Habanero has won two 2013 Intranet Innovation Awards for solutions designed for the Calgary Board of Education and FortisBC. Both entries received gold level status for their innovative approach to intranet technology and were the only Canadian entries to be recognized in this year’s awards.
Iris, the Calgary Board of Education’s member portal, brings personalized learning to the classroom. The solution connects students and teachers in a collaborative environment where each group can set goals, plan for the future, and track progress.
Iris was entered in the social, collaboration, and communication category. The judges said the solution was deserving of gold-level recognition because of its user experience design, solid communication of educational philosophy, and the portal’s ability to impact the quality of interaction between teachers and students.
“[Iris] envisions a world of interaction that was never possible before, and it delivers an engaging technology that can completely change the way people think and work. It represents a level of fundamental change that few corporations would dare attempt,” said Martha Brown, portal program manager at Duke Energy and Intranet Innovations Awards judge.
FortisBC’s Information Request System enables British Columbia’s largest utilities distributor to manage the massive amounts of data necessary to respond to information requests from the provincial utilities commission. The solution saves FortisBC hundreds of thousands of dollars in productivity.
The Information Request System was submitted in the business and frontline category, a section for solutions that improve business processes. The judging panel said the Information Request System was especially innovative because of its customized design, integration with Microsoft Word, and the efficiencies encouraged by the solution.
“[The Information Request Systems is an] outstanding example of an intranet fully aligned to the business and taking the organization one step beyond their current ways of working. Great to see an innovation that benefits the workforce and executives,” said Jane McConnell, founder of intranet strategy firm NetStrategy/JMC and Intranet Innovations Awards judge.
About the Intranet Innovation Awards
The Intranet Innovation Awards are global awards that celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets. The goal is to find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community. Uniquely, these awards recognize individual intranet improvements and not intranets as a whole. Gold Awards are given in five different categories, each focusing on a specific aspect of intranets. These awards are about improving all intranets, by increasing the pace of innovation across the whole of the intranet community.
About Step Two Designs
The Intranet Innovation Awards are run by Step Two Designs, a recognized global thought-leader in intranet strategy and design. The awards are judged by an international panel of intranet experts from Australia, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
