• Data Gumbo strives to be the largest smart contract network globally and to change the way the world does business 
• Amid the pandemic and oil price crash, Data Gumbo achieved numerous milestones as a recognized leader, including a robust sales pipeline and customer base, doubling the size of the company, and adding several partnerships
• Data Gumbo’s blockchain network, GumboNet, automates the execution of smart contracts for industrial enterprises, resulting in increased speed, accuracy, transparency, visibility, security, massive cost-savings, the removal of inefficiencies, and trust

About Data Gumbo 

Data Gumbo started out as a data platform that connected to collected and standardized operational data to enable machine learning, AI, and condition-based maintenance systems. The company transitioned to utilizing blockchain after spotting an opportunity to eliminate a sizable cost inefficiency between an oil supermajor and one of its suppliers. With integrated real-time capabilities, GumboNet reduces contract leakage, frees up working capital, enables real-time cash and financial management, and delivers provenance unprecedented speed, accuracy, visibility, and transparency, as well as automated and accurate ESG standards measurement and reporting.

Data Gumbo was founded by entrepreneur and energy executive Andrew Bruce in 2016 and set out to build a solution to unify operational field data with automated smart contracts, resulting in GumboNet, the massively interconnected industrial smart contract network powered by blockchain that delivers transactional certainty in commercial relationships. 

Since 2020, Data Gumbo has experienced a rocket-like trajectory as adoption and business use cases have become evident to the most critical of global heavy-asset industries - especially as they navigate the crises of the past year. Data Gumbo is a broadly recognized innovator, as noted in the Forbes 2020 Energy Awards as the “Disruptive Innovator” and in being named to CB Insights Blockchain 50. 

Amid the pandemic and oil price crash, Data Gumbo achieved numerous milestones as a recognized leader, including a robust sales pipeline and customer base, doubling the size of the company, and adding several partnerships. Now Data Gumbo is being adopted at a fast clip - one indicator of recognition that its innovation is not only disruptive but critical to enable monetary and operational survival for coming out of crisis. 

GumboNet

The antithesis of token-hyped, public blockchains, Data Gumbo offers a purpose-built, private and permissioned blockchain network called GumboNet that enables and automates the execution of smart contracts for industrial enterprises. By transforming existing natural language contracts to “smart” digital contracts, the network creates validated, auditable, and immutable records delivering trust and value to counterparties. 

Available as a subscription, GumboNet frees users from excessive IT spend and the hefty administrative burdens required to build their own solution. Business outcomes include speed, accuracy, transparency, visibility, security, massive cost-savings, the removal of inefficiencies, and finally, trust. For example, service providers get paid for exactly what is delivered, and buyers pay only for what is measurably delivered; payment automation takes a typical 90-day invoice process down to as little as two days. 

GumboNet’s key differentiators include the capability for subscribers to create, configure, negotiate, and manage smart contracts that work in tandem with natural language contracts. The network is a purpose-built private, permissioned blockchain with no cryptocurrency, tokens, or mining. It operates as a single network of ledgers rather than non-interoperable point solutions, can restore massive data sets for complete visibility and audibility, integrate with existing legacy or IoT data sources, and guarantees interoperability with other subscribers. 

Blockchain delivers the ability to know and lower a subscriber’s cost, and GumboNet offers a path to navigate previously convoluted and resource-intensive issues around trust, accuracy, and the ability to verify data in the field. 

Data Gumbo won two Gold Stevie Awards for Company / Organization Categories - Most Innovative Company of the Year - Up to 100 Employees and for New Product & Service Categories - Business Technology - Blockchain Solution in The 2021 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2022 American Business Awards? Request the entry kit. 

• Performive is a hyperconverged VMware-centric multi-cloud provider
• Their two-person marketing team launched a complex rebrand in just 100 days

About Performive 

Performive specializes in providing mid-sized companies enterprise-grade solutions scaled and priced right. In over 20 global locations, Performive delivers secure, hyperconverged solutions with world-class support and on-demand engineering assistance.

Performive’s Marketing Success

Prior to the spring of 2020, Performive had never invested in a marketing team. Today, the Performive Marketing team is comprised of Danielle Walter, VP of Marketing, and Nicolette Downs, Marketing Manager. 

In 2020, the team of two launched a new brand fully supported with over 70 pieces of enablement, deployed a new website, redeveloped the product portfolio, trained employees on messaging and culture, built a demand generation program, and executed a hybrid, all-employee Kick-Off Event. 

Danielle and Nicolette executed a full rebrand in 100 days by writing, designing, and engineering all brand assets available at launch. The team re-envisioned 'Total Server Solutions' culture and values into the new, embraced brand without ever meeting each other in person before the launch! 

The rebrand project resulted in a new name (Performive), logo, messaging, brand look and feel, product offerings, website, integrated tracking, Marketing CRM implementation, and 50 pieces of customer-facing collateral. The sales, channel, and internal teams were also armed with messaging training, battle cards, and over 100 slides of presentations with scripting. 

Carrying out a complete rebrand (name, messaging, website, internal training/enablement, and all external-facing branded material) in just 100 days is an ambitious timeline by most standards. To do so with only two full-time marketing team members requires a team that works seamlessly together with agility and dedication. For perspective, recent rebrands in the industry of a similar size and scope were tackled with teams of 5-12, with a large agency involvement, over timelines upwards of 6 months. The tight timeline and small team contrasted with the stunning and cohesive end result speaks to Performive Marketing Team’s success.

Performive is devoted to improving the impact IT Professionals can make in their organizations through informative content, time-saving services, and improved products. In recent news, they continued to expand the content on their website as well as launched a blog with weekly posts. The team also launched new demand gen programs, achieving a 300% increase in leads. At only the end of April 2021, they have filled the funnel 3.1X (opportunity dollars) of their YEARLY quota (won dollars).

Performive won the Silver Stevie Award for Marketing Organization / Professional Categories - Marketing Department of the Year and the Bronze Stevie Award for Marketing Campaign Categories - Specialty - Re-Branding / Brand Renovation of the Year in The 2021 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2022 American Business Awards? Request the entry kit. 

• Rockstar Capital’s marketing numbers skyrocket with award-winning team
• Creative branding generates multi-million impressions and thousands of leads for the property management company
• Rockstar Capital’s innovation allows them to get ahead of competitors in a notoriously slow industry

About Rockstar Capital 

Rockstar Capital is an industry-leading property management company that owns and operates affordable, well-maintained apartment homes throughout Texas, in cities such as Houston, Humble, Baytown, Rosenberg, Alvin, Angleton, Pasadena, Ingleside, and Kingsville. Their current operations include 21 communities with a total of 3,762 units, and they expect to grow to 10,000 units by 2023.

Beginning humbly in 2011 by holding signs outside of their apartment communities, Rockstar Capital’s marketing team has grown to six members who have brought in a lot of their previously outsourced work. With more manpower, they have been able to focus more work on the big picture and run more targeted and strategized campaigns. Rockstar Capital has successfully established its Apartment Rockstar branding for investors, as well as the Rockstar Capital brand for their residents.

Influencer-Style Branding

With more than 1,400 YouTube subscribers, 64,000 Instagram followers, and 1,400 Facebook page likes as of August 2020, the Apartment Rockstar branding has helped the company team up with celebrities like Tarek El Moussa, from HGTV’s Flip or Flop. They have also established owner Robert Martinez as a recognizable face in the Houston Multifamily industry.

Apartment Rockstar strives to take both investors and residents on a journey behind the scenes of Multifamily, something their competitors rarely do. Martinez was recognized as the owner of a National Apartment Association (NAA) Property of the Year in 2019 and has earned NAA’s Independent Owner of the Year award for the second time in 2019, becoming the only NAA member ever to do so. Along with awards, Robert has been featured in articles by Forbes, Money, CNBC, Make It, Entrepreneur, and Business Insider.

Cost-wise, 2019 was a great year for Rockstar Capital’s marketing numbers. Rockstar’s team was able to bring in 34 million impressions, 4.7 million company website views, 51,000 potential resident leads, and 2,800 net leases portfolio-wide. While generating record-breaking numbers, the team reduced marketing costs by bringing everything in-house instead of relying on apartment websites or marketing companies. Rockstar Capital’s ability to innovate and to stay on top of current marketing trends enables them to get ahead of its competitors in an industry that is notoriously slow on keeping up with modern marketing.

As a marketing department, they have been running an immense conglomerate of campaigns to fully establish their brands in the Multifamily industry. For four consecutive years, Rockstar’s properties have been recognized as the top in the nation—five of their properties rank in the Online Reputation Assessment (ORA) Top Rated Elite 1% among 116,000 other properties nationwide.

Rockstar Capital won the Bronze Stevie for Marketing Department of the Year in The 2020 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2022 American Business Awards? 

Generator Exchange's Virtual In Home Consultation Service received the most votes in the 2021 People's Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite New Products, an annual feature of The American Business Awards®, the U.S.A.’s top business awards program, which are now in their 19th year.

The worldwide public vote was conducted last month, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in a variety of product categories. More than 92,000 votes were cast. To win, a category’s leading vote-getter had to have received at least 100 votes.

The winners of the crystal People’s Choice Stevie Awards will be recognized during the ABA’s virtual awards ceremony on June 30, along with the winners of the Grand, Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevies announced in April and May.

All new products and services nominated in the new product awards categories of this year’s American Business Awards were eligible to be included in voting for the people’s choice awards.

The winners of the 2021 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products are:

-AI/Machine Learning Solution: Datamatics Global Services' TruCap+
-Business Technology - Other: Digital Air Strike's Sales Boost
-Business-to-Business Product: True Influence's Marketing Cloud
-Business-to-Business Service: Aerial Group's G-FORCE
-Career/Workforce Readiness Solution: Infosys' LeX- Next generation learning experience platform
-Cloud Infrastructure: CoreStack's Enterprise Cloud Governance
-Cloud Platform: Birdeye
-Cloud Storage & Backup: Nasuni 8.8
-Collaboration/Social Solution: Koch Industries's EverLearn
-Consumer Service: Generator Exchange's Virtual In Home Consultation Service
-Corporate Learning/Workforce Dev. Solution: Skyllful's Mobile Digital Adoption Platform
-Digital Process Automation Solution: IQVIA's Vigilance Platform
-Electronic Commerce Solution: Generator Exchange's Virtual In Home Consultation Technology System
-Financial Management Solution: Century Business Solutions EBizCharge
-Financial Service: John Hancock's ZOOM (Zeroing in On Our Moments) mobile web portal
-FinTech Solution: Online Trading Academy's CLIK
-Governance, Risk & Compliance Solution: PKWARE's Data Security Platform
-Health & Pharmaceutical: SanMelix Laboratories' BEECure line of products
-Healthcare Technology Solution: iPro Healthcare's iOrder V8.4.6.2
-Identity & Access Security Solution: IDology's ExpectID Decision Builder
-Insurance Solution: BenefitMall's Agency Workspace
-Mathematics Instructional Solution: Savvas Learning Company's enVision® Mathematics Common Core © 2020/2021 Grades K-8
-Mobile Operations Mgmt. Solution: Windstream Enterprise's WE Connect from Windstream Enterprise
-Network Security Solution: Ericom Software's Ericom Shield Cloud Service
-Other Products & Services: Newberry Tanks and Equipment's New Code Compliant Skid Tank
-Software Defined Infrastructure: Windstream Enterprise's SD-WAN Concierge
-Software Development Solution: MSys Technologies' Digital Wealth Aggregator App
-Solution for Special Needs Students: PresenceLearning's Therapy Essentials
-Supply Chain Management Solution: Link Labs' AirFinder SuperTag
-Transportation: BFGoodrich's® Off Road Wiper Blades
-Virtual Learning Solution: UWorld's  Learning Tools for AP® (Advanced Placement®) Courses

• Software company used by millions of people worldwide is an industry leader in sensitive data privacy and proactive protection
• Spirion helps organizations shrink their sensitive data footprint 
• The Sensitive Data Manager identifies core data, its location, its accessibility, and its usage timeline, thus preventing cyberattacks against organizations in all industries globally

About Spirion

Spirion is a software company that is an industry pioneer designing the critical first step of data security and privacy through its data discovery, persistent classification, and behavior software and services. Since 2006, thousands of organizations worldwide have reduced their sensitive data footprint and minimized the risks, costs, and reputational damage of successful cyberattacks and regulatory violations. 

Protecting Sensitive Data

Managing massive amounts of organizational data is a standard, necessary part of doing business today. Using and owning sensitive data of this size brings great responsibility and moral obligation to protect it. In response to numerous cybersecurity incidents, organizations must now focus on both cyber and privacy risk - the intersection at which true data privacy management now lies. 

Spirion sits squarely at this crossroads and has created a solution where many least expect it: before the firewall. Bringing a different way of thinking, Spirion protects what matters most - the personal data privacy and security of colleagues, customers, and the community. They build and deliver accurate data discovery and classification solutions. 

What Sets Spirion Apart

Spirion protects the identity of over 50 million people across all industries around the world. With an accuracy rate of 98% and the lowest false-positive and negative rates in the industry, Spirion finds all structured and unstructured data on networks, clouds, remote file servers, and all endpoints. 

Sensitive Data Footprint Reduction: Performs fast and accurate searches of structured and unstructured data in locations where many other solutions cannot, including data mining within images, email servers, databases, SharePoint, and the cloud. 

Persistent Classification: Ensures that no matter how many times data gets moved, copied, or shared, it is categorized and tagged automatically. 

Rules-based automation: Accurately examines, identifies, and tags data sensitivity, helping organizations reduce friction to business operations. 

Data Policy Enforcement: Continuously monitors for new data; when a file is created, copied, edited, detached from an email, extracted from an archive, retrieved from the cloud or from enterprise storage, or modified, it is discovered, automatically classified, and reported. 

Secure Disposal of Private Information: Secures unprotected data from creation to retirement with mechanisms in place for the proper remediation of all sensitive data-file shredding, redaction, quarantine, reduction of access rights, third-party controls and more. 

Managing Sensitive Data

The Sensitive Data Manager discovers the location of sensitive data across an enterprise and classifies it according to business rules and industry regulations. Once identified, the Sensitive Data Manager helps organizations automatically identify their core data, where it is stored, who has access, and when it was last used. It automatically finds sensitive data and prevents unauthorized distribution, helping organizations to implement appropriate controls, strengthen their security position, and comply with growing data privacy regulations. It also helps them to effectively label and shrink their sensitive data footprint and keep track of their data in all forms and locations, on-premise or in the cloud.

It is essential for organizations to understand sensitive data within the context of their business in order to take proper actions to protect it, set their broader security strategy, and incorporate additional controls to further strengthen their data defense and ensure ongoing compliance. This allows companies to get the bigger picture of how data flows through their organization and gain real command and control over that data to comply with the laws and regulations built to protect personal data privacy. 

Spirion’s COVID-19 Response

As a data protection software provider, Spirion is actively focused on the risk associated with massive amounts of data created each day under the new wave of privacy laws. Their mission to protect what matters most - paired with the forced changes caused by millions of people working from home - allowed them to quickly develop a no-charge data-discovery agent to minimize the risks associated with personal data exposure. 

Spirion won a Gold Stevie for International Data Protection Solution, a Gold Stevie for Postsecondary Enterprise Solution, and a Silver Stevie for Governance, Risk, & Compliance Solution in The 2020 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2022 American Business Awards?

The Stevie® Awards announced today the Grand Stevie Award winners in The 19th Annual American Business Awards^® competition. Winners will be honored during the ABAs’ virtual awards ceremony on June 30, 2021. Registration for the virtual ceremony is now open.

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.

This year more than 3,800 nominations were considered in the judging process by more than 250 professionals, whose average ratings determined the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners announced earlier this month. For a complete list of the 2021 Stevie Award winners, visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

Grand Stevie Awards cannot be applied for directly.  Winners are determined by a points system based on the total number of awards won in the ABAs, with a Gold Stevie win counting for 3 points, a Silver Stevie for 2 points, and a Bronze Stevie counting for 1.5. 

2021 Grand Stevie winners in The American Business Awards are as follows:

Organization of the Year: Wolters Kluwer, the Dutch information services company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands and with offices in the U.S., EMEA and Asia Pacific, earned 41 award points, more than any other entrant in the 2021 ABAs, for Gold, Silver and Bronze wins by teams and divisions throughout the USA.

Most Honored Marketing Agency: Tinuiti, the New York-based performance marketing firm, wins for 26.5 award points earned for Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie wins in a variety of marketing and technology categories.

Most Honored Public Relation Agency: 5W Public Relations, the New York based PR agency earned 35 award points for Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie wins on behalf of themselves and a multitude of clients, including CarParts.com, CommerceHub, Contakt World, and Five9, among others.

Highest-rated Nomination of the Year: The nomination of Rebecca Stenholm, Director of Public and Government Affairs, by EPCOR USA (Phoenix, AZ), received the highest-average (9.57 / 10) score of all nominations submitted to the 2021 ABAs.  The nomination won the Gold Stevie for Communications Professional of the Year.

Highest-rated New Product or Service of the Year: Graylog (Houston, TX), winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Best New DevOps Solution, received the highest-average (9.25 / 10) score of all new product or service nominations submitted to the 19^th ABAs.

Highest-rated COVID-19 Response Category Nomination: The Salvation Army’s (New York, NY) nomination of Seth Ditmer, their Deputy Director of Operations - Emergency Services, won Gold for Delivery Hero of the Year, for his oversight of the delivery of pantry boxes to home-bound seniors, people with compromised immune systems, and coordinated mass grocery deliveries to soup kitchens at The Salvation Army’s 38 community centers in the New York City area.   With an average score from the judges of 9.5/10, the nomination wins a Grand Stevie Award as the highest rated of all those in the competition’s COVID-19 Response categories.

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, today announced the Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie winners in The 19th 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, a record number, were reviewed in the judging process this year by more than 250 professionals worldwide, whose average scores determined the winners.

Winners of three or more Gold Stevie Awards include:

Altium LLC (La Jolla, CA), ARRAY Information Technology (Greenbelt, MD), Bursali (Bursa, Turkey), Comcast Business (Philadelphia, PA), C-Strategies Inc. (Chicago IL), Estée Lauder Companies (New York, NY), Global Citizen (New York, NY), GN Hearing (Copenhagen, Denmark and Bloomington, MN), Hearts & Science (New York, NY), Ingersoll Rand (Charlotte, NC), Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL), John Hancock (Boston, MA), Katalyst Productions (Philadelphia, PA), New American Funding (Tustin, CA), Other World Computing (Woodstock, IL), St. Croix Chocolate Co. (Marine on St. Croix, MN), State Farm (Bloomington, IL), Tinuiti (New York, NY), T-Mobile (Bellevue, WA), and Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. (New York, NY).

Among other winners, organizations with five or more Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie wins include:

5W Public Relations (New York, NY), BMO Financial Group (Chicago, IL), Department of Labor Office of the Chief Information Officer (Washington, DC), Fannie Mae (Washington DC), Grant Thornton LLP (Chicago, IL), IBM (Armonk, NY), Makers Nutrition (Hauppauge, NY), Merkle (Columbia, MD), Nature's Sunshine (Lehi, UT), OnBoard (Indianapolis, IN), POWERHOME SOLAR (Mooresville, NC), RepairSmith (Los Angeles, CA), Salesforce (San Francisco, CA), SmartLinx (Iselin, NJ), SoftPro (Raleigh, NC), TriNet (Dublin, CA), Wesley Financial Group (Nashville, TN), Wolters Kluwer (Minneapolis, MN), and Xandr (Boston, MA).

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

Winners of six best-of-show prizes will be awarded Grand Stevie Award trophies. Those winners will be announced the week of May 10.

2021 Stevie winners will be celebrated during a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday, June 30 at 2pm ET. Details of the event are available on the website.

The categories that recognize outstanding new products and services introduced in the USA are among the most heavily subscribed in the ABAs, and every new product or service nominated in The 2021 American Business Awards is included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products, a worldwide public vote. Voting opened today at at http://peopleschoice.stevieawards.com and will conclude on May 28. People’s Choice Stevie winners will be announced the week of June 1 and will be honored during the June 30 virtual presentations.

“The American economy continues to show its resilience, and as we’re poised on the beginning of what should be a phenomenal period of growth, we celebrate the remarkable achievements of a wide range of organizations and people over the past 18 months,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Gallagher. “This year’s Stevie-winning nominations in The American Business Awards are testament to the ingenuity, the commitment, the passion, the adaptability, and the creativity of the American people. We look forward to celebrating this year’s winners during our virtual ceremony on June 30.”

Sponsors of The 2021 American Business Awards include John Hancock, Melissa Sones Consulting, and SoftPro.

• The United States’ projected future deficit of over 1 million health care workers created a need for drastic change in how nurses are hired
• Career matchmaker reverses roles and has employers (hospitals) apply to employees (nurses), resulting in happier nurses and patients and an improved healthcare system
• Incredible Health began offering a free continuing education unit (CEU) specifically during the pandemic to help retired nurses reenter the workforce

About Incredible Health 

Incredible Health is a career marketplace for permanent health care workers. Unlike traditional job boards, employers such as hospitals apply directly for potential employees like nurses. This is the first and only platform in the industry that focuses on permanent employees rather than contractors. As proof of traction, Incredible Health is already being used by over 150 major California hospitals, including Stanford Healthcare.

Proactive Problem-Solving 

Healthcare workers make up the United States’ largest labor force, and unfortunately it’s the industry that’s believed to experience the most burnout. Within the next five years, the United States will face a shortage of over 1 million nurses. As a result of understaffing and nurse burnout, hospitals experience a 20% annual turnover rate. Understandably so, high stress leads to unhealthy living and unbalanced lives. Exhausted nurses increase the chances of errors with patients’ medication by 20% and patient-to-nurse ratio errors by 13%. Even worse, overworked, fatigued, and understaffed nurses are 2.5x more likely to quit, leaving patients and hospitals in a difficult position at the most inopportune times. 

To make up for the lack of nurses, hospitals often expect nurses to work longer shifts, resulting in burnout symptoms such as increased stress levels, lower energy and emotional tolerance, sleep deficiency, and physical injuries. Burnout also affects patient care: When nurses are mentally and physically exhausted, medication errors skyrocket by 20%. Hospitals also see an increase in patient readmission and patient death. For every additional patient added to a burnt-out nurse’s care, the probability of patient mortality increases 7%. 

However, the challenge isn’t solely burnout and short turnover rates; it’s an inefficiency in how hospitals scout talent. Incredible Health set out to solve the $1.6 trillion labor problem in healthcare, starting with 60% of the market: nurses. 

By reimagining the career marketplace for permanent nurses, Incredible Health expedites the hiring process and helps hospitals hire great staff at a fraction of the cost (previous average: $20K per new hire). The ideal outcome: Maintain healthier nursing staff to help ensure higher quality patient care. Incredible Health is striving to provide better outcomes for everyone, starting with those who care for us every day—nurses.

This career matchmaker puts nurses in the driver’s seat. Once they sign up online, they can sit back and relax as hospitals apply to hire them. With Incredible Health, nurses receive an average of a 17% salary increase and a 15% commute time decrease. This is the only platform in the industry that truly cares on an individual level. They provide career and personal support via a dedicated career coach to ensure that the nurses are hired into a position that meets their, and the hospital’s, needs. These coaches are former RNs who help with every step of the process, from resume building and interview prep to salary negotiation. The company also offers free wellness events because the people who care for others need care, too. 

Incredible Health’s COVID-19 Response

In March 2020, this platform launched a first-of-its-kind free offering to help nurses across the United States obtain or renew the licenses required to practice. This continuing education unit (CEU) offering was specifically launched during the pandemic to help retired nurses reenter the workforce and ease the financial burden that practicing nurses face when their licenses are close to expiring. Since the launch, tens of thousands of nurses have signed up for the course, and more than 26,000 courses have been completed. 

Incredible Health also recently shared the results of a data report that provides firsthand nurse insights into the impact of coronavirus on the nursing landscape and hospitals. 

Recent Accomplishments

Since launching the beta in 2017, Incredible Health has earned an average of 200% growth month-over-month, making it the fastest-growing hiring platform for nurses today. Other accomplishments include: 

• Employers hire applicants 25x more efficiently than through traditional channels, a testament to the custom talent matching and automated screening technology
• Nurses who use Incredible Health are hired 3x faster than through traditional channels (25 vs. 90 days)
• Nurses hired through Incredible Health receive an average of 17% salary increase and a 15% reduction in commute time
• Application time is reduced by 90% from 45 to 5 minutes
• 96% of hired nurses recommend Incredible Health to friends or colleagues
• Incredible Health is used by over 150 California hospitals and is expanding nationally

Incredible Health’s goal is to help health care professionals live better lives and do their best work.

Incredible Health won the Gold Stevie for Startup of the Year - Business Services Industries and the Silver Stevie for Health care Technology Solution in The 2020 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2021 American Business Awards?

• KCD PR teamed up with Brain Corp to position this startup tech company as an industry leader 
• Brain Corp’s floor-cleaning technology became a global sensation with KCD PR’s media expertise
• Targeted, meticulously researched approaches to media coverage made this sanitary maintenance company a distinguished, sought-after technology 

About KCD PR

KCD PR is an integrated communications agency that delivers award-winning strategic public relations, marketing communications, social media campaigns, and counsel to financial services, fintech, and technology leaders worldwide. KCD PR’s mission is to create and communicate a brand’s vision through highly targeted campaigns that drive their business forward. 

Brain Corp x KCD PR: The Genesis

Brain Corp is a successful San Diego-based technology startup that specializes in turning manual machines into autonomous mobile robots. While the mention of ‘robots’ may sound sexy, the primary application of its technology was far less so - in commercial floor scrubbers. Brain Corp engaged with KCD PR to help raise awareness of the company and its technology in order to attract new customers, pave the way for future investment, and for this year in particular, take it beyond the standard floor-cleaning trade media and position it as a leader in the business and technology press. 

Development

KCD PR needed to develop an approach that would make Brain Corp and its technology attractive to a far broader and incredibly discerning swathe of media. In a nutshell, they had to make a company that currently focuses on sanitary maintenance compete for media space with the same writers covering the likes of iRobot and Amazon. 

They focused on the following core campaign elements: 

• Develop a clear message
• Laser-focus efforts on a core ‘media bench’
• Think big picture
• Create a foundation of relationships to set up for campaign success

Execution

With a plan in place, KCD PR hosted a messaging workshop with Brain Corp’s key technology leaders which ultimately provided them with compelling messages that positioned the company’s technology as crucial to the current evolution of work through robotics. Simultaneously, the team meticulously researched and developed a list of 20 key media outlets that moved outreach beyond the cleaning trades and into influential tech and business press such as TechCrunch, ZDnet, Fortune, CNBC, Bloomberg, and the Wall Street Journal. Based on this list, they created targeted approaches, often reserving exclusives, feature angles, and early notice of product news tailored to each title.

One of the campaign’s biggest challenges was that they had a very well-known customer story to tell as part of Walmart’s major tech rollout but had very little control over the message and their position within the announcement. Their challenge was to ensure that Brain Corp gained a strong share of media exposure within the resulting coverage. 

To increase changes for positive and well-informed coverage of the news, the team focused on building influential media relationships well in advance. To secure briefings, they employed a ‘big picture’ approach by creating pitches which positioned the company and its core technology as critical to the current evolution of retail, how they work, and the state of the tech economy - highlighting Brain Corp’s key investors (SoftBank Vision and Qualcomm Ventures) for added credibility. 

Results

The campaign proved highly successful in gaining Brain Corp media coverage far beyond the traditional trade outlets. KCD outperformed its goals for top-tier media interviews by 33%, gaining quality coverage in the business and tech press, thus positioning the company and its technology as leaders in the field. The campaign generated over 500 pieces of coverage against a campaign target of 130. Key media hits included Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, CNBC, and a full feature in broadcast technology program BBC Click, which aired in 200 countries with over 380 million viewers. 

KCD PR’s COVID-19 Response

Though this PR firm prides itself in working with industry leaders and top-ranked organizations, they are entrepreneurs at heart and care about the community they live and work in. When the pandemic hit, the team offered on-demand crisis communications counseling to small businesses impacted by COVID. They were providing counsel on everything from creating a social media marketing presence to critical customer updates to pointing to financial resources to help aid their friends in the community. 

KCD PR won the Silver Stevie for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Media Relations in The 2020 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2021 American Business Awards? 

• Red Hat’s Quarkus framework modernizes Java software by making it cloud-native
  
  
• Revolutionary open-source project helps applications consume 1/10th the memory and startup 300x faster when compared to traditional Java
  
  
• Quarkus helps Java maintain its platform leader status through modern innovation designed to meet the fast-paced, ever-changing demands of today’s businesses

About Red Hat 

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open-source software solutions. They use a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, contained, and Kubernetes technologies. 

Modernizing Fundamental Technology 

Red Hat’s Quarkus framework makes Java relevant where it otherwise may have been dismissed. Despite Java’s age, there are still millions of Java developers and numerous mission-critical enterprise applications running in Java in some of the world’s largest organizations. Quarkus is a Kubernetes-native Java framework tailored for GraaIVM and HotSpot, crafted from the best Java libraries and standards. The goal of Quarkus is to make Java a leading platform and serverless environment while offering developers a unified reactive and imperative programming model to optimally address a wider range of distributed application architectures. In recent years, there has been a massive investment in Java, but without Quarkus leading Java into cloud-native, modern app development, Java would run the risk of not being able to adequately meet the changing needs of businesses today. 

Quarkus

Quarkus represents a fundamental shift in modern application development and is designed to address some of the shortcomings that Java faces in cloud-native application architectures. Java developers are able to use Quarkus to build apps that have a faster startup time and take up less memory than traditional Java-based microservices frameworks. Quarkus includes flexible and easy to use APIs that enable developers to build cloud-native apps and best-of-breed frameworks. 

As an open source project, Quarkus has gained attention because of its revolutionary approach to running Java in the cloud, its native use of containers, and its ability to provide a true serverless runtime for Java. This framework is designed to work out-of-the-box with more than 80 popular Java extensions. Developers can choose the Java frameworks they want for their applications, which can be run in JVM mode or compiled and run in native mode. Quarkus also includes developer productivity capabilities, such as live coding so that developers can immediately check the effect of code changes and quickly troubleshoot them, unified imperative and reactive programming with an embedded managed event bus, unified configuration, and easy native executable generation. Quarkus builds applications to consume 1/10th the memory when compared to traditional Java and to have 300x faster startup times, both of which greatly reduce the cost of cloud resources.

Quarkus is designed to spark developer joy, meaning that tried and true Java developers are able to continue working in the language they know and love. Quarkus is changing the game when it comes to driving the future of Java. 

Red Hat won the Bronze Stevie for New Product & Service Categories - Business Technology - Software Development Solution in The 2020 American Business Awards®.

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