Channel Asia Innovation Awards 2023: and the winners are… – Channel Asia
Channel Asia is proud to announce the winners of the Innovation Awards in 2023 featuring a leading and diverse line-up of partners, vendors, distributors and individuals across ASEAN.
Celebrated during a black-tie event on 9 November at The Exchange in Singapore, the Innovation Awards brought together ASEAN’s channel community in one place.
“The Channel Asia Innovation Awards 2023 brought the unique community together to celebrate the best of the best,” Foundry Asia editorial director Christopher Holmes said. “Representing the entire ASEAN ecosystem, more than 110 finalists make the shortlist this year from a pool of over 40 organisations, spanning partner, start-up, telco, vendor and distributor businesses.
“It was impressive to see the vast array of projects, frameworks, solutions and results across all the award categories. Despite some challenging marketing conditions, the commitment to excellence was clear, with winners standing out due to their ingenuity, acumen and resilience.”
Reflective of a diverse technology network, finalists range from large-scale multinational consultancy firms to emerging start-ups, alongside leading system integrators, managed service providers and solution consultants, plus cloud specialists, independent software vendors, boutique agencies and application developers. This is in addition to channel-centric vendors, telecommunications providers and supply chain experts.
In addition to honouring winners, Channel Asia also holds wider responsibility for ensuring as many credible technology providers are endorsed through this unique awards program, aligned to the collective goal of providing a platform upon which the ecosystem can shine across ASEAN.
Channel Asia congratulates all winners, highly commended and finalists and thanks the judging panel, which comprises many of the industry’s leading influencers.
PARTNER INNOVATION
Partner Innovation recognises customer innovation and excellence across the key market segments of Enterprise, Mid-Market and SMB, in addition to pioneering collaborative providers.
Enterprise:
Winner: Prophet
Prophet wins this award by working with clients to drive innovation on two fronts. Firstly, understanding the external environment that the organisation is operating in, and secondly, internally introducing collaboration and more nimble ways of working.
Mid-Market:
Winner: Telstra Purple
Telstra Purple wins this award for its work in cloud transformation, modernisation and innovation to improve customer experience. Through the use of automation, clients have seen a reduction in costs and an increase in speed of deployment, all in very short implementation times.
SMB:
Winner: Cloud Comrade
Cloud Comrade wins this award for its work in digital transformation with a local Malaysian manufacturer to improve business outcomes and lower IT costs. Deploying a secure, scalable and high-performing IT infrastructure with zero downtime allowed the client to realise significant business improvements and have a secure platform for future growth.
Collaboration:
Winner: Singtel
Singtel wins this award for working with partners across many sectors to introduce new 5G and multi-access edge computing infrastructure-enabled use cases. One example is in the healthcare space, where Singtel has piloted tools and applications to help surgeons leverage mixed reality technology to better visualise organs in high-resolution 3D and plan operating procedures without any disruption or lag.
TECH INNOVATION
Tech Innovation recognises partners leveraging established and emerging solutions to enhance customer innovation levels, underpinned by deep levels of expertise and specialist services.
Cloud:
Winner: Cloud Kinetics
Cloud Kinetics wins this award for its focus on helping companies transform. With an emphasis on professional development, its workforce has seen a huge growth of certified professionals across cloud platforms. Customer success stories demonstrate the flexibility in approach and ability to meet and exceed customer expectations.
Security:
Winner: Telstra Purple
Telstra Purple wins this award for working with a customer with an immediate need. The customer in question had operations stop due to a ransomware attack. Telstra responded immediately, understanding and working with the customer’s unique challenge by focusing on containment and eradication of the threat and developing an approach where the customer could operate in a far more secure manner.
Digital Transformation:
Winner: AsiaPac Technology
AsiaPac wins this award for its approach to digital transformation. Working with a Singapore-based organisation, it brought in advanced data technologies. Through understanding the uniqueness of the business, the transformation extended beyond the IT department and got the entire organisation thinking digitally, with significant productivity and business gains.
Emerging:
Winner: NEC Asia Pacific
NEC wins this award for its work in introducing biometric authentication technology. Working with governments, NEC has introduced a cloud-based facial recognition system to provide safer and smoother transactions for citizens when they transact online. Facial recognition has also been introduced at two local hospitals to provide a seamless visitor experience.
START-UP INNOVATION
Start-up Innovation recognises market-leading start-ups building unique businesses to bring innovative new technologies to the ASEAN market. Note: All submissions must be from ASEAN-based start-ups commencing business after 1 July 2017.
Customer Value:
WIZ.AI wins this award for its work in automating customer service in ASEAN enterprises through voice AI technology. One month after deploying its Talkbot for a local insurer, contact rate metrics of 77 to 80 per cent were achieved. In addition, 38 to 40 per cent of calls were handled solely by the Talkbot. This led to improved customer experience through a reduction in waiting time, improved CSAT scores and an overall cost reduction.