On Thursday afternoon, BGL was named Australia’s 9th most innovative technology company in the AFR BOSS Most Innovative Companies awards.
This is a sensational achievement by the BGL Team, and I could not be prouder of each and every one of you.
BGL’s submission to the AFR awards was BGL Smartdocs. This was developed by the BGL Big Data Team led by James Luo.
So, what is BGL Smartdocs? Well, I described it in our submission to the AFR in the following paragraph:
BGL has built a solution to convert PDFs or images files into transaction data files. Then using our award winning (2019 AFR Most Innovative Technology Company) Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, we automatically process this data in our SMSF administration software. The documents can be clean or contain notations. We use AWS Textract as our OCR provider and then apply Natural Language Processing, Probability and Statistics on lots of linguistic data to help us extract and categorise the data. We then automatically link the data and the document through a system of tags. Our deep learning model runs in the “Edge”, so clients can scan and optimise documents via their mobile phone. BGL SmartDocs will even verify the client has the right data in the right place if they upload a different source document. And BGL SmartDocs also automatically indexes the documents and images making the documents full text searchable.
The BGL Big Data Team have done some amazing work over the past few years. Apart from BGL Smartdocs, they have also developed BGL Smartpost III, our AI based transaction posting solution as well as the big data views in Simple Fund 360 and now Simple Invest 360.
I am especially proud because this is the second year in a row BGL has made the top 10 list. Last year we were recognised as Australia’s 5th most innovative technology company with BGL Smartpost III.
It is unusual and incredible that a 30+ year business can continue to be innovative. This is a reflection of the BGL Culture.
Innovation should be part of the DNA of every business. It is at BGL. But you do not achieve awards like this without a high level of team engagement. At BGL, this is close to 90%. When I hear statistics that only 17% of people are engaged at work, I can understand why the world is in the mess it is today. And why so many of companies have forgotten why they are in business. Hey, let me remind you – it is to serve your customers – not cover the arses of your directors!
When I look at the new board composition laws in California, I wonder what the world has come to. When did we stop selecting the best people for the job rather than the best politically correct candidate? When did quotas ever work? The Victorian government optimizes this stupidity and is one of the reasons my state is in the COVID-19 mess it is in today. Our state public service is employed on the basis of diversity and political views rather than competence.
I am glad to say we have a widely diverse teams of sensational people at BGL. We did not go out to employ a diverse team – we simply employed the best people who came through our doors no matter who they were or where they were from. As Martin Luther King Jnr said I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Boy have many of us forgotten this.
Congratulations again to the BGL Team. You are incredible!
Congratulations that is fantastic. All your hard work has certainly paid off!