A Brisbane-based startup 'turning payroll chaos into clockwork' has won the 2014 qutbluebox Innovation Challenge.
Tanda founders and recent QUT alumni Tasmin Trezise, Jake Phillpot, Josh Cameron and Alex Ghiculescu will use their $60,000 first prize to go global with their time-and-attendance automation tool.
The digital solution automates repetitive payroll processes, such as rostering, timesheets and penalty-rate calculations, for industries involving shift work and hourly rates such as child care, health care, franchises, retail and hospitality.
Like most inventions, Tanda founders say their innovation was borne out of necessity, while three of the team were executive officers of the QUT Student Guild.
"We were complaining about how so much of our time was being spent manually processing timesheets for our employees, leaving us no time to build the Student Guild's business", said finance graduate Tasmin Trezise.
"Our flatmate Alex, an IT major, said he had a potential solution for automation, which he developed and we trialled with the Student Guild in late 2012.
"A year and half on, more than 5,000 employees around Australia are clocking in and out of Tanda and administrative staff tell us they actually look forward to payroll processing because what once took them up to eight hours to do manually now takes them about five minutes."
The annual qutbluebox Innovation Challenge is designed to unearth and support innovations with outstanding commercial potential.
This is the first year the competition has been open to QUT alumni as well as staff and students, and the prize pool has been increased to a record $100,000.
Five finalists submitted a 30-second video pitch, and faced a panel of independent judges for a 10-minute live pitch.
qutbluebox Director of Innovation and Engagement Brent Watts said the quality of finalists was extremely high, making it hard for judges to choose the winners.
"The $30,000 second prize went to the founders of Boardcave, also QUT alumni, whose web software is revolutionising the surfboard cottage industry by bringing manufacturers and retailers together in one of the largest selections of surfboards and surf accessories online," Mr Watts said.
"The $10,000 crowd vote went to the QUT alumni and founders of Haystack, who impressed the public with their technology for storing, updating and sharing business cards directly from your phone.
"As QUT's innovation arm, bluebox's role is to encourage and foster the transfer of business solutions into reality.
"Events like this play a key role in helping QUT alumni, students and staff have a significant economic impact through their innovations."
For more information on the winners and finalists, visit the qutbluebox blog.
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Media contact:
Kate Haggman, QUT Media, 07 3138 0358, kate.haggman@qut.edu.au
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