App of the Year Revealed!

Each entry was evaluated against the three core criteria of customer experience, digital transformation and innovation. Several entries were particularly strong in one of these areas, and we developed three categories to recognise their phenomenal achievements. We crowned a winner in each category, plus an overall App of the Year.

Congratulations to Cumbria County Council for being awarded the 2020 App of the Year for their Test and Trace App. Cumbria’s scheme was the first to launch in the UK, delivered in 10 days, they beat the government to rollout a national system! The app is able to notify members of the public of outbreaks and incidents, helping to reduce the COVID impact on the community. Over 4,500 cases were recorded within Create and it enabled the team to reach 97.1% of contacts (compared with just 62.4% nationally).

The success of Cumbria’s Test and Trace has received praise from the Director of Public Health, and also been featured in the Sunday Times and the BBC Andrew Marr Show. It was quickly shared on the Community and we are delighted to award them with our App of the Year title.

The Digital Transformation Award

The winners of this category were Hampshire Trust Bank. Their application was built to put the control back into the hands of the brokers themselves. It uses the latest capabilities of Liberty Create 2020.1, including Theme Packs, as well as powerful enterprise integrations, including federated OIDC security, Experian and SnapLogic iPaaS. The design work and branding of the app was also to an extremely high standard, creating a great user experience.

Runners-up Adur & Worthing Councils were shortlisted for their re-engineering of a process which was originally delivered through an Access database. The new solution provides extensive self-service options for waste collections, is integrated with gov.uk.notify to send out PDF letters and has also been extended to incorporate mobile tablets in vehicle cabs.

The Customer Experience Award

NHBC, won this category for their Technology Assisted Inspections app. COVID meant NHBC had to work in a new innovative way, so they brought in remote inspections using photographs to cope with social distancing and increased remote working. The app was built by two business analysts that were new to low-code. After amazing feedback from the pilot, with only one question raised from 200 inspectors, it has been rolled out to allow inspections to continue in these new circumstances.

Croydon Council were runners-up in this award for their COVID Business Rates Relief app which was built in just 10 days at the beginning of the crisis. As they had only just completed their Create training, part of the build also included all their set up. They were able to use the app to pay out over £50million of government funds to local businesses in six weeks.

The Innovation Award

Bonfire Creative Intelligence identified the need for a platform to empower the volunteer sector to help manage, organise, deliver and track an ever-increasing level of support. The app that they developed, PieceofKind, intelligently matches volunteers with someone in need and won the innovation category. The app integrates with mobile technologies to provide two-way text-to-text communication and can be updated on the fly. The concept was created at the start of COVID, a minimum viable product (MVP) was built in Create, a government competition entered, a National Innovation award granted (out of 8,600 applicants) and a new was concept funded. Bonfire was able to build a working MVP in 12 days to submit as part of the proposal, which was crucial to funding being granted.

Cumbria County Council were runners up in the innovation category for their efficient, simple process for managing the effective allocation of support to vulnerable households across Cumbria, which was expanded to help with distribution of PPE. A working system was created in five days and, from April to August, the system managed over 9,000 interactions, supported 2,800 households and safely distributed more than 1 million facemasks, 2 million gloves, 800,000 aprons and more.

Huge congratulations!

Richard Billington, Netcall’s Chief Technology Officer, was one of a panel of judges and also hosted the virtual awards ceremony, presenting each winner with their trophy. He says “The applications that were submitted were built using Liberty Create, our market-leading low-code solution, show how rapidly organisations have been able to deliver process and application solutions. The differences that they have made to their organisations, customers, communities and beyond were genuinely astonishing to all of us on the panel. We salute the ingenuity and dedication of the build teams that have been recognised, both as finalists and winners, and we look forward to seeing what can be achieved next year!”