The Innovation Exchange, a €5m multi-year programme to facilitate collaboration between Irish SMEs and multinational corporations, managed by Dublin BIC and Skillnet Ireland, has announced that 150 innovative companies have been successful in their applications to join.

The successful companies met criteria for applicants to have proven ability to deliver innovative digital solutions, and demonstrate an innovative approach and potential to scale, with a further 100 companies expected to join the programme this year and 1,000 over the next four years.

A second call for applications, focusing on challenges and solutions in healthcare transformation, will be made this month.

The Innovation Exchange has also announced that eight large organisations -- Musgrave Group, the HSE, Health Innovation Hub, Ryanair, Glanbia, IBM, Select USA, Carberry and An Post -- signed up to the programme during the first quarter.

Each partner has committed to at least one innovation challenge, which participating SMEs are invited to take on, and Innovation Exchange said that a minimum of 20 corporate partners will have published challenges by the end of the year, with approximately 500 proposals expected to be put forward by SMEs for consideration.

In Association with

The Innovation Exchange's corporate partners will have access to the programme's members, which are at the cutting edge of digital transformation across sectors from manufacturing to retail with expertise in areas such as IoT, data analytics and AI that can be applied to challenges in areas of sustainability, energy, big data, workflow management, recruitment and retention.

On the other hand, the successful applicants get access to a customer pipeline and to a framework that develops their capability to navigate sales and procurement through specialised, tailor-made training.

“The calibre of SMEs that applied to be part of the programme is very high," said Conor Carmody, programme director of the Innovation Exchange.

We are not only looking for tried and tested digital transformation solutions, but also for the ability to collaborate with large businesses who also want to put their stamp on the end solution that they will adopt."

Some of the SMEs that were successful in the first call for solutions include Ambisense, GladCloud, Touchcom, Cognition, World Boatyardx,  Energy Elephant, HR Locker, Visual ID, ApplyOn and Overcast. See further details for a sample of the SMEs below.

Ambisense (DCU Innovation Campus)

Ambisense uses solutions that combine Internet of Things (IoT) hardware with its online platform, Ambilytics, to deliver intelligence and insight into the current and future behaviour of environmental pollutants to its clients, alerting them to potential problems in advance and allowing them to take a proactive approach to risk management.

Environmental monitoring, indoor air quality, facilities management, digital twinning, smart buildings, smart cities and green tech.

GladCloud

The digitization of Trade Marketing

GladCloud is a collaborative social media marketing platform for (B2B2C), so national brands can locally activate campaigns, by transforming their independent merchant partners into digital brand advocates at scale via custom co-branded social media posts and sponsored advertising.

The platform is specifically designed for brands that sell products or services via large networks of independently owned merchants.

Touchcom

Touchcom’s Managed Mobility Service allows an organisation to centralise, comprehend and control the complete lifecycle of every aspect of their mobility program all through one platform. Touchcom looks after LinkedIn, Workday EMEA, and NTMA.

Cognition World (Dogpatch Labs)

Saas-based technology firm providing sustainability management software along with connectivity and wireless battery-operated sensors and support. Cognition World is using its technology to address the challenges of IOT, big data and sustainability.

Boatyardx

BoatyardX provides bespoke software development services, spanning the process of product building from discovery/investigative work, through minimum viable product development to production build and operation. They work with companies looking to provide or improve digital services, in areas of business ranging from finance to data management to improving workflows in complex processes.

Energy Elephant

EnergyElephant helps organisations around the world improve sustainability, save time and reduce costs with their all-in-one energy and sustainability management platform. Energy Elephant innovation area is working with companies who have net zero carbon commitments.

Current customers include: Linkedin, Virgin Media, Zalando, IAA, British Film Institute, Bank of Ireland and AIB. Multi-site organisations with sustainability/carbon challenges.

HR Locker

HR Locker has a dedicated digital transformation team ready to bring companies to the cloud and beyond. HR Locker facilitates the digitalisation of all ‘things’ recruitment - people management, people performance and training.

Visual ID

Visual ID has developed cloud software solutions to manage the compliant production and publishing of content and marketing material for all media outputs. Visual ID applications deliver brand compliance, control and cost savings by giving their clients the controls to allow HQ and their store and agent networks the ability to create compliant personalised and variable content for print, social media, digital screens and web media and also the ability to manage all delivery and publishing challenges.

SCG Growth Partners - ApplyOn

ApplyOn enables companies to digitalise multiple compliance-based workflows and processes with their workflow management platform which includes an integrated CRM for customer management and integrated process modules.

Overcast

Overcast provides media asset management (MAM) solutions that compliment augment digital asset management (DAM) solutions and help enterprise businesses manage video from camera to distribution to archive. Overcast work with Diageo, Vodafone, Yeti and a number of other global brands. 

Parents and Brands

Parents and Brands deliver actionable insights with measurable results for businesses through its private digital platform by hosting tailored panels, recruited from its engaged parent community, to unlock qualitative insights on behalf of businesses looking for brand and product specific answers.

Threadable

Threadable helps companies to fast-track the design, development and launch of their innovative solutions with its software. It partner with customers to accelerate their digital transformation, in order to boost their productivity and profitability, working in partnership with them to navigate and simplify their digital journeys.   

Utility AR

UtilityAR builds augmented reality smart glasses-based software, which allows an industrial technician or engineer to automatically see information about the piece of equipment they are working on. This information could include detailed procedures on the task they must carry out, dynamic metering data, or video guidance.

Additionally, they can do a remote advisor video call which allows a colleague or adviser to see what they are seeing and to draw on their vision to assist them to fix any problems they encounter.

The software works on any AR smart glasses, VR headset, PC or phone, and it can be set up using a simple excel driven database or can be linked to the users existing SAP, IBM Maximo, or other asset databases to provide maximum flexibility.

Business Games Ireland

Business Games Ireland helps companies turn their trainings into gamified learning experiences using user-friendly learning solutions and leveraging technologies such as chatbots, virtual meeting spaces, and whiteboards. Its areas of impact include onboarding, recruitment, change management, leadership, diversity/inclusion and compliance.

Kyzentree - Kt-Pulse

Kt-Pulse is used to drive continuous improvement on the manufacturing floor, by tracking the performance of key processes, engaging the whole production team from the operators to senior management. Kt-Pulse is used to diagnose performance issues in key processes, and present actionable insights for the management & improvements teams. Kt-Pulse is then used to control and maintain the improvements.

Kyzentree has built a digital platform that extracts insights from production operators across a range of manual and semi-automated manufacturing processes in a very agile way. The insights captured through the operators is translated into ready-to-use dashboards that create better visibility on how processes are performing and where to prioritise improvement activity.

Dulann

Dulann is empowering companies in all sectors to fundamentally deliver more efficient complaint safer workplaces, in a whole new way by digitally transforming compliance led paperwork and processes. It has specific expertise in food processing, construction and medical/pharma.

Fathom Ltd

Fathom is an innovation and cloud transformation consultancy that help their clients solve business problems through the adoption of cloud technologies and the development of software applications.

It has a team of experienced business analysts and full stack engineers who deliver exceptional results via cloud transformation, DevOps, machine learning,  earth observation data, text to speech, speech to text and web applications.

Ecat

ECAT is a cloud-based service delivery management tool that allows organisations to collect, collate, distribute and analyse data efficiently. Ecats’ aim is to reduce repetitive paper based processes across sectors such as facilities management, warehousing and logistics/manufacturing.

Chatspace

Chatspace transforms data into meaningful insights in a fast, secure and reliable way so their clients, including large and medium-sized enterprises and universities, can augment their decision making.

Bounce Insights

Bounce is a consumer research platform that enables consumer facing brands to gather authentic consumer data from any cohort they need access to. Bounce achieves this through an end-to-end research platform with a team of experts to make capturing insights fast, agile and convenient for any brand.

Bounce work with consumer-facing brands and companies that rely on consumer research to drive decision making. Their target industries include fast-moving consumer goods, alcohol, grocery, retail, media/ advertising agencies, telecommunications, and financial services

Mersus Technologies

Mersus Technologies creates software that digitises industrial processes and assemblies for knowledge transfer, using computer gaming technology. By creating virtual laboratories, its Avatar Academy platform allows people to prepare for jobs in biopharma and medtech industries before actually starting on any live production line.