Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update with Enlighten Designs

A year can bring a lot of change. Enlighten Designs, the New Zealand-based digital innovation firm, has experienced one of its busiest years yet, according to General Manager Alan Greener. In an interview this week, Greener reflected on the company's recent international expansion, new digital products, and its growing recognition, including a shortlisting for a major business award.

The global shift to remote working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has been more than just a challenge for Enlighten Designs. As Greener explained, it has also proved to be "a bit of a blessing in disguise." He noted, "The world has moved strongly into that sort of digital world of video conferencing, remote meetings - everybody's working from somewhere." This societal leap to online engagement helped Enlighten Designs accelerate its international business.

"It doesn't matter so much where you are, if you can deliver good services then companies will do business with you," Greener said. The company has used this moment to forge new relationships with firms in North America, creating business opportunities that Greener described as good, solid ongoing projects. "Location has not been the constraint for us that it was perhaps previously," he explained.

Enlighten Designs has also delivered numerous Microsoft Azure Immersion workshops, not only in New Zealand but also in Australia and "multiple geographies," he said. These workshops are designed to help businesses unlock the full potential of Microsoft cloud services.

Greener pointed to the company's involvement in the Young Presidents' Organisation (YPO) - an international business network - as another driver of its recent overseas growth. "The set of connects across that network has helped us to expand as well," he added.

One of the most significant developments for Enlighten Designs in the past twelve months has been its deepening partnership with Microsoft. Greener revealed the company has worked on several confidential projects with the tech giant, performing technical work that is later Microsoft-branded. One product, however, is squarely in the public view - an artificial intelligence-based offering called the Insight and Discovery Accelerator, or IDA.

"She's a beauty," Greener enthused, as he outlined how IDA uses Microsoft's cognitive services and other technologies to help organisations make sense of unstructured data. "It was something that was developed in the labs and we had a little bit to do with it, but Microsoft then basically gave it to us to build out and take as our own, and we've been doing that over the last 12 months," he said. The result is now available on the Microsoft commercial marketplace as a "platform-based service," allowing clients to purchase and deploy it rapidly.

So far, IDA has attracted pilot customers, including a company in France, and there is growing interest, especially in the northern hemisphere, where organisations may have "the scale to make that interest grow." Greener explained that IDA is especially suited to organisations with large volumes of unstructured data, offering keyword-based search results across records that may not have been fully organised or categorised.

The company is also developing a tool called Scanner, originally designed for US journalists to monitor police radio activity and quickly dispatch news crews to emerging incidents. "It's pretty interesting stuff. Not every jurisdiction allows media companies to tap into the voice network, so it's got some limits to it, but again, the technology is potentially reusable in different scenarios," he said.

Enlighten Designs' efforts were recently recognised in its home country, after being shortlisted in the Best Emerging Business category at the New Zealand International Business Awards. Greener highlighted several projects that had helped to secure this nomination, including work with a major North American self-storage company, Public Storage, to overhaul its web presence amid search engine changes signalled by Google. "Public Storage had an opportunity to get ahead of the curve and make some improvements before this sort of became mainstream," he explained.

Other notable collaborations include projects with the Rocket Group, a major US-based organisation, and continued partnership with Microsoft in America. Greener believes the key to the company's recent success is maximising every international opportunity. "We've been using each and every opportunity on the international stage to leverage that, to get some more business, to get the most out of the work that we're doing," he said.

He added, "There's that saying that overnight success is often underpinned by 10 years of hard work, and I think it was putting all that together - it seemed like things actually came together a bit on the night in terms of putting our presentation together and it really was a big thing for our business in this last year."

Asked about broader trends impacting the technology sector, Greener said digitisation remains the word of the moment. "We can see this everywhere - it's sort of become a bit of a buzzword. We see that in various forms still being the motion, whichever way you look," he said. He cited projects moving clients from in-house desktop apps to more modern, web-based and user-friendly solutions, typically delivered in an agile, stepwise manner so that value can be delivered progressively.

Greener also highlighted a demand for websites and online services that foster real engagement and interaction - not simply digital brochures. This demand, he said, extends beyond the commercial sphere, with local authorities often at the forefront of digital engagement with their communities. Combined with rising consumer expectations for access to information across multiple channels, this is driving an increased focus on mobile-friendly solutions and sector-specific products.

"We recently did a piece of work with Carters to create a mobile app for them which is particularly focused on tradies and enabling them to connect from a building site - see what's available, make orders and so on," he said. "There's degrees of market segmentation and personalisation which really are drivers for companies ... to really try to hone in on meeting needs in quite an individualised way, without being a turn-off."

Enlighten Designs' own technology stack is heavily invested in Microsoft products, especially Azure and cognitive services, and Greener acknowledges that keeping pace with constant technological change is a perpetual challenge. "One of the challenges in this world is to be able to keep up with new developments at the same time as undertaking new developments," he said.

Looking ahead, Greener remains optimistic. "There's a lot going on - a lot happened in a year and there's a lot going on. I think 2022 is going to be even bigger, bolder, brighter," he said.