The Vanguard: Highlighting innovation in SA business
Welcome to The Vanguard – InDaily’s new weekly business column which will highlight great business ideas and innovation in South Australia.
Published each Tuesday, the column will focus attention on local businesses doing cutting edge work, or finding ways to run more efficiently using new techniques, technology or just state-of-the-art common sense.
We’ll also provide advice from experts and other businesses on keeping your business ahead of the game, such as the best emerging tech tools, and new ideas in marketing and HR management.
To give you a taste of what’s to come, today we highlight some examples of local businesses who are doing things differently – and experiencing success as a result.
Innovative wiring
WBC Group (WBC) is poised to take its innovative electrical wiring solutions, including WireByClick, from its current commercial market into the domestic market by the end of the year. A supplier of ‘fly leads’ – the electrical cabling network that provides the foundation for electrical systems – WBC pre-engineers a solution that can be assembled in a modular fashion rather than the traditional approach of rolling out cable and then hard-wiring componentry like switches and fittings.
WBC Managing Director, Mark Fahey, describes it as “Lego for electrical systems – the pieces just click together”. Hence the product’s name.
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Fahey told InDaily that WBC has developed a system that takes the electrical plans for a building and pre-designs the fly leads which can then be installed in a very cost effective manner.
WBC has supplied major local and interstate projects from its base in Lonsdale including the new Royal Adelaide Hospital (40,000 light fittings), the adjacent SAHMRI Building (25,000 square metres of lighting), the Barangaroo project in Sydney (320,000 square metres of lighting) and Adelaide Oval (general lighting).
WBC is developing a new product range of modular wiring solutions that will take it into the domestic housing and apartment market by the end of this year, and the company again intends to manufacture its products in Australia rather than offshore.
Keeping staff healthy
It may have taken real estate giant Anthony Toop’s nasty encounter with oesophageal cancer to put the family’s focus firmly on good health, but the silver lining is that the entire Toop team can now participate in the Toop Wellness Centre.
Established at Toop’s head office in Norwood, the Wellness Centre is proving very popular with the company’s 125 staff members who have 24-hour access to gym equipment, floor exercise classes, and professional advice and support.
As Anthony Toop puts it: “We needed to change something profoundly to make us do what we needed to do for our own good.”
He says the Wellness Centre has created a buzz around the Toop team with at least half the office conversation – and even more so in his individual case – now concerning food, working out and wellness rather than the previous preoccupation solely with real estate.
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The centre offers a range of different classes and activities based on the view that there is more to wellness than just exercise.
New digital frontiers in finance
Adelaide-based credit union, People’s Choice, is experimenting with fingerprint identification for its latest iPhone app as it adds further digital dimensions to its financial services, including having the credit union’s website as ‘a digital branch’.
In addition, a major investment in taking the People’s Choice Community Lottery online is delivering results with more than 6000 tickets sold online in the first week compared with 450 in the comparable period last year. The lottery generates $1.6 million and supports more than 1000 community groups annually.
Shaking up the law
The Master Builders Association last week brought some innovation to the traditional world of legal practice with the launch of MBA Law as a company rather than the conventional legal partnership. A legal service for members, MBA Law is also adopting a new pricing model, offering rates of around $175 per hour (plus GST), which it says will halve usual commercial legal rates.
MBA SA Chief Executive, John Stokes said “we want to invest in the future growth of member businesses by offering the best advice at the best price; this is a firm established for members, so there is simply no need to charge eastern seaboard rates for short-term gain.”
MBA believes the new service is the state’s “first association-backed incorporated legal practice”.
Keeping track of finances
Australian Credit Management, a company which specialises in cash flow management providing debt collection services to a large number of clients, recently launched an outsourced accounts receivable service for better credit management for small to mid-sized business. This is achieved via a secure link with the client company for the ongoing transfer of transaction data like invoices and payments. Once transferred, and stored within Australian Credit Management’s bank-level security data facility, the firm then manages the portfolio of customer accounts for the client.
The status of customer accounts is then presented within a dedicated web portal: the client can access this portal at any time to view a customer account plus get a number of daily reports on the aged-debtor profile. The benefit to the client of this innovative service is they don’t have to invest in new software, are more than likely to see an improved cash flow and can focus on running their core activity.
If your business has a story of innovation to tell, send an email to InDaily’s business writer Peter Gill.
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