For many employees in the corporate world, checking email is the most time-consuming activity of each workday. Despite this, innovation in email has been, arguably, lacking as compared to other forms of productivity software.

That’s where the app Front comes into the picture. The company offers a tool that lets workers combine their multitude of communication platforms, from internal messaging to email, into a single interface.

“By working on the most critical tool people use to get work done, we felt we could improve things on a large scale,” says Front spokeswoman Heather MacKinnon.

The firm, which is based in San Francisco, California, United States, believes it can help users save time by allowing them to access multiple communication channels—including social, SMS, chat, and calls—in a single app. Want quick feedback from your coworkers? By using mentions and comments instead of email, you can reach teammates instantly.

“There are very few knowledge workers who only communicate internally,” MacKinnon says. “From customers to partners, candidates to vendors, external parties have significant sway over what we work on and when.

“Yet these communications today, which largely take place via email, remain in a silo. They’re cut off from the rest of your team, as well as the other tools you use to do your job,” she says. “It’s part of the reason why email is the universal communication tool for work that is also universally hated.”

While apps geared toward internal communication are getting some buzz—the increasingly popular Slack is a prominent example—MacKinnon notes that workers largely rely on tools that have been around for a long time when they want to reach people outside their companies.

“Email hasn’t been significantly updated since Gmail introduced threading in 2004,” she adds. “Despite being the universal communication tool for work, email has only been incrementally improved over the last 15 years and has never been re-architected for the way people work as a team. Front is changing that.”

One of the ways the company is trying to revolutionize communication is by integrating other data sources, whether it’s CRM tools, such as Salesforce, or project management software, such as Asana and Trello.

All-Hands Approach to Customer Service

The roots of Front go back to Paris, France, where founders Mathilde Collin and Laurent Perrin started the business in 2013. The following year, the start-up made its way into Silicon Valley’s famed Y Combinator.

Packed into a home in the Bay Area of California, United States, the initial team of five employees lived and breathed the product for several months. It was a grueling experience, but one the company’s leadership still views as an integral part of the company’s development. The accelerator not only tested the company’s concept but exposed it to business prospects it wouldn’t have otherwise had. In just six months, Front amassed a staggering 3,000 beta testers.

This momentum hasn’t slowed. In 2016, the company was able to secure $10 million from its initial round of funding, and two years later, it gained $66 million of investments from a team led by Sequoia Capital.

Today, more than 5,000 businesses around the world use Front. MacKinnon suggests it’s not just the features of the app attracting those clients. The company also focuses on providing superior customer support in order to ensure users get the most out of their experiences.

Naturally they’re using their own tool to help do that. The team, now more than 100 strong, has shared inboxes in Front for its customer surveys, feedback emails, and support inquiries. All staff members have access to the inboxes, so they’re able to keep apprised of how users feel about the product.

MacKinnon says the company, which was recently named a StevieⓇ Awards winner for Customer Service Department of the Year, also emphasizes a “low-ego” ethos, which encourages workers to keep striving toward excellence. During its regular all-hands meeting, for example, staffers are encouraged to share their “Stumbles of the Week.”

“By encouraging employees of all levels—even our CEO and other leaders—to openly discuss their mistakes, we create a culture of humility and continuous improvement,” says MacKinnon.

While many think of academics as the core of education, there have been recent shifts in the fundamental way learning is viewed and approached. One of these more significant shifts came with the rise of the whole-child approach—policies and practices that move the focus from a narrowly defined set of academic standards to a concept of success that encompasses long-term developmental health.

The whole-child approach is particularly championed when it comes to early childhood education. The goal of this approach is to equip students with the skills necessary to be fully prepared not just for elementary, middle and high school but also eventually for college, fulfilling careers, healthy relationships, and successful citizenship. This is done through a more holistic and comprehensive look at all of a child’s needs, including the emotional component. It also emphasizes a collaborative approach between the child’s school, fellow students, family, and community.

Schools Embrace the Whole-Child Approach

The Malvern School, which is headquartered in Glen Mills, PA in the United States, is a private year-round preschool that serves children ages six weeks to eight years, and it serves as a prime example of the kind of learning institution that wholeheartedly embraces the underlying concept of whole-child education.

“The Malvern School always seeks to raise the bar in early childhood education,” says Kristen Waterfield, the school’s cofounder and president. “We encourage children to meet their highest potential, but that potential isn’t one-dimensional. As a teacher and a mother, I have always felt strongly about the importance of developing the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social growth of the ‘whole’ child, and this is key to our educational philosophy.”

While some detractors of the whole-child approach fear the loss of academic rigor, schools like The Malvern School demonstrate that the enhancement of emotional intelligence need not come at the expense of more traditional intellectual development.

“When my business partner, Joe Scandone, and I founded the Malvern School 20 years ago, our goal, first and foremost, was to provide exceptional programming,” says Waterfield. “And we wanted that exceptional programming delivered by forward-thinking, college-degreed educators. By starting to build this dual foundation of emotional health and academic intelligence early, we truly believe we’re setting up children for success throughout their lives.”

Parents and Caregivers Recognize Success

Parents and caregivers of the young children who attend programs like The Malvern School are pleased with the concrete, positive results. With the continuing success of its curriculum, The Malvern School, which began in 1998 with only 20 employees, now employs 580 educators and operations and business professionals over 26 locations throughout southeastern Pennsylvania, United States, and central and southern New Jersey, United States.

“Departing from the traditional model of day care or childcare programs, our schools focus on diverse programming that enables children both to learn and to feel loved,” says Waterfield. “This has fueled the school’s ability to become the largest privately owned preschool in Greater Philadelphia [Pennsylvania, United States].”

While some educational shifts may be more fad than lasting ideology, the whole-child approach only seems to grow in popularity every year as parents seek to provide their children with the best pathways to success.

“Since 1998, The Malvern School has educated more than 30,000 children—a number that continues to grow significantly,” says Waterfield. “With our steadfast focus on providing value to the community, we continue our journey to bring new educational opportunities to children and families, and we have plans to open additional schools in 2019.”

Parents, however, aren’t the only ones recognizing the significant work done by educational institutions in this sector. For her innovative work with young children, for example, Waterfield recently earned a Gold Stevie® Award in the Entrepreneur of the Year category in the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. 

To learn more about Waterfield and The Malvern School, visit MalvernSchool.com.

The Stevie® Awards announced today the Grand Stevie Award winners in The 17th Annual American Business Awards^® competition. Winners will be presented their Grand Stevie Awards trophies at the ABA’s gala banquet on June 11 in New York.

All organizations operating in the U.S.– large and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit—are eligible to submit nominations to the ABAs in a wide range of categories, honoring achievement in every aspect of work life, from customer service and management to public relations and product development.

More than 3,800 nominations submitted to the 2019 competition were reviewed and rated in the judging process by more than 200 professionals, whose average scores determined the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners who were announced earlier this month. The June 11 awards presentations will be broadcast live via Livestream.

Grand Stevie Award winners were determined by a points system in which Gold Stevie-winning nominations are granted three points, Silver Stevies two points, and Bronze Stevies one and a half points.

Grand Stevie winners are as follows:

Organization of the Year: Melissa Sones Consulting, a New York-based communications consultancy focused on researching and writing awards nominations for clients, is the most honored organization in the 2019 ABAs, with 37 award points earned for Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award wins on behalf of clients including CBK Partners, Momentum Design Lab, Sleepm Global, and the West Point Association of Graduates, among others.

Most Honored Interactive Agency: The XD Agency, a strategic communications agency focused on experience design, with offices in Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco, is recognized with 23 awards points earned for work for clients including the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Cisco, the Experimental Aircraft Association, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and TradeRev.

Most Honored Marketing Partner: Publicis Sapient, the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe, earned 30 award points with Stevie wins on behalf of clients Bridgestone, Fiat Chrysler, MGM, the Ontario Energy Board, and Samsung.

Most Honored Public Relations Agency: Method Communications, with offices in Salt Lake City and San Francisco, earned 28 award points with Stevie-winning nominations on behalf of clients Age of Learning, Aptive Environmental, O.C. Tanner, PagerDuty, Podium, and Valimail.

Top 10: The following 12 organizations will also receive Grand Stevie Award trophies for being among the most recognized organizations in the 2019 ABAs.

1. Jeunesse Global, Orlando, FL (27 points)
2. PAN Communications, on behalf of multiple clients (22)
3. Reltio, Redwood Shores, CA (21)
4. 5W Public Relations, on behalf of multiple clients (20)
5. (tie) George P Johnson Experiential Marketing, Auburn Hills, MI (19)
   John Hancock Financial Services, Boston, MA (19)
6. Finn Partners, on behalf of multiple clients (18.5)
7. (tie) Comcast Business, Philadelphia, PA (17)
   Cisco, San Jose, CA (17)
8. (tie) Lycored, Orange, NJ (15.5)
   Bhava Communications, on behalf of multiple clients (15.5)
   ADP, Roseland, NJ (15.5)

For a complete list of the 2019 Stevie Award winners, visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

The atmosphere was festive when Michael Gallagher, founder and president of the Stevie® Awards, and the well-known news anchor Leslie Nachmann, in her role as MC of the evening, presented the winners of the German Stevie Awards with their Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevies last Friday, May 3, at the Munich Hotel Four Seasons Kempinski. More than 160 guests were present when high-ranking representatives of more than 50 winning companies from all over Germany received their awards on stage.

The highlight of the evening was the presentation of the two Grand Stevie Awards.

The Grand Stevie Award for the highest-rated nomination was presented to the production company for image and advertising films twosyde media from Leipzig with its client Marketing Dresden for the best image film of the year "Liebes Dresden". No other of the approximately 400 nominations received a similarly high average rating. "It's not just the award that makes us grateful, it's the fact that something - born of our hearts and minds - has been able to persuade the people behind to give it to us," says Andreas Schmidt, CEO of twosyde media GmbH is delighted.

The Grand Stevie Award for the Company of the Year was awarded for the second time in a row to CROWDCONSULTANTS 360 from Berlin for their multiple Stevie Award wins. The crowd-based corporate and personnel consultancy won big again at the 5th German Stevie Awards. The company won five Gold and four Silver Stevies.

Founder and Chairman Damiano Albrecht and his team received the Gold Stevie Awards from Michael Gallagher for Company of the Year Awards for Business Services, Diversified Services, and Internet & New Media, and Management and Founders Teams for the Year. The Silver Stevies went to CROWDCONSULTANTS 360 for the most innovative company, the best B-2-B service, and the HR department and HR team.

Exceptionally successful at the German Stevie Awards 2019 was Werner Schmid GmbH from Fulda. The leading supplier of metal and plastic parts received a total of four Gold Stevie Awards as Company of the Year (Production & Manufacturing) and the best Corporate Social Responsibility program. The two managing directors Matthias and Joachim Hauß received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for their achievements. The former managing director and shareholder Monika Hauß-Schmid accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award.

"I am very happy about these awards. Especially the award for my life's work means a lot to me personally. During my time as an entrepreneur and as a volunteer for Perspektiva and IHK (Chamber of Commerce), I experienced profound changes; to work in the way, but also in the way social issues such as inclusion are dealt with. In the face of constant change, I have always been guided by what I consider necessary and important - economically as well as socially. It fills me with pride that the jury sees this as worthy of recognition, “ says Monika Hauß-Schmid.

Paysafe Pay Later from Munich was pleased to receive three Gold Stevie Awards. The white label payment solutions provider has been recognized as Financial Services Company of the Year and the Best New Ecommerce Solution. Managing Director Claire Gates was named Manager of the Year for Financial Services.

Other multiple award winners include Blacklane (Berlin), Communication Consultants GmbH Engel & Heinz (Stuttgart), Deutsche Telekom Service Europe (Cologne), Pfeiffer Medienfabrik (Hersbruck) and promio.net (Bonn).

Great news for the future of the German Stevie Awards reported Michael Gallagher. In his opening speech, the president and founder of the Stevie Awards announced that the German Stevie Awards would be open to all German-speaking European countries for next year’s edition starting in Fall 2019: "We invite all German, Austrian, Swiss, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Belgian business makers and innovators, to compete with their achievements and successes and to face an international German-speaking competition.“

The German Stevie Awards were launched in 2014. At that time, the initiators deliberately chose the name "German Stevie Awards" because this name signals that the German Stevies are more than just a national prize. "This reflection of that time is being implemented today in full consequence" adds Gallagher.

Any changes, from logo, to terms and conditions and to the website, will be made until the opening of the 2020 awards in September. A preview of the new logo is already available on the awards website: https://stevieawards.com/gsa/photos-and-logos-.

Further Information

Photos of the awards ceremony are available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevieawards/albums/72157691258298783.

Offstage videoclips with interviews of the winners and jury are available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J369eo41IHM&list=PLxZrTaLFgyEKJ31YMMm4ct1yjRp7qT-TV

An overview of all winners of the 2019 German Stevie Awards is available at https://stevieawards.com/gsa/2019-gewinner-der-german-stevie-awards

When Natasha Bansgopaul helped establish a financial technology firm focused on alternative investments, she knew getting clients to ditch their existing methods of evaluating funds and raising capital wasn’t going to be easy. The bigger challenge: acting as a minority change agent who also happens to be female.

“People tend to underestimate you. This is especially true in financial services and technology industries, which are trying to rally to incorporate more women leaders throughout,” says Bansgopaul. “The advantage is that I’m always able to over-deliver and to lead my team accordingly. You can perform well beyond expectations when you’re underestimated.

“The disadvantage, though, is that you always feel the need to prove yourself and to deem yourself ‘valued’ or ‘worth it’ in order to combat the perception,” the entrepreneur says. “I focus on debunking the myths and letting our deliverables speak for themselves.”

Transforming the Industry

More than four years into DarcMatter, her venture that’s based in New York, New York, United States, the cofounder and COO has proven more than a few people wrong. The firm has become a key researching and networking platform for investors and fund managers involved in alternative investments—a category that includes hedge funds, venture capital funds, and financial derivatives.

Qualified investors (typically financial advisers), institutions, and high-net-worth individuals can use DarcMatter to explore pre-vetted funds, to perform due diligence, and to purchase shares online. It’s quite a change for industry insiders who, believe it or not, still frequently use more traditional channels to share information, including fax machines and “snail mail.”

“Our mission is to enhance capital flow, transparency, and efficiency for clients by providing direct and comprehensive access to funds in the asset management industry,” says Bansgopaul, who started the business with college friend Sang Lee in 2014.

One of her main responsibilities these days is broadening the brand awareness of DarcMatter via speaking invitations in the United States and abroad in South Korea, as well as spearheading the company’s product development and blockchain integration initiatives.  Recently, the team announced the launch of “Konstellation,” the blockchain development and consulting division of DarcMatter, geared towards financial institutions with dedicated internal blockchain development teams.

Since July 2017, she’s helped grow the company’s user base by over 60 percent. Today, DarcMatter hosts information on more than 150 live fund products and has upwards of 2,900 registered investors using the platform around the globe.

Bansgopaul was honored for those accomplishments last November with a Gold StevieⓇ Award for Female Executive of the Year and a Silver for Female Entrepreneur of the Year in the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. DarcMatter also received a Bronze in the Company of the Year category.

“It was an amazing honor to be selected amid stiff competition from over 1,500 finalists from more than 30 countries,” she says. “I’m truly proud to represent the DarcMatter team.”

Interested in entering the Stevie Awards for Women in Business this year?

Paying It Forward

DarcMatter, which has offices in South Korea, China, and Ukraine, boasts a particularly diverse management team for the financial technology (fintech) industry, which is something Bansgopaul definitely takes pride in.

“As a company with a black female founder with an MBA, a Korean-American cofounder, and a Ukrainian chief technology officer, our management team comes from culturally diverse upbringings,” she says. “We tout a wealth of diverse experience from various sectors, including traditional financial services, CPG, and corporate strategy, as well as product and SAAS technology development.”

The executive is aware, however, that there’s a long way to go before women attain equal footing in her industry. According to a gender diversity report published by Mercer, women comprise 46 percent of all employees in the financial services sector but only 15 percent of leadership positions. Currently, DarcMatter has seven female employees, representing 35 percent of its total employee count. Bansgopaul hopes that number will continue to grow.

“As a female in a position of power, I am laser focused on hiring qualified female candidates. I hope to assist in their growth and development within financial technology firms, which should, in turn, help to build a new class of diverse female talent. Moving forward, they can then recruit candidates like themselves, and this positive cycle will continue,” says Bansgopaul.

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, today announced the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie winners in The 17th Annual American Business Awards®.

All organizations operating in the U.S.A. – large and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit - are eligible to submit nominations to the ABAs in a wide range of categories, honoring achievement in every aspect of work life, from customer service and management to public relations and product development. More than 3,800 nominations were reviewed in the judging process this year by more than 200 professionals, whose average scores determined the winners.

2019 Stevie winners will be celebrated and presented their awards during a gala event on Tuesday, June 11 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York. Tickets are now on sale. The presentations will be broadcast via Livestream.

Publicis Sapient (Miami, FL) with eight Gold and four Bronze Stevies, and The XD Agency (Atlanta, GA) with seven Gold and one Silver, are leaders among the Gold Stevie Winners with wins in a wide range of categories. They are sure to be among the winners of the Grand Stevie Award trophies, the top overall winners in this year’s ABAs, who will be announced next week.

Among the organizations with the most Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award wins are ADP (Roseland, NJ), ARIIX (Bountiful, UT),  Comcast Business (Philadelphia, PA), Cvent (McLean, VA), Darktrace (San Francisco, CA), Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL), LABOV Marketing Communications and Training (Fort Wayne, IN), Lycored (Orange, NJ), Merkle (Columbia, MD), PAN Communications (Boston, MA), Reltio (Redwood Shores, CA), Rimini Street (Las Vegas, NV), and SoftPro (Raleigh, NC).

For a complete list of the Stevie Award winners announced today, visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

Every new product or service nominated in The 2019 American Business Awards is included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products, a worldwide public vote. Voting is now open at http://peopleschoice.stevieawards.com and will conclude on May 31. People’s Choice Stevie winners will be announced the week of June 3 and will be honored during the June 11 presentations.

“The nominations submitted for The 2019 American Business Awards were outstanding.  The judges found the competition to be intense, and those recognized as Stevie Award winners should be immensely proud of this accomplishment,” said Michael Gallagher, president and founder of the Stevie Awards.

About the Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in seven programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

We all get them from time to time: emails from places we’ve shopped promising “quick” surveys in order to assess the buying experience. Most customers, however, soon learn the process is rarely as swift as advertised.

While it’s not hard to see why response rates to these survey requests tend to be abysmally low—often less than 10 percent of consumers to whom they’re sent respond—British entrepreneur Lindsay Willott is trying hard to increase that number.

Her solution is an email survey individuals can complete with just a single click. Rather than making customers navigate a series of questions about various aspects of the business encounter, she’s selling clients on the idea that simple is better.

When consumers get a survey from her eight-year-old company, Customer Thermometer, they have just four options: gold (very satisfied), green (happy), yellow (mildly concerned), or red (dissatisfied).

Because of the survey’s concise nature, clients can choose any number of delivery options, including emailing the survey to subscribers or embedding the quick poll into their help desks or marketing automation apps. Companies can even place them into the email signatures of their employees, allowing businesses to track how each team member is performing.

A New Level of Response

Prior to launching Customer Thermometer, which is based in Oxford, England, United Kingdom, Willott ran a marketing agency that sent out annual customer satisfaction surveys. She says the firm never had an effective way to link that feedback to a specific customer experience, which limited the value of the response.

“Customers were leaving without warning and often for reasons that could have been fixed, had we known about them in advance,” she says.

Willott came to the realization that a dramatically stripped-down approach to surveys was not only a lot quicker but had the potential for much better response rates. Nine months pregnant with her son, she sold the agency in 2010 and began working on her new customer feedback venture.

It was a bold move—and not simply because she soon had a baby to care for. For one, Willott admits she did not have much in the way of technical experience, a significant hurdle for any software-based business. After extensive research and planning, she partnered with local developers to get her idea off the ground. Four months later, the app was ready for launch.

“Early on, we focused on the UK market. We signed up a few customers, including [the telecom firm] BT Group, which was our chance to really understand how people wanted to use the product,” says Willott.

Eventually, several foreign companies heard about the service and signed on.

“It wasn’t until four years ago we really realized the potential of the overseas market and made a concerted effort to grow our international business,” she says.

Customer Thermometer managed to amass a litany of big-name enterprises to its client list, including Dollar Shave Club, Sonos, and the job-searching website Indeed.com. In total, the company now has nearly 2,000 customers in more than 60 countries.

Companies aren’t left with troves of data for analysis, but they do get a sense of what their customers’ overall experiences are like. Some of Willott’s clients now enjoy survey response rates of 80 percent or higher—a number that is far beyond the norm in the marketing research field.

“Our vision is to create surveys that customers actually love responding to because they use such a light touch and are fun,” says Willott.

It’s not just about having a sound idea, though. Willott says her small team of eight employees also makes sure customers get a high level of service to ensure positive relationships. Recently, Willott and her team became finalists for Customer Service Department of the Year in the Computer Software category at the upcoming 13^th annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service?

“Our core values are caring about each other, accountability, and a genuine belief that amazing customer service feels like magic,” the executive adds.

MTC, the transit planning entity for the area around San Francisco, California, United States, is responsible for ensuring residents of the bustling California community get to work and back home again efficiently. Until recently, though, “efficient” wasn’t exactly the way to describe the agency’s process for managing vendors.

All submissions were still done on paper, making it hard for the MTC staff to score and to aggregate proposals in a timely manner. As a result, it took around two to three months to complete a typical request for proposal (RFP).

That all changed when the commission turned to the Canadian software firm Bonfire Interactive, which was founded in 2012 and specializes in streamlining the procurement process for public sector clients. By converting its antiquated process to Bonfire, MTC was able to reduce the RFP time to around thirty days while improving its reporting capabilities.

MTC certainly isn’t the only public entity hampered by wasteful and inefficient internal processes, but the roughly ninety-employee team at Bonfire is trying to turn that around.

To hear the management team at Bonfire talk about it, the company’s mission isn’t merely about gaining market share but doing good for society in the process.

“The people behind Bonfire aren't just building purchasing software solutions; they're enabling organizations to turn the purchasing function into a powerful lever that can improve the world,” says Meghan Hennessey, the company’s marketing communications manager.

Ultimately, she believes, when public entities get more out of every dollar they spend, the public is better served.

“Increased fiscal efficiency means patients in hospitals can benefit from better equipment and receive better care. Municipal citizens can experience safer means of transportation, and schools can have proper resources for a more enriched learning landscape,” says Hennessey.

There Must Be a Better Way

Born out of an incubator in Silicon Valley, a region in San Francisco, California, United States, Bonfire, which is based in southwest Ontario, Canada, has developed an impressive client list that includes the Chicago Board of Education, the University of Massachusetts, and the city of Dallas, Texas, United States. In the process, its revenue has grown an impressive 225 percent annually.

“Through various experiences in my career, I witnessed the time, energy, and frustration that went into thousands of RFPs,” says Corry Flatt, the cofounder and CEO of Bonfire. “Every time I thought, There must be a better way, it turns out there wasn’t. Eventually, in order to address that problem, Bonfire was born.”

By initially focusing on governments, the company bucked a trend within the tech industry, which often tailors products to private businesses. According to Hennessey, however, that’s why it made sense to move in the other direction.

“There’s an entire blue ocean of opportunity when you step away from the commercial sector,” she says.

Through it all, the Bonfire management team emphasizes client satisfaction, helping the company become a Silver Stevie-winner for Customer Service Department of the Year in the Computer Software category at this year’s Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Today, the company’s software as a service (SaaS) solution handles more than $20 billion of procurement activities, and Bonfire expanded its portfolio to include private-sector users, such as the global accounting firm BDO.

In 2018, US-headquartered GTY Technology Holdings purchased Bonfire for $108 million. In an effort to provide a full cadre of services to public-sector organizations, including everything from budgeting and permitting to grants management and procurement, GTY Technology Holdings also acquired five other firms in the government technology field.

“Legally, what’s happening is an acquisition and a merger, but it’s more like they’ve assembled a team of stallions, and they’re letting them all run,” Flatt said in a statement after the deal. “For us, our employees, and our clients, it’s just a really good news story.”

The purchase will ultimately allow the firm to boost its marketing efforts to both public and commercial clients and to develop additional product capabilities, including predictive analytics. It also expects to substantially increase hiring at its offices, which are about a mile west of Toronto, Canada.

For Hennessey, the deal means the ability for organizations to make better use of their financial resources, which she reaffirms is most rewarding part.

“To paraphrase a famous quote, the smartest minds of our generation have spent the last decade figuring out how to get you to click on ads,” she says. “Today, though, that's not good enough. People want their creativity and energy poured into something that matters.”

The Stevie® Awards, organizer of the world’s premier business awards programs, has issued a call for speakers and topics for its second annual Women|Future Conference. This two-day event about how working women can and should prepare for change will be presented in conjunction with the 16^th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business on November 14-15, 2019, at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.

Speaker and topic proposals may be submitted at https://www.womenfutureconference.com/speaker-topic-proposals. The deadline for submission is June 14. Questions about the conference, presentation opportunities, and sponsorship options may be directed to Ruslana Milikhiker, Conference & Event Manager, at Ruslana@StevieAwards.com. 

The mission of the conference is to help working women—entrepreneurs, executives, and employees—understand and prepare for the changes that will affect their businesses, their industries, their careers, and their lives. Speakers and topics may address impending change in areas such as technology, international trade, government regulation, access to capital, and the nature of work, for example.

Last year’s speakers included Liz Carisone of GroundLink, Shimona Chadha of HCL Technologies, Cheryl Eisen of Interior Marketing Group, Debbie Profit of Otsuka Pharmaceutical, and Jessica Rovello of Arkadium, among others.

After the conference, speakers will be welcome to attend the Stevie Awards for Women in Business gala on November 15, where Stevie nominees will be awarded in categories such as Entrepreneur of the Year, Startup of the Year, Women Helping Women and Women-Run Workplace of the Year, in Equal Pay, and Achievement in Developing and Promoting Women.

Few industries are as integral to well-being as health care—and by capitalizing on the globe’s exponential technological achievements, the medical field continues to advance telehealth. Much as the Internet changed how people communicate, telehealth is disrupting the status quo of health and wellness in order to improve how people live.

What Is Telehealth?

Telehealth essentially leverages technology in order to distribute health-related services and critical health-related information. Even when a clinician is in another city, state, or even country, telehealth allows that clinician to provide advice, reminders, health monitoring services, and more to his or her patients.

The field of telehealth is not necessarily new, but with burgeoning technological advances, the applications continue to expand and to change. Here are just a few ways telehealth is pushing the medical field in an innovative, positive direction:

• Two or more doctors, regardless of location, can meet via video conference to discuss a case. (Lab results and tests can also be distributed to multiple facilities across the nation or world to ensure the proper specialists analyze the results.)
• Through remote access, a surgeon can perform robotic surgery.
• A patient can complete a physical therapy regimen from home through live feeds and digital monitoring equipment.
• Transitioning health data management online can make the process more secure, accurate, up to date, and integrated with the health care system.

Benefits of Telehealth

Even as this industry evolves, the underlying benefits remain clear:

• Increased access to health care for those living in remote or rural areas.
• Increased access for those with limited or no means of transport to a medical facility.
• Increased access to care for historically vulnerable populations, including the elderly and disabled.
• Minimized health care costs.
• Consolidation of a company or organization’s resources into a single platform (e.g., a mobile app).
• Access to live health ambassadors any time, day or night.
• Ability for working parents in the medical field to perform job tasks from home. (Many nurse call centers today are moving toward a remote nursing model.)
• A modernized health care system that prioritizes convenience, communication, and wellness.

As people continue to live longer, demands on the health care system increase, but there’s often not a correlated increase in funds for those facilities. When critical resources—namely, money and staff members—are low, telehealth can fill in many of those gaps, ensuring more people get easy, affordable access to the care they need.

Recognition of Innovation

Every year, telehealth becomes an increasingly integrated part of the medical landscape. Companies at the forefront of that innovation are receiving both recognition and support for their important work.

Continuwell, a company based in Jacksonville, Florida, United States and part of the TriageLogic Group, provides telehealth software and mobile communication solutions to U.S.-based medical centers and businesses.

“Continuwell is an innovative platform with a mobile application designed to simplify the employee well-being experience,” said CEO Dr. Charu Raheja. “We keep members engaged and informed, and we empower them to access key company resources through our easy-to-use mobile app.”

For her efforts, Dr. Raheja won the 2018 Gold Stevie® Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year in the Business Services category of the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the TriageLogic Group and Continuwell took the 2018 Silver Stevie Award for the Most Innovative Company of the Year in the same category.

“This recognition is an honor to our team,” said Raheja. “By increasing our visibility, we sincerely hope we can help other companies engage with their colleagues and prioritize health and well-being.”