Amanda Del Signore

Amanda Del Signore

Recent Posts

Location Intelligence Company Uses Human Movement Patterns to Help Solve Some of Society's Biggest Challenges

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Wed, Mar 15, 2023 @ 01:48 PM

ABA22_spotlight Square-7Founded in 2011, Stevie-winner Gravy Analytics is an enterprise location technology company providing actionable intelligence to businesses. Using its patented technology, the company brings data about people, places, and events together to understand human mobility, helping companies enhance their sales and marketing strategies and optimize business operations.

Gravy Analytics began as a local events discovery company, recommending interesting things consumers could do in their area. Knowing that events are often the greatest indicator of interests and passions and seeing the gap in understanding what customers do in the physical world, in 2016, Gravy pivoted to become a consumer intelligence platform. Events—and the unique context that they add to location data—remain foundational to the business and are one of Gravy’s biggest differentiators.

Today, Gravy’s intelligence powers leading-edge solutions for a wide range of industries– from advertising to market research, financial services to supply chain risk management– that rely on knowing how people, products, and materials move throughout the world.

Beyond this, Gravy Analytics believes that location intelligence should be used for social good. For select organizations whose missions align with these values, Gravy Analytics provides access to location datasets at a nominal cost through its Data for Social Good program.

For this program, Gravy Analytics won a Silver Stevie Award for Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year for  Organizations With Up to 100 Employees in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Gravy Analytics' Data for Social Good Program
As part of its Data for Social Good program, Gravy Analytics teamed up with the University of Florida Transportation Institute (UFTI) to use location analytics to examine wildfire evacuation data in hopes of helping vulnerable communities reduce risk and enhance safety during natural disasters.

To do this, UFTI researchers wanted to study the movements of local residents during the 2019 Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, California. Gravy provided UFTI with human mobility data for their study through its Observations Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) product for mobile devices seen in the evacuation zone and surrounding area of the wildfire.

The resulting data and analysis helped UFTI researchers to better understand natural disaster evacuation behaviors, support more effective emergency management, and help vulnerable communities prepare and mitigate risks.

Gravy also provided human mobility data to researchers from Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering who were working to gain a deeper understanding of how COVID-19 spreads in smaller communities.

Researchers incorporated Gravy’s data into their “Anytown, USA” simulation model that illustrates how the movement of people and different circumstances can impact COVID-19’s progression patterns in a small community. The simulation follows the movement of COVID-19 infected people in a small town for sixty days, beginning with a few infected people who subsequently go on to infect others.

Primarily designed as a tool for awareness and education, the Anytown, USA simulator can help people understand how a pandemic can spread in their community and how certain interventions and public health policies can make a difference.

Continued Progress
Gravy Analytics knows that understanding human movement patterns, and how they change over time is key to better stewardship. Location data and its derived datasets have the potential to fuel innovation within our communities and help people live healthier, more fulfilling lives.

Location intelligence lets local governments make policy decisions based on data, not opinion. It allows non-profit organizations and environmental groups to allocate scarce resources in the places where it is needed most. In times of crisis, location data can help prioritize outreach, deploy life-saving healthcare services, or direct the efforts of first responders. It can also help cities plan for the future—for skyrocketing growth, or a declining population—and inform critical infrastructure and redevelopment projects.

In short, location data can help to solve some of our society’s biggest challenges. Too often these problems are under-resourced; the great irony is that these are often the issues that most impact our everyday lives. Gravy Analytics is proud to play a part in solving these problems. The many projects that Gravy has supported through its Data for Social Good program have benefited communities both in the US and overseas.

Gravy Analytics won a Silver Stevie Award for Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year forOrganizations  With Up to 100 Employees in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

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Topics: American business awards

Gutenberg Technology's End-to-End Content Authoring Platform Offers Organizations a Revolutionary Way to Cost-Effectively Create Content, Speed Time to Market

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Wed, Mar 15, 2023 @ 01:31 PM

ABA22_spotlight Square-9Stevie-winner Gutenberg Technology (GT) powers content management and transformation in some of the world’s leading education publishers, higher education institutions, and certification organizations. They aim to transform how companies create, re-use, and deliver content at scale to multiple and changing digital and print experiences.

Founded in 2010 and now with offices in Paris and Boston, the company’s end-to-end content management platform enables organizations to author, transform, and distribute print and digital content from a single workflow – dramatically reducing cost and time to market. The world’s largest publishers and educational institutions rely on GT to transform legacy content into new, engaging web and mobile products.

GT's end-to-end content authoring platform won a Gold Stevie Award for Content Authoring Development or Curation Solution in the New Product & Service Categories - Content in The American Business Awards®.

Gutenberg Technology's End-to-End Content Authoring Platform
Traditionally, creating, updating, and distributing educational print and digital content is a highly manual, time-consuming, redundant, and expensive process.

GT’s platform helps content creators re-engineer their processes, implementing a single, unified workflow—regardless of the end product—that enables a more agile approach to content creation and distribution. This modern approach removes cost barriers, enables more engaging learner experiences, accelerates time to market, and presents new revenue opportunities for educational content providers.

Key platform features include:

  1. Efficient collaboration. Collaborate inside one user-friendly, cloud-based interface.
  2. Interactive content. Easily incorporate sophisticated interactive features, including assessment tools.
  3. Streamlined courseware creation. Create, scale and easily update personalized learning experiences.
  4. Content reuse. Leverage legacy content to create new products and courses.
  5. Simultaneous print & digital publishing. Simultaneously create and distribute to print, ebooks, mobile devices, the web or any LMS.

GT has released their first version of the highly requested IMS Common Cartridge as a new out-of-the-box export format. This new feature is aligned with their continued commitment to making content as portable as possible by enabling more standard export formats than any other authoring tool.

Common Cartridge is a specification that describes a format for creating and sharing primarily educational digital content, including courseware content for use in a third party LMS. This feature will provide customers that rely on Common Cartridge with many benefits, including easily repurposing existing content for use as courseware. This is especially remarkable if you wish to reuse content from a digital ebook and/or print book.

GT is calling this new capability the “Instant Course”: users who create a book on the platform can immediately export a course-repurposed version to Common Cartridge. This overcomes the relatively high cost barrier that prevents publishers from creating courses for upper-division, graduate, and other courses with more limited enrollment, where the economics have always been a challenge.

Creating and updating digital and print content at scale is challenging. The traditional process is manual, error prone, and inefficient. Generally, it takes publishers 12 to 18 months to create a print and digital product, and creating a digital course can take an average of six months.  Today’s “digital natives” expect feature-rich, interactive experiences, including opportunities to assess progress and create personalized learning pathways.

Since Winning Their Stevie
GT's content authoring platform offers organizations a completely revolutionary way to create content by allowing content authors to collaborate more efficiently and intuitively, ultimately speeding time to market and significantly reducing costs.

In addition, the ability to create multiple products using legacy content from within a single collaborative platform has proven invaluable to clients, saving them time and money, and drastically streamlining their creation processes.

GT is continuously innovating, introducing product updates to increase the platform's flexibility, often in response to the needs of users. Recently, they released a new one-click content reuse feature for project elements, enabling even faster and simpler creation of derivative products. On the user side, they've introduced a new "global notebook" view for mobile app users that allows them to see all their ebook annotations in one place.

The company’s acceleration reflects the large and urgent transformations that education publishers and certification providers are going through to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and deliver more engaging student digital experiences.

GT also saw growth from higher education institutions who turned to Online Program Management (OPM) companies to help them get courses online quickly through COVID but are now seeking more cost-effective and sustainable technical solutions that better leverage their own teaching talent.

Gutenberg Technology won a Gold Stevie Award for their Content Authoring Development or Curation Solution in the New Product & Service Categories - Content in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

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Topics: American business awards

Remote Virtual Assistant Side-Hustle Turned Start-Up Demonstrates Clear ROI for Businesses

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Tue, Mar 14, 2023 @ 11:28 AM

ABA22_spotlight Square-8Stevie-winner Virtudesk is a virtual assistant company that focuses on equipping business owners in a variety of industries and verticals with remote-working professionals from the Philippines.

Virtudesk's mission is to help business owners optimize and automate company systems and processes, teach them how to delegate responsibilities, and focus on revenue-earning activities. By leveraging well-trained virtual assistants, business owners can grow and scale their businesses at cost-effective rates. 

They offer competitive rates with a streamlined process and virtual assistants well-trained in business services such as marketing, administration, customer service, prospecting and inside sales, and real estate transaction coordination. 

History 
In 2016, US-based real estate broker Pavel Stepanov was still working primarily in real estate when he realized the benefits of employing virtual assistants for his business. 

Prior to hiring assistants, he had been working 12 to 16 hours a day. Hiring a virtual Inside Sales Agent changed his life. He was able to delegate all the tedious administrative tasks that used to consume so much of his time and refocus his attention on building relationships. When he had his virtual assistant responsible for booking appointments, Pavel was able to almost triple his yearly revenue.

After seeing the results from his own experience, he started helping the agents in his brokerage hire virtual assistants. Then, he started Virtudesk to help more entrepreneurs. Starting with only one virtual assistant helping Pavel in 2016, Virtudesk has since grown by over 400%, employs hundreds of people, and serves all industries.

Virtudesk also prides itself on providing livelihood to hundreds of Filipinos. The company gives them an opportunity to work remotely, provides complete benefits, and nurtures professional growth in their role with international clients.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award 
In the time since winning their Silver Stevie, Virtudesk has secured an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. They will continue to work to further improve many of their internal systems for operational efficiency and better client experience, including training and client support.

Virtudesk won a Silver Stevie Award for Fastest Growing Company of the Year among companies with Up to 2,500 Employees in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards? 

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Topics: American business awards

K-12 Publishing Company, TCI Wins Gold Stevie Award for Social Studies Alive! Program

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Tue, Mar 14, 2023 @ 10:16 AM

ABA22_spotlight Square-6In The 2022 American Business Awards®, TCI's Social Studies Alive! program won a Gold Stevie Award for Social Studies Instructional Solution, part of the New Product & Service Categories - Education.

Social Studies Alive!’s engaging activities, easy-to-use materials, and ELA integration help teachers bring learning alive in elementary classrooms across the country. 

TCI creates efficacious, engaging K-12 social studies programs and K-8 science programs. For more than 30 years, the company has partnered with the education community to change classroom instruction. TCI’s programs are based on proven teaching strategies and practices that achieve consistent, positive classroom results.

TCI excels at making curriculum adoption and implementation easy. They provide training with self-paced professional development courses and live webinars , as well as continuous support before, during, and after adoption. Teachers trust TCI to match interactive, standards-aligned learning experiences with unparalleled teacher support so that they can focus on student success.

TCI’s Social Studies Alive! Program
Used in thousands of elementary classrooms around the country, Social Studies Alive! immerses students in learning about their communities, country, and the world through engaging, hands-on activities. Aligned with state standards and national frameworks, such as the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies, the program is constructed with inquiry-based instruction at its core.

Social Studies Alive! also offers teachers easy-to-use lesson plans and activities for engaging their students in learning. Built-in technology guides students through multimedia and learning games while helping them grade assignments and track student progress.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award
Hands-on learning and engagement are at the heart of everything TCI does. TCI's continued dedication to creating memorable classroom experiences through engaging activities, meaningful technology, and compelling content ensures that students remain invested and enthusiastic about learning.

TCI won a Gold Stevie Award in Social Sciences or Studies Instructional Solution within the New Product & Service Categories - Education in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

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Topics: American business awards

Grand Stevie Award-Winner Ingersoll Rand Continues Long History of Progress With Multiple Stevie Awards for Outstanding Growth, Management Personnel

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Tue, Feb 28, 2023 @ 02:27 PM

Ingersoll Rand_aba22Spotlight SquareIngersoll Rand is an American multinational company that provides flow creation systems and industrial products, including air compressors, pumps, blowers, the well-known Club Car brand of electric vehicles and systems for fluid management, loading and material handling.

A global market leader with a broad range of innovative and mission-critical air, fluid, energy and medical technologies, Ingersoll Rand provides services and solutions to increase industrial productivity and efficiency.

Today’s Ingersoll Rand touts a rich history of two leading industrial manufacturers who united in 2020, yet have been making life better for employees, customers, and the planet for more than 160 years. The merger of Gardner Denver, Inc. with the Ingersoll Rand Industrials segment on March 1, 2020, created a global provider of mission-critical flow creation and industrial solutions.

The company has been listed on the NYSE for more than 120 years, making it the 16th oldest company and the 12th oldest continuously listed company. Its journey is carved by innovation, beginning in the 1850s with the debut of a revolutionary effective speed control for steam engines and the invention of its steam-powered rock drill in the 1870s.

The company’s excellence was recognized among 3,700 applicants in The 2022 American Business Awards®, earning honors with a Grand Stevie Award and a Gold Stevie Award for its Achievement in Growth, and a Bronze Stevie Award for its Achievement in Management by an individual leader. One of five Grand Stevie Awards, Ingersoll Rand won the Grand Stevie Award for the Highest-rated nomination of the year among all Stevie winners.IngersollRand_people_aba22

Sustained Achievement in Growth
Ingersoll Rand has grown steadily throughout its history but has experienced some of its largest growth in the past two years, largely due to corporate expansion through mergers, acquisitions, and portfolio transformation. Today, the company has approximately 16,000 employees, more than 100 locations across six continents and more than 40 premium brands that serve a wide variety of industries. It operates in two segments, Industrial Technologies and Services and Precision and Science Technologies.

Achievement in Management
Mary Betsch, Vice President of Sustainability, was recognized as a “Maverick” for her leadership at Ingersoll Rand. Since launching “Operate Sustainably,” a strategic imperative launched in 2020, Mary and her team have yielded impressive results, both internally and across supply networks. In addition to reducing its footprint, new products, innovations, technologies, and investments have created tremendous value for customers addressing their own environmental objectives.

Since Winning in The 2022 American Business Awards
Ingersoll Rand’s growth strategies remain the same. The company leverages its established growth strategies by aligning its portfolio with three global megatrends: digitization, sustainability, and quality of life. The execution of these opportunities is supported by ample liquidity and a strong balance sheet.

The company has seen its largest growth in the past two years. Even during the integration of companies in the middle of a pandemic, Ingersoll Rand not only achieved great financial results, but it also built a strong foundation for long-term success. Driven by the culmination of employee ownership, strategic expansion strategies, innovation, sustainability and purpose-driven execution, its achievements and growth make the company an outlier.

This is the second consecutive year Ingersoll Rand was honored at The American Business Awards. In 2021, the company was honored with three Gold Stevie Awards (Achievement in Management, Campaign of the Year Communications, and Achievement in Human Resources) and two Silver Stevie Awards (Events and Observances Campaign of the Year, and Most Valuable Corporate Response).

Ingersoll Rand won a Gold Stevie Award for Achievement in Growth - Manufacturing, a Bronze Stevie for Maverick of the Year, and the Grand Stevie Award for Highest-rated Nomination of the Year in The 2022 American Business Awards.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

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Topics: American business awards

Gold Stevie-Winning eCommerce Entrepreneur Started Career by Running Errands, Now Leverages Fintech, Blockchain for International Clients

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Thu, Feb 16, 2023 @ 01:34 PM

cf4c778e-ce11-44aa-a81b-c05e7de622f7-photos_upload-Anh-Son-2Stevie-winner Thai Son Nguyen is Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of SmartOSC, a premium, full-service eCommerce agency established in 2006. SmartOSC offers solutions in areas from consulting, website development, UX/UI design to managed services.

With a variety of large customers in North America, Singapore, Australia, Japan and Europe, SmartOSC has proved its expertise in guiding companies to take advantage of the online marketplace to drive revenue opportunities. Over the past 16 years, SmartOSC has built its reputation through a focus on eCommerce and cost effectiveness, together with a faster go-to-market service thanks to its scalable resource offering, and a track record of successfully delivering enterprise-level projects. 

Thai Son's customer-centric mindset has led to large, revenue-generating deals and award-winning projects with famous brands like LG, ASUS, and Toshiba, alongside regional giants like Korean ride-hailing firm Baemin and Independent Hardware Group, the largest independent hardware wholesaler in Australia. 

SmartOSC has grown quickly, opening new local entities in competitive markets such as Singapore, Japan, Australia, the US, and the UK, with steady growth even throughout the COVID pandemic.

From Humble Beginnings to Widespread Impact 
Thai Son Nguyen has never been one to stand still. He got his start in commerce running errands at his parents' grocery shop as a young boy before founding and growing one of Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated's (APAC’s) most prestigious eCommerce agencies, SmartOSC Corporation. Under his leadership, the business scaled from zero to more than 800 employees, achieving consistent 50%+ year-over-year growth. His sharp mind and resilience in the last 16 years have proved that he is an entrepreneur of extraordinary talent and a business leader whose impact and influence have extended beyond Vietnam and Asia, especially amid the global pandemic.

Instead of offering basic IT outsourcing services at cut-rate prices like many peers in the Asia Pacific, SmartOSC helps businesses save time and money by enabling them to build excellent experiences for customers on their eCommerce websites. Instead of selling cheap labor resources, Thai Son aims at digging into the nature of the client’s business models, analyzing their operations to offer comprehensive and customized eCommerce solutions for long-term growth.

Thai Son believes his industry has a duty to act in the interest of society in times of crisis. Since 2020, he has been an active force in building a community that knows how to leverage technology for the benefit of society amid the pandemic. SmartOSC collaborated with three other leading companies to introduce the Omnichannel Framework documentation to more than 500 retailers to guide them through the pressure of the strict lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 with digitalization. Thai Son has also invested in cutting-edge eCommerce technology such as ConnectPOS, GritGlobal, Antsomi and other fintech and blockchain applications to ensure global merchants get the best out of digital innovation.

The Vietnamese press has called his company “a pioneer in building the eCommerce community” as they have hosted many events for retailers such as Meet Magento (the largest annual event for the eCommerce community), and the Omnichannel Playbook. 

Years of active and thoughtful leadership have made Thai Son one of Vietnam’s top entrepreneurs. He is now also Vice President of the Vietnam-Australia Business Council (VABC), which strives to create a more favorable business investment environment with technology. Thai Son is also a trusted voice for top media platforms for C-suite members such as Vietnam Innovators, ticker NEWS, and Startup Grind. 

Since Winning His Gold Stevie Award 
Thai Son Nguyen has long been fixed on boosting SmartOSC’s presence across the globe and transcending its sources of advantage. As an eCommerce front-runner, Thai Son is dedicated to growing a network of local entities in new markets for the company, evidenced by SmartOSC’s newly opened office in South Korea. 

By maintaining teams of professionals who are highly knowledgeable of local regulatory structures and consumer markets, SmartOSC has been able to leverage both existing capabilities and new host country-specific capabilities, which help maximize the company’s competitiveness in new markets. The result has been a continuous cycle of exploration, adaptation, enhancement, and the exceptional growth that SmartOSC helps businesses around the globe achieve.

Thai Son’s strengthened ambition is not just reflected in the company’s expansion plan, but also in lower staff turnover and a reinforced digital talent engine. With Thai Son's strong emphasis on building a culture that encourages taking ownership and large ambitions, each organizational unit is characterized by a collective determination to constantly innovate. This helps ensure that SmartOSC's clients worldwide can meet rapidly changing customer needs and deliver exceptional customer experiences.  

SmartOSC Corporation Co-founder & CEO Thai Son Nguyen won a Gold Stevie Award for Best Entrepreneur - Computer Services in The 2022 International Business Awards. Read his Gold-Stevie winning nomination here.

Interested in entering The 2023 International Business Awards? 

 

 

 

 

Topics: International business awards, IBAs, The International Business Awards, IBA23

SAP Solutions in Intelligent Agriculture and Document Reporting Compliance Earn Multiple Stevies in The International Business Awards®

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 09:22 AM

IBA22 Spotlight, square A market leader in enterprise application software, Stevie-winner SAP is one of the world’s leading producers of software for the management of business processes, developing solutions that facilitate effective data processing and information flow across organizations. They redefine enterprise resource planning (ERP) and created networks of intelligent enterprises that provide transparency, resiliency, and sustainability across supply chains.

Founded in 1972, the company was initially called System Analysis Program Development (Systemanalyse Programmentwicklung), later abbreviated to SAP. Since then, it has grown from a small, five-person endeavor to a multinational enterprise headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, with more than 105,000 employees worldwide.

SAP won two Stevie Awards in The 2022 International Business Awards®: a Silver Stevie for Governance, Risk & Compliance Solution, and a Bronze Stevie for Business or Competitive Intelligence Solution for their "SAP Intelligent Agriculture," both within the Product & Service Categories - Business.

SAP Document and Reporting Compliance
Tax authorities have been continuously increasing the number and complexity of legal mandates, and they are now taking digitalization to the next level, introducing disruptive changes that make the adoption of new technologies essential to remain compliant.

Since the introduction of electronic documents, the world has been evolving toward continuous transaction controls, forcing SAP’s customers to embed tax technologies within the business processes and ensure electronic documents, financial records, and records in the tax authorities’ systems match.

SAP Document and Reporting Compliance provides an overall streamlined process for dealing with local regulations for electronic documents, and statutory reporting greatly reduces the need for manual efforts, leading to higher productivity, more sustainable compliance and to a drastically reduced Total Cost of Ownership for the customer.

SAP® Intelligent Agriculture
Agribusiness companies today are faced with an increasing amount of data captured on the field and farm, but they lack solutions to efficiently use the data to optimize farming processes or provide better farming services. This results in difficulty establishing digital decision-support processes that leverage both farming data and existing farming experience.

The SAP® Intelligent Agriculture helps agribusinesses to increase their profitability per farmed area and support their efforts toward achieving sustainable farming practices. SAP customers can optimize their plan-to-harvest processes while taking advantage of data science and machine learning capabilities.

SAP Intelligent Agriculture helps agribusinesses to increase their profitability per farmed area and support their efforts toward achieving sustainable farming practices.

Since Winning Their Stevie Awards
More recently, SAP released additional legal content increasing ready compliance to 380+ scenarios and reports, responding to newly introduced mandates like SAF-T reporting in Romania.

The offering has been enriched with further automation capabilities to smooth ongoing maintenance, flexible handling of withholding tax certificates via email, and electronic ordering through Peppol Network.

SAP won a Silver Stevie Award for Governance, Risk & Compliance Solution and a Bronze Stevie Award for Business or Competitive Intelligence Solution in the Product & Service Categories - Business in The 2022 International Business Awards.

Interested in entering The 2023 International Business Awards?

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Topics: International business awards, IBAs, The International Business Awards, IBA23

Nobul's Open Real Estate Marketplace App Brings Transparency, Accountability to Real Estate Industry

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Tue, Jan 31, 2023 @ 02:22 PM

Nobul_ABA22Spotlight_SquareStevie-winner Nobul real estate marketplace platform was built to disrupt North American real estate by empowering home buyers/sellers and increasing healthy competition and transparency among agents.

Nobul empowers home buyers and sellers with unprecedented information transparency,
choice and control when it comes to their real estate transactions, which, for many people, is the largest transaction of their lives.

Approximately 90% of today’s consumers rely on online reviews (such as Yelp, Google, etc) before choosing/visiting a business. Until now, there hasn’t been the right resource with aggregated ratings for prospective home buyers/sellers to objectively evaluate real estate agents. What’s worse, they usually end up paying a price far removed from the actual estimated property value.

Nobul solves this problem by providing a transparent, centralized platform that supports all aspects of the real estate experience, including traditional multiple listing service (MLS) listings, agent transaction history, services offered, and more. After a user inputs information about a property that they may be looking to buy or sell, the Nobul platform leverages advanced AI technology to assign a “match score” for each agent based on criteria applied by the consumer, for instance, years of experience, local knowledge, language, etc.Nobultech Graphic_ABA22Winner

Consider this example: if a user is looking to purchase a condo or lock in a 4% commission agreement over a 5% one, they will get matched with someone who has a high-rank score based on those factors. Users then receive multiple bids from these agents, who are further evaluated based on commission, real estate transaction track record, and other key data points.

And, realtors win, too. Real estate agents get matched with buyers and sellers who are a good fit for their services and expertise without having to spend money upfront on marketing and advertisement.

Finally, Nobul provides the consumer with an upfront estimate of how much they will spend or save by working with that agent. The goal is to put the transaction power back in the hands of the home buyers/sellers and elevate the overall experience of real estate transactions for a new generation.

Since Winning Their Stevie
Nobul has achieved billions of dollars in sales across more than 100 markets throughout North America. In December 2021, Nobul surpassed over $5 billion dollars in completed sales.

Nobul is continuing its nationwide rollout into key markets across the United States. In May 2022. Nobul made its marketplace available throughout Texas, including but not limited to Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso. With Nobul, buyers and sellers in Texas can now review criteria and data to help them choose the right real estate agent for them while agents compete for their business in real time. 

Nobul won a Gold Stevie Award in the Mobile Web & App Awards category - Real Estate in The 2022 American Business Awards.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

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Topics: The American Business Awards, ABA, American business awards

Gold-winning IMPACT App Helps Users Make Socially Responsible Investment Choices

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Tue, Jan 31, 2023 @ 01:57 PM

Screen Shot 2023-01-03 at 4.33.03 PM copy-1Stevie-winner Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is an American multinational brokerage firm. It operates the largest electronic trading platform in the United States by number of daily average revenue trades. The company brokers stocks, options, futures, EFPs, futures options, forex, bonds, funds, and some cryptocurrencies.

IBKR conducts its broker/dealer business on over 150 market destinations worldwide, providing direct access (“online”) trade execution and clearing services to institutional and professional traders for a wide variety of electronically traded products including stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, gold, crypto, and funds.

IBKR is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA, and has over 2,650 employees in its offices in the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Hungary, India, China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), Japan, Singapore, and Australia.

IBKR won a Gold Stevie Award for their mobile trading platform for socially conscious investors called IMPACT.

IMPACT by Interactive Brokers
IMPACT is a mobile trading platform for socially conscious investors that is bringing transparency to investing. IBKR believes that everyone should know as much as possible about the business practices of the companies they invest in. IMPACT was created as the simplest way to invest in companies that are aligned with the values investors care most about.

IMPACT allows investors to select their personal investment criteria from 13 impact values and principles: Clean Air, Pure Water, Ocean Life, Land Health, Consumer Safety, Ethical Leadership, Gender Equality, Racial Equality, LGBTQ Inclusion, Company Transparency, Sustainable Product Lifecycle, Mindful Business Models, and Fair Labor & Thriving Communities.

Investors can also exclude investments based on 10 categories: animal testing, business ethics controversies, corporate political spending and lobbying, energy-intensive, fossil fuels, greenhouse emissions, hazardous waste, high water usage, tobacco, alcohol and gambling, and weapons and gun manufacturers.

Based on these selections, the app provides impact scores on existing portfolios and holdings and identifies companies that align with investors’ selected criteria. Ultimately, IMPACT makes it easy to find and invest in companies that share your values, helping to better align your portfolio with the kind of world you want to create.

IMPACT: Post-Launch
Since launching IMPACT by IBKR, the team has continued to evolve the product to better enable access across the globe. This includes not only regularly reevaluating and enhancing the app’s tools to further educate clients and simplify sustainable journeys, but also adding new features such as “Carbon Offsets,” which allows users to take control of and reduce their individual carbon emissions.

Looking forward, they aim to continue to develop and introduce new features as part of their ongoing effort to encourage investment that will ultimately improve lives today, tomorrow, and for generations to come.

Interactive Brokers won a Gold Stevie Award in App & Mobile Website - Financial Services/Banking in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

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Topics: The American Business Awards, ABA, American business awards

"Mercenaries of the Business World": Veteran-Run Consulting Firm Wins Gold for Workforce Solutions

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 @ 11:02 AM

OSMEAC Solutions_ABA22Winner_SquareStevie-winner OSMEAC Solutions is one of America's leading-edge accounting consulting firms. They are considered to be in the top 1% of accounting and finance professionals and are publicly marketed as such by their network partners.

With a mission to be "Mercenaries of the Business World," OSMEAC Solutions works to ensure that every client has clear and legible accounting records, financial foresight, and the ability to make sound business decisions. They utilize a fully remote team that spans the United States, assisting clients across North America and now Europe, and facilitating the future evolution of back-office workforce solutions.

President and Founder Charlie Osborne, a US Marine veteran, grew OSMEAC Solutions from $120,000 per year in revenue from 2019 to over $1.2 million in annual revenue in one and a half years, with revenue projected to double over the next 12 months.

From Military Service to Consulting Services
After separating from service with the US Marine Corps, Charlie earned both his bachelor’s and Master's degrees in Accounting. He went on to work for several companies and industries in construction, gaining skills related to SaaS, Tech, Education, Insurance, and eCommerce. He Charlie Osborneheld every position in the accounting and finance field before leaving the corporate world as a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and starting his own Contract CFO firm.

After a few years on his own, seeing the lack of communication and full-service offerings from other firms in his field, he brought a team of highly skilled individuals together to provide a wide array of services to best meet his client’s needs on a contracted basis.

Navigating the Pandemic
In 2020, COVID-19 hit most companies hard. Charlie continued to provide support to his clients despite not always getting paid on time, or at all due to the hardships that were endured. As a result, Charlie found a way to continue growing his business tenfold from 2020 to 2021.

With that growth, he was able to hire over 13 employees in a very short time frame and give opportunities to those in the accounting industry who had been laid off or put out of business. That number continues to grow, with a plan to add 5 more accounting professionals in the next few months.
Team
OSMEAC Solutions provides a fully remote work environment, staying ahead of the curve from most accounting professionals that are afraid to make the jump. Charlie hired employees in 10 different states, and that allowed OSMEAC Solutions to service clients nationally, but also internationally where there is a need for back-office support in an era of increasing mergers and acquisitions.

Through Charlie's leadership skills gained while leading Marines in high-stress combat situations, he has honed-in on the needs of people, clients, and employees to help everyone find that success they are looking for. He attributes his success to his Marines, employees, clients, and family who have helped shape him into the leader he is today.

Since Winning a Stevie Award
OSMEAC Solutions has continued to provide a fully remote, flexible work environment to retain and hire the top accounting talent in the United States. They now provide back-office accounting and finance solutions all over North America and Europe.

They have helped several small businesses scale by providing accurate data and reporting so business owners can make crucial decisions. OSMEAC Solutions has also moved over 6 different corporations from a cash-based accounting method to accrual to comply with US GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and gain better insight into their margins.

OSMEAC Solutions won a Gold Stevie Award for Veteran-Owned Business of the Year in The 2022 American Business Awards.

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Topics: The American Business Awards, ABA, American business awards