttings to the construction industry. Its 24-strong sales force operates across Northern Ireland, and most of its business comes from visits by sales staff to construction sites. Three years ago it implemented a Microsoft-based solution aimed at eliminating the errors and delays inherent in its ordering process.

Back then the system was an “absolute shambles”, recalls Eddie McStravick, Ace Fixing’s IT boss. Ordering, price fetching and invoicing was all done on paper. With 23,000 product lines and 30,000 sq ft of storage, this was less than perfect.

Ace was already using Microsoft Dynamics NAV to manage its fi nances, so when it approached Cambridge-based Anglia Business solutions for advice, Anglia suggested using it as the cornerstone of a new mobile-integrated system. “We knew that Dynamics NAV was a very strong fi nancial solution,” says fi nancial controller Mervyn Glenn. “However, we wanted to fully exploit the powerful operational applications, such as manufacturing, warehouse management and mobility.”

Anglia suggested pushing Dynamics NAV to a small portable device that could be easily carried by sales reps. But even with a super-fast 3G mobile connection it can take minutes for all the data to be sent. With Ace having many product lines it would be like “pushing an elephant

down a straw”, according to Anglia. The solution was Anglia’s own Drizzle technology, based on .NET. This works in the background, so only data that has been altered is transmitted from the mobile device to the main offi ce. Synching with Drizzle takes only 30 seconds.

After a six-month trial, the application received the green light. Now sales reps are able to provide instant quotes while on location and pass orders to the warehouse immediately for fulfi llment. Order accuracy has improved as data duplication has been removed. And the near-instant processing of orders means that management can see stock levels at any given time. Less paperwork means sales reps can focus on selling, rather than form- fi lling. “The mobile solution was the icing on the cake,” says Glenn. “We can now use IT as a real competitive differentiator while signifi cantly improving client service.”

Highly Commended: BlykFree mobile phones, with free minutes and texts. So who’s footing the bill? Advertisers – that’s who.

In the gutsiest move of the year, new mobile phone operator Blyk is hoping to create a totally new mobile business model. Only 16 to 24 year olds are eligible for the handsets, which come with 217 free texts

and 43 free talk minutes a month, and they will have to watch six text messages and picture ads a day. Before you scoff, Buena Vista, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, MasterCard, Xbox and Adidas have already signed up to advertise. And the team behind Blyk is second to none. Pekka Ala-Pietilä,

former president of Nokia, and advertising industry

mogul Antti Öhrling are the brains behind this well-funded venture.

Highly Commended:

JB EyeJeff Bridgewood’s fi rm,

JB Eye, fi ts offi ces with fi re sensors and security alarms. It

also happens to be an innovative user of mobile technology. Staff use Windows Mobile PDAs to take orders and process H&S assessments. “The result is that we can often have the invoice in the post before the engineers have started their vehicle engine. It’s done wonders for our cash fl ow and increased the reliability of our records.”

Alarms are linked to JB Eye’s offi ce via broadband and backed up with GPRS, allowing remote diagnosis of problems. Satellite tracking follows company vehicles so the nearest offi cer can be sent to emergencies. It’s an admirable approach for a fi rm that only employs eight people, but Bridgewood says it’s worth it: “We are growing revenues by 25 per cent a year in a static industry largely because of our IT investments.”

MobileConstruction is the new site for mobile technology

After a six-month trial, the application

former president of Nokia, and advertising industry

mogul Antti Öhrling are the brains behind this well-funded venture.

Highly Commended:

JB EyeJeff Bridgewood’s fi rm,

JB Eye, fi ts offi ces with fi re sensors and The mobile phone industry is

holding its breath over Blyk’s new mobile business model

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Reinventing cinema: A Swarm of Angels founder Matt Hanson

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Winner: A Swarm of AngelsSacre bleu! French film icon François Truffaut claimed that a film is the product of an auteur, or author, whose mind is solely responsible for the work. But what if there are thousands of authors, directors and producers of a film? Truffaut didn’t see that one coming!

A Swarm of Angels is the world’s first mass-participation film studio. Its first film will be the work of 50,000 members, who each pay £25 to influence the film’s direction.

Studio founder Matt Hanson calls this method “open source cinema”. He says A Swarm of Angels has a method in its madness: “We are using the wisdom of crowds to make the film, but the structured process ensures there is harmony rather than conflict. For example, the script isn’t written from scratch by the members; we produce a script and allow feedback from them. The plot is pointed but can sway in the breeze of opinion. We gather feedback, and the best contributors are appointed to work on a second script. We vote on the best suggestions, so there is a call-and-response mechanism. The script is emergent.”

The goodwill of participants is essential. “We have a self-selecting audience. They have to pay to be involved and are in it to produce a film, which is why it works. No one wants to mess with the process.” Participation is through forums, wikis and online polls. The geographical spread of members is illustrated using Frappr mapping software.

Hanson, 35, has been careful to build momentum gradually, using five phases. Phase One was the proof of concept, requiring 100 members. Phase Two, which has just closed, signed up another 900 members and began script development. Phase Three, when the script will be finalised and a trailer produced, will allow membership to reach 5,000. Phase Four takes the project to the brink of filming, and will require 25,000 members. By the time A Swarm of Angels is ready to film – Phase Five – 50,000 members will have raised £1.25m, enough to fund production, post-production and marketing. At each stage, members volunteer their services depending on their talents. If you can wield a boom mic then great. If all you can do is make tea for the crew, get brewing.

Fittingly for an open-source project, the film will be given

away, with no digital rights management

software to prevent dissemination. All profits will be

retained for the follow-up film.

The studio’s first film is still a year or two from entering production, but Hanson says things are going smoothly. “We have provisional titles for

our two possible scripts: The Unfold and Glitch. We are moving in the direction of a dark love story.” Users will vote on which script to

use.Hollywood will be scrutinising

the result. “This is an experimental project designed to change the film industry,” says Hanson. “We are reconfiguring how media is made, creating a new cultural eco-system.”

Highly Commended: Cambridge Cell NetworksDrug discovery is mind-blowingly expensive, costing hundreds of millions of pounds to gain approval for a single molecule. Dr Gordana Apic is founder of Cambridge Cell Networks, which provides the drug industry with software and databases designed to slash costs and speed up development times. Her ToxWiz product helps forecast toxicity, and SafetyPin allows accurate forecasting in proteomics and genomics.

Researchers can instantly access and manipulate reams of scientific data and records, transforming their ability to forecast the impact of drug combinations upon the human body.

R&DOpen source cinema wows the crowd

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“By the time A Swarm of Angels is ready to film, 50,000 members will have raised £1.25m”

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Winner: Thomson IntermediaIf you’ve ever advertised in a newspaper then Thomson Intermedia will know who you are. Founded by husband and wife team Steve and Sarah Jane Thomson with Mintel colleague Paul Gladman in 1997, the fi rm’s technology pores over just about every advertising medium imaginable. It scans radio and television stations, extracting information about the ads, monitors direct mail drops, cinema ads, internet banners and even Google-sponsored links. By comparing this information with known rate card fees, Thomson can estimate ad spend by individual companies, calculate campaign costs and estimate reach.

In just ten years, Thomson has become a core source of information for the entire advertising industry. The fi rm’s 300 clients access data through a web portal where they can see up-to-the minute metrics. The monitoring service orders the information so clients can create their own tailor-made homepage with all known information on rivals displayed on a single page. Not for nothing do the UK’s biggest media agencies turn to Thomson before they spend a penny on media space.

Thomson also offers a media monitoring service, collating every mention of your company throughout the media. If you’ve been slagged off in the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, you’ll get to hear about it within hours.

Collecting the information isn’t easy. The newspaper operation alone requires the scanning of

thousands of regional newspapers, in addition to the nationals. Radio ads are captured using proprietary technology and integrated with market data from a JET feed.

The internet capture operation is perhaps the most ambitious. Thomson’s crawlers travel through cyberspace noting all shockwaves and fl ash banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, banners, buttons, sponsored links and search engines’ content-sensitive ads. Thomson gathers detailed page impression estimates from a panel of 15,000 UK-based internet users to arrive at page impression and expenditure totals for each ad campaign.

Thomson’s technology is developed in-house by its 240 employees, and the payoffs from this operation are as handsome as the technology behind it. Turnover has risen from £11.1m in 2006 to £20m this year, with £3.1m in operating profi ts. The technology is currently licensed to partners in Germany, Brazil, Greece and Cyprus, and the fi rm is actively looking for new partners in larger markets.

Highly Commended: SciemusInsuring satellites is a risky business. If one goes missing you’re looking at a bill of $100m or more. Which is why Sciemus’s number crunching is so valued. Their algorithms help the insurers calculate a premium for each satellite. So far, the company has helped insure 80 satellites, one tenth of the total in existence.

Founded by former cybernetics lecturer Andre Finn and ministry of defence mathematician Neil

Fleming, Sciemus’s Space RAT programme uses ten Java packages, 230 modules, 3,500 lines of HTML and 59,000 lines of code. The result is the industry’s largest dataset. In partnership with insurer Liberty Syndicates, Sciemus can provide insurance of up to $225m, compared to the market average of $20m. Amazingly, none of the satellites it has insured have required a pay-out, making it one of the few satellite insurers to have made a net profi t.

Highly Commended: BrainJuicerJohn Kearon spent 15 years as a market researcher at Unilever lamenting the cost, speed and inaccuracy of market information. So he started his own fi rm. The result, BrainJuicer, founded in 2000, relies on the internet to gather responses to open-ended questions. BrainJuicer then crunches the results with powerful proprietary analytics software to provide the most insightful information possible to clients.

Kearon has recently pioneered the use of webcams to capture users’ responses to stimuli. The resulting product, FaceTrace, is used by Shell, Pepsi and, fi ttingly, Unilever. Floated on AIM last year, BrainJuicer is valued at £23m, though Kearon is confi dent his young fi rm can power past the £100m mark in the next few years.

Marketplace AnalysisMedia monitoring adds up

Fleming, Sciemus’s Space RAT

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Winner: Direct Path SolutionsNeighbourhood Watch schemes are low-tech. They rely on pensioners with notepads, stay-at-home mums with clipboards and a chief coordinator who meets the police once a month to pass on notes. Except in Hertfordshire, where new technology is managing the efforts of thousands of members.

Created by Direct Path Solutions, OWL allows volunteers in Herts to go online to register the start and fi nish of shifts. The more senior the coordinator, the greater the rights to create new watches, and add new houses or businesses. It is even possible to send text messages concerning the watch via the system.

Crucially, the police are logged in, too. They have the ability to send crime alerts directly to residents and businesses by email, telephone, fax and text, and to print out formatted letters for hand delivery. All activity is recorded in OWL.

Coordinators keep an online diary of incidents, which the police view and search to discern patterns in criminal activity.

Direct Path Solutions founder Gary Fenton says he came up with OWL to plug a hole in the market. The custom-written application runs on a Windows 2003 Server platform with SQL Server 2005, and has passed the government’s CESG security test – a requirement for interacting

with the police. Users access it over the web and don’t need to download any software at their end. The licence cost is calculated by population of the region covered, and Fenton is hoping to market OWL to other police forces across the UK. OWL is also applicable to School Watch, Pub Watch and Shop Watch, making it as potentially lucrative for Fenton as it is useful for the curtain-twitching brigade.

Highly Commended: Prime PrincipleThanks to meddling politicians, teachers have a mountain of paperwork to process. Prime Principle’s Classroom Monitor is the software package designed to reduce their workload by streamlining different areas of statutory assessment and reporting

into one process. Teachers can use Classroom Monitor to record pupil data, write lesson

plans, set individual pupil targets and

analyse academic performance.

Classroom Monitor was developed by David Francis and Chris Scarth (pictured

above, from left) when they were 21 and fresh out of university. Simply

getting the attention and trust of head teachers was a challenge at

fi rst, though the product is now used in more than 600 schools. To

encourage a wide take-up, the pair are pricing the

product at £1,000 for the fi rst year and £500 per year after that. “More than 50 per cent of new business comes from

recommendations,” says Scarth. “Feedback from

customers has been fantastic, and Ofsted reports have been glowing from schools already using the system.”

Highly Commended: Music Factory EntertainmentThe actor Stephen Fry claimed he was his school careers adviser’s only success. Asked what he wanted to do for a living, Fry replied “school careers adviser”. On his record the irritated adviser inscribed prophetically “comedian”. So how do you help kids fi nd a career? One solution is to introduce them to U-Explore, an online demonstration of what really happens to workers in manufacturing, engineering, health, social care and the media.

Produced by Music Factory Entertainment, U-Explore has videos, detailed career information and case studies of students who have made a career in each sector.

As the student uses U-Explore, their choices are tracked, allowing teachers to provide relevant information. Priced at £2,500 per school, U-Explore uses technology to gives pupils the opportunity to make considered career choices, which, as Fry could tell you, is far from easy.

Education/Information ExchangeEverybody needs good neighbours

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download any software at

also applicable to School

encourage a wide take-up, the pair are pricing the

product at £1,000 for the fi rst year and £500 per year after that. “More than 50 per cent of new business comes from

recommendations,” says Scarth. “Feedback from

customers has been fantastic,

Winner: Direct Path SolutionsNeighbourhood Watch schemes are low-tech. They rely on pensioners with notepads, stay-at-home mums with clipboards and a chief

Everybody needs good neighbours

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Winner: ViaPostPosting letters is a pain. You’ve got to print your document, address the envelope, lick the stamp, insert the letter into the envelope and then schlep down to the nearest postbox. Okay, so it’s not a labour of Hercules, but a Covent Garden-based start-up believes its service can save you a minute or two and shave off 9p per letter. Interested?

ViaPost is offering an automated posting system. Its software is free to download and integrates into all word processing programs. Instead of printing out a document, users “print” to ViaPost. Thus, the document is emailed to ViaPost’s facilities, which are dotted around the country, where it is printed, popped into an envelope and dropped into the Royal Mail’s system.

The ViaPost concept is appealing for a number of reasons. The convenience factor is high. If you’ve got a gammy knee, are wheelchair-bound or simply value your time too highly to mess about with envelopes, ViaPost is pretty appealing. You don’t even need to type in the address, as ViaPost can read it from the top of your document. The cost is eye-catching, too. ViaPost’s partnership with the Royal Mail

allows it to post letters First Class for the price of Second Class. Stationary costs are removed as well – an important consideration for bulk mail-outs. There’s also a carbon footprint bonus: letters enter the system at the “final mile”, reducing the distance travelled, something companies trying to be carbon-neutral will appreciate. The Royal Mail is chuffed, too, as the ViaPost system increases the speed of sorting.

ViaPost is still in Beta, but soon everyone – from individuals at home to multinationals – will be able to use the system. It could prove a truly “disruptive” technology, integrating the world of emails with that of the rather older world of letters.

Founded in January this year and privately funded, ViaPost has attracted a first-rate

crew. The chairman is David Bland, chairman of Postwatch South-East, and non-executives include Chris Moss, who founded 118 118, and advertising industry maverick MT Rainey. Founder Ben Way says he’s taking letter posting into the 21st century – a bold but believable claim.

Highly Commended: Hazchem NetworkIt’s a tricky business transporting dangerous chemicals.

Store your butane near your acetone peroxide and you may cause Krakatoa Mark II.

Alas, the logistics industry is notoriously low-tech, which is why Ali Karim’s Hazchem Network shines out like a beacon of sanity. Established in 2004, Hazchem uses a web-based collaborative technology to ensure all parties shifting chemicals know everything required to ensure safe passage. The precise composition of each shipment is logged, and the system coordinates the storage and movement of each load to minimise danger. Barcodes on each shipment are tallied with a barcode on the paperwork, eliminating human error. Created by logistics software specialist Deltion, Hazchem Network’s technology has made chemical movement in the UK immeasurably safer.

Highly Commended: MarshallsMarshalls may be in a low-tech industry, delivering landscape products such as flagstones and paving, but its fleet is cutting- edge. A GPRS-based system installed by Cybit ensures head office is aware of hold-ups within five minutes, and it can track the location and status of all 150 vans and lorries.

The system also integrates with back-office applications, such as the company’s customer relationship management software and enterprise resource planning system, which means the performance of every driver can be scrutinised.

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Winner: WebmartWebmart is the printing consultancy without any printers. Instead, it uses software to connect printers with spare capacity to clients with jobs.

Simon Biltcliffe (pictured) founded the company in 1997 as a low-tech operation, relying on his knowledge of the print industry to locate low-cost facilities. But a year later he realised the internet could kill his business. “I worked through the night to turn this threat into an opportunity and, as dawn broke, I knew using the net to deliver prices to clients was the way forward.”

After many iterations, Biltcliffe has created a php/SQL platform to hook up the buyer and seller directly. And the service is free: Webmart makes money by establishing itself as the industry’s key organiser and by selling consultancy services. For example, Tesco tried out Webmart’s free service and then hired it to develop internal print management systems, which cut quotation times from days to three to four seconds.

“There is nothing like our software anywhere else in the world,” says Biltcliffe, and his long-term plans involve an assault on the global market, valued at £360bn annually.

The “freemium” model is proving its worth. Webmart’s turnover has grown to £23m, which is more than £1m per employee. The firm has placed £3.8bn worth of print jobs, five times more than its nearest rival.

Biltcliffe runs Webmart with a strong philanthropic ethos. Half the profits are shared with staff, creating a staff bonus last year of 88 per cent of salary. Webmart also funds internet cafes in Ethiopia and makes sizeable donations to charity. Even the paper it sources is Fairtrade.

The chairman of the British Print Industry Federation says with perfect justification: “What these guys do just blows me away.”

Highly Commended: CoolroomAll Vista PCs have Windows Media Center built in as standard. This turns a computer into a Sky Plus-

style box, capable of recording and downloading films. The choice of where to download from is potentially wide, but Rupert Fleming’s Islington-based Coolroom is the platform’s current market leader. Offering games and music, and films from Hollywood’s biggest studios, Coolroom is indirectly competing with Blockbuster video, iTunes and Sky. Copyright is a major headache for all download services, but Coolroom is using digital rights management software, so secure studios such as Universal and Working Title are prepared to trust Coolroom with their films – a significant advantage in this fledgling industry.

Highly Commended: ZubkaThis online recruitment site is taking on both traditional and online recruitment firms. Its unique selling point is recommendations: the person putting forward a candidate (often a friend) can get between six to eight per cent of the starting salary. Zubka takes 15 per cent of a successful job applicant’s starting salary. By offering incentives for recommendations, the pool of applicants is increased. And by conducting business online, overheads are reduced.

Founded by David Shieldhouse and Armando Ruffini, and backed by Balderton Capital (which backed eBay and Bebo), Zubka wants to be the “eBay of jobs”. Jay Bregman says: “Recommendations could be a vital differentiator. I could have bought a yacht for the amount eCourier has paid to headhunters.”

Leading the print management revolutionTaking on the Big Guys

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Winner: Wall ColmonoyTo the untutored eye, Wall Colmonoy’s shop floor looks chaotic. The Swansea firm is a world-class producer of cobalt- and nickel-base alloys. They are used in a range of products – from rail carriage axles through to glass manufacturing moulds. Each month it churns out 100 tonnes of atomised powder and 8,000 parts, requiring five furnaces and 98 machine centres.

The complexity got to the stage where the firm found it impossible to keep track of what was going on. “Order promises were not being kept,” says IT chief Rhodri John. “We had a culture of fire fighting, which was not surprising as we had 21 racks of work in progress on the machining floor.”

The solution Wall Colmonoy opted for was a planning and scheduling system called Preactor, installed by Alana Keene of The Scheduling Business. Preactor takes order information and puts the jobs in the most efficient sequence. It tracks the location of all parts on the factory floor and displays the information on an interactive planning board, or Gantt chart, which gives an overview of the works orders across the entire company. New data is fed into Preactor several times a day to produce modified work schedules.

The impact of the Preactor system is hard to overestimate. “Visibility of what is happening on the plant floor has gone from zero to 100 per cent” says John. “We can now see every order, its current status and projected progress.”

On-time delivery performance has increased from 80 per cent to 95 per cent. The machine area efficiency has risen from 75 per cent to 92 per cent. And the work-in-progress racks have been reduced from 21 to just three. As a result, the late order list, which used to run to six pages, is now just a handful of orders, usually a consequence of external factors.

“This level of transformation is just astonishing,” says judge Sarah McVittie. “To go from non-existent visibility to complete control is a remarkable achievement.”

The sales team is benefiting, too, explains John. “They can now target specific market sectors for a fixed length of time, knowing that the capacity is available. For example, the company can now identify if it can beat the industry average for a product in terms of price or delivery time, which makes generating a sales strategy much more effective.”

The financial rewards have been significant. Turnover has passed £36m, an increase of 50 per cent in the machine area.

Highly Commended: JT DoveKnowing what your sales guys are up to when they’re on the road isn’t easy. How many clients have they seen? What was the result of their meeting?

JT Dove, set up in Newcastle in 1869, is an independent chain of builders’ merchants with 12 reps

on the move. Managing director Dave Wares installed a mobile phone-

based reporting system created by

i-snapshot to find out what his troops get up to. Now, whenever sales reps meet a client, they text

a reference code back to HQ that

indicates who they are seeing. A simple analytics

programme ranks sales people by number and duration of visits, and correlates this with sales figures to reveal the best and worst performers. Highly Commended: TenUKIf you need tickets to a sold-out concert or a plumber at two in the morning, TenUK is the company to call. Its concierge service is used by 55,000 people, and services 10,000 requests a month. To provide instant responses, TenUK relies on a communications product by Corebridge, which knits together the telephone system with customer records. Every incoming call is identified so the salesperson can view the identity, account information and historical records of the caller. VIP clients are given priority routing – essential in this premium service business.

Corebridge’s off-the-shelf product even ties in emails, and it dovetails with TenUK’s existing telephone hardware – an Avaya S8300 phone system and Envox CT Connect call centre software.

Metals shine with tailored production schedulingPerformance Analysis

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