Cork Company of the Year Awards 2018: A look at the contestants in the Emerging category

Buzz growing around ApisProtect’s unique beekeeping technology

It is no wonder there is such a buzz surrounding ApisProtect, a truly innovative and unique company that uses technology to help beekeepers prevent losses and increase productivity in their hives.

In 2013, Fiona Edwards Murphy began her doctoral research into the application of sensors and networking in honey bee hives.

The Kanturk native’s name has long been whispered within academic, student, and business circles as one associated with ingenuity, innovation, and savvy. Her research, and application of it, was seen as one of the most exciting in years to come out of University College Cork’s IGNITE programme.

The project received international recognition, including at least eight academic publications and awards from the likes of the Irish Research Council, IBM, and Google.

ApisProtect was named Business of the Year 2017 at the IGNITE Awards — the culmination of the huge amount of work and dedication put in by Ms Edwards Murphy and the ApisProtect team.

Currently, ApisProtect helps commercial and amateur beekeepers managing 81m beehives around the world — who are losing up to half their colonies each year — to reduce losses and increase productivity in their hives.

ApisProtect uses in-hive Internet of Things (IoT) enabled sensors, machine learning, and world-class beekeeping knowledge to help beekeepers identify hive problems, diseases, and pests.

The company’s technology enables beekeepers to monitor hives at times that are typically difficult or impossible such as during the night, during poor weather, or in the winter.

It allows beekeepers to evaluate the productivity of their beehives in terms of pollination or honey production.

It also helps beekeepers to make faster and more effective decisions on beekeeping actions, and assists beekeepers to act early to reduce or prevent beehive events which would otherwise cause large-scale colony losses.

Ms Edwards Murphy said being nominated in the Emerging Category of the Cork Company of the Year Awards was a tremendous boost for the young business.

“We’re thrilled to be selected as a finalist for emerging company of the year. We’ve come so far in our first year of business, and the support from the Cork business community has been amazing,” she said.

EviView is making strides on the world stage with e-ConnX

EviView, which was established in 2015 — it provides smart analytics software for lean-focused pharmaceutical manufacturers — has exceeded all expectations.

By its third anniversary, this year, with its innovative e-ConnX solution, EviView will be in an extremely strong position to further occupy the Irish market and to enter into Polish and US territories.

Its e-ConnX technology is pioneering the way life-science manufacturers manage their performance and reliability. This is an unmet need in the industry.

The concept of e-ConnX is ingenious — it is a customised, shift-to-shift performance-management application used to implement the weekly production schedule.

It also provides downtime reasons for any non-adherence to the schedule. The South Mall company has intrigued the giants in the sector across the world, making significant progress with 10 of the world’s top-20 pharma and biotech companies.

The concept of e-ConnX was developed on the factory floor by professionals who identified costly production problems and inefficiencies in their own workplaces.

It is an easy-to-implement and highly scalable software platform that helps companies measure production and reliability performance, and is particularly powerful at data-visualisation — it becomes easier to diagnose exactly where you are having issues that are delaying production schedules, increasing costs, and scuppering sales deadlines.

The efforts of the EviView team are only enhanced by the nomination as a finalist in the ‘emerging’ category of the Cork Company of the Year Awards, according to chief executive, Pat Lynch.

“It’s been an amazing two years for the EviView business.

“While we knew we were catering for an unmet need in the life-science space, we couldn’t have imagined the amazing progress we have achieved in such a short period of time.

“This progress is testament to the huge efforts of our talented team.

“We are honoured to be chosen as finalists for the ‘best emerging company’ category. Exciting times!” he said.

The success of EviView means growth in the coming years.

The market focus will be on Ireland, the UK, the US, Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria, and Poland.

Fuller Marketing’s third-party approach earning the plaudits

Specialists in the concept of third-party marketing, the reputation of Fuller Marketing continues to rise in 2018. It does not matter the size of the firm engaged with the company, which works with clients big and small in industries across the board, offering revolutionary third-party marketing to organisations of all sizes.

Fuller Marketing’s core offering of third-party marketing means if a marketing department exists, it provides the niche support it requires, and in its absence, Fuller provides the whole marketing function.

Founder Ruth Fuller has gained a stellar reputation in the marketing field over the years, working with some of the most recognisable names in Cork business, as well as international brands.

Clients of Ms Fuller have included Bishopstown Credit Union, Cork On Ice, Elite Pilates, Cork Chamber of Commerce, Network Cork, McDonald’s, Aviva, Emirates, Mars Ireland, Reckitt Benckiser, L’Oreal, 7Up, PepsiCo, EOne Movies, Musgrave Group and RedFM.

Fuller Marketing was founded, according to Ms Fuller, on the insight that many SMEs shy away from bringing in the best digital expertise because of cost. There is a real need for digital marketing and most businesses recognise this, she said, so Fuller Marketing offers senior level marketing at a reasonable price.

The South Mall-based business also works on new projects with a number of clients. This could involve a new website, brand position, a new product launch or an analysis of the business.

It is wonderful recognition for Fuller Marketing to be recognised in the Emerging Category of the Cork Company of the Year Awards, Ms Fuller said.

“To have made the finalist shortlist is, without doubt, an achievement in itself and it’s one we are immensely proud of. We see this recognition by our peers as an acknowledgement of, and a testament to, our work. Not only are we passionate about what we do, but we are passionate about where we do it.

“Being in business in Cork is so important for us and as we see it, we have a lot to offer to both the business community and wider Cork region.

“We have big plans for the future growth of our business. We have set ourselves challenging targets but ones that we are confident we will achieve,” she said.