Published on the 11/09/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Global research firm Frost & Sullivan recently announced the winners of its inaugural New Zealand Excellence Awards, preceded by its Growth, Innovation and Leadership (GIL) Congress 2014…
Frost & Sullivan calls itself a growth partnership company, specialising in collaborating with clients to “leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today’s market participants”, as reflected in the keynote speech delivered by Manoj Menon partner and managing director of Frost and Sullivan in Singapore.
The keynote was a whistle-stop tour of the top megatrends that industries are or will be collectively facing in the next five or more years. Menon said that Frost & Sullivan actively tracks approximately 50 mega trends but he whittled the list down to something more manageable for his talk, choosing the most important and the most interesting. He also coined a new acronym: SoT – the sensorisation of things, also known as the “multi-factor sensory-based trackers that revolutionise the field of human interaction and personal identification”. Move over IoT, your sun is setting already!
Menon’s megatrends were often bound up in one another, for example, increasing urbanisation, and ongoing population growth go hand in hand. More interesting again is that the regions which are contributing the most to population growth and urbanisation are the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), which is kick-starting another megatrend: the rise of the global internet-connected middle class, will reach five billion people by 2020.
The people living in these new cities are going to be different, however. Menon pointed out that Gen Y has different values and beliefs and has been brought up to take care of the environment. Cue the ‘smart is the new green’ megatrend. With these new values he said we are also going to see an extrapolation of Bill Gates’ ‘innovate to zero’ theory, but now it can mean almost anything; innovate to zero waste, zero crime or zero faults for example. The question of how we are going to care for this massive population is also creating another megatrend, this time in the health, wellness and wellbeing industry where the focus is on making public healthcare affordable and leveraging preventative healthcare techniques and technologies.
He also discussed megatrends that have been hitting the tech headlines for some time now, but are no less powerful for that fact. We are heading towards a seamless experience termed ‘connected living’ where the three silos of work, home and our surrounding environment are united and become one fluid experience through our devices. The internet of things (or IoT) and mobility are already wreaking massive change in certain industries setting in motion the ‘New Business Models’ megatrend which will see companies continue to disrupt the industry status quo. The bricks and clicks megatrend in retail is one example of such a shift and Menon said that by 2025 an integrated cross-channel model, merging the digital, virtual and physical into a single model will be the norm. Menon took it one step further and actually said it’s more like the sensorisation of things (or SoT) and forecast that the eco-system will be worth more than $700 billion by 2020.
And finally, he discussed the megatrend that he calls ‘the span of influence’ – one person’s increasing capacity for influence which has ballooned thanks to social media – and how that will only continue to grow.
Following the conference 18 Frost & Sullivan excellence awards were presented over lunch to companies across the food, energy and power, healthcare and ICT industries. The New Zealand Excellence Awards will be an annual event to honour companies that have demonstrated outstanding achievement and superior performance in their respective market segments.
The recipients of the 2014 New Zealand Excellence Awards were:
| Category | Award Recipient |
| Energy & Environment | |
| 2014 Asia Pacific Customer Value Enhancement Award in DC Power Systems | Enatel Ltd |
| 2014 New Zealand Energy Management Services Company of the Year | ABB Limited |
| 2014 New Zealand Electric Vehicle Charging Company of the Year | Juicepoint |
| 2014 New Zealand Smart Grid Solutions Company of the Year | Silver Spring Networks |
| 2014 New Zealand Facilities Management Company of the Year | ISS Facility Services |
| Healthcare | |
| 2014 New Zealand Mobile Health Company of the Year | Vensa Health |
| 2014 New Zealand Medical Imaging New Product Innovation Leadership Award | Aranz Medical Limited |
| 2014 New Zealand Aged Care Industry Emerging Company of the Year | Bupa Care Services |
| 2014 New Zealand Aged Care Company of the Year | Ryman Healthcare Ltd |
| Food | |
| 2014 New Zealand Animal Nutritional Feed Company of the Year | Alltech |
| 2014 New Zealand Nutraceutical Company of the Year | Vitaco Health |
| 2014 New Zealand Edible Oil Company of the Year | The Village Press |
| Information and Communication Technology | |
| 2014 New Zealand Network Security Vendor of the Year | Check Point Software Technologies |
| 2014 New Zealand Enterprise Telephony System Integrator of the Year | Cogent Limited |
| 2014 New Zealand Contact Center Outsourcing Service Provider of the Year | Datacom |
| 2014 New Zealand Unified Communications System Integrator of the Year | Spark Digital |
| 2014 New Zealand Hosted Contact Center Service Provider of the Year | Spark Digital |
| 2014 New Zealand Data Center Hosting Service Provider of the Year | Spark Digital |
