GroundProbe Awarded One of Australia’s Most Innovative Companies
GroundProbe has been announced as one of the Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies for 2016. The awards, now in their fifth year, seek to celebrate Australian-based companies that strive to innovate.
Organisations are judged on their ideas, how well an idea addresses the problem it’s solving and the impact that the idea has made. GroundProbe was awarded the 36th Most Innovative Company for 2016 from a shortlist of over 1000 entrants.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are 2,121,235 actively trading businesses in Australia. GroundProbe has been a global leader in development and supply of slope stability radars to mining for over a decade. Its radars revolutionised in-pit safety and productivity, allowing mine planners to safely access areas previously not possible. The information is so valuable that mine crews can continue to operate safely at the base of a moving slope, and move away hours before the collapse will occur. GroundProbe CEO John Beevers says that GroundProbe’s focus on innovation is not by accident but is a cornerstone of the business’ strategy for success.
“Innovation doesn’t happen by accident. We made a conscious decision to adopt it as a business strategy and invest in how we deliver it. Innovation is part of everyone’s job at GroundProbe.”
Our business strategy is based around excelling in innovation and product leadership, and customer intimacy. Innovation and product development take more than 25% of management’s attention and even board-level discussions are heavily focused on innovation and R&D.
“Innovation is at the heart of our business,” says GroundProbe’s VP of Marketing and Technology, Lachlan Campbell. “We use it to lead our industry and differentiate ourselves from our competition.” GroundProbe run a number of internal and external innovation programs designed to support development and growth within the business through customer and employee input. It’s what helps GroundProbe to maintain its position as the market leader in slope stability radar monitoring technology.
“In the realm of product development, we engage our customers in our innovation process in several ways. We hold six-monthly product development forums and workshops with our most strategic customers to brainstorm improvements and to push the limits of our technology,” said Mr Campbell.
“Innovation is more than a process, which is why we hold quarterly “Work on Whatever” days (WOW days) where employees can spend 24 hours working with whomever they want, on any pet project or idea they want, from improving our office space to blue-sky products. This spawned some of our best ideas – our latest software release includes two major features that came from WOW days.”
The final list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies has been published in the Australian Financial Review, a country-wide publication that reaches 1.46 million readers.