Meet the iTnews Benchmark Awards mass-market finalists for 2020

After announcing finalists in the education and health categories of our annual Benchmark Awards earlier this week, iTnews is pleased to showcase the next tranche of finalists.

Today, we can reveal the three projects worthy of an accolade in the rebadged mass-market category, which brings together the previous consumer and telco and media categories.

Fitting of the new decade, the category is one of the most distinct in this year’s awards, spanning vastly different areas like government, media and entertainment, retail, and telco.

Stay tuned over the coming days as we announce the finalists in the remaining 11 categories, including finance, federal government, diversity, sustainability and young leader.

Also keep an eye out for the first of our case studies on the finalists in the run up to the awards gala dinner on March 5 at KPMG’s Sydney Office in Barangaroo, where we will crown the teams behind the winning projects.

But before that happens, here are the finalists in the mass-market category.

iTnews Benchmark Awards 2020 Mass-market Finalists

Transport for NSW: Opal Connect

Opal Connect is a recently introduced account-based ticketing platform from Transport for NSW that provides a new way for customers to transfer between different modes of transport.

The single digital account helps commuters keep track of all their public transport payments, whether this is via Opal smartcard or contactless credit or debit cards, and receive travel credits.

It is key to the government’s planned digital opal card, which will be trialled later this year, as well as the foundation to eventually offer Netflix-style subscription service for transport.

Transport minister Andrew Constance first raised the prospect of such a model last year, whereby commuters would pay a weekly or monthly fee to use public transport.

In this future, this has the potential to cover not only public transport journeys, but trips through ride sharing platforms like Uber, taxis, parking and tolling.

Aussie Broadband: MyAussie App 

The MyAussie App is the main way for Aussie Broadband users to manage their account, look after bills and payments, view data usage and request technical support.

Available through Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, the app also offers users a number of innovative features for managing their service. There’s a matching online portal.

This includes allowing users to ‘kick’ - or restart - their connection all the way through the network, view known outages in the area and perform a series of connection tests.

The app was built by Aussie Broadband’s in-house development team in just 45 days using PHP, Laravel, Vue and Cordova and has already paid for itself after 91 days of use.

Nine: 9Voyager

9Voyager is Nine’s new self-service, automated buying platform that aims to democratise TV advertising for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The platform, which was launched in July 2019, offers SMEs an easy way to advertise across Nine’s, including on Channel 9 and its on-demand platform, 9Now.

Users can use 9Voyager to choose every aspect of a campaign, from when it will run and the campaign budget to the market segment the SME wants to reach.

The platform, which has been built in-house at Nine, also has an integrated payment gateway that allows users to pay in one simple transaction via credit card or bank transfer.

It can also be used by customers without a pre-prepared TV commercial, with a fully integrated creative service that will shoot, produce and deliver the commercials.