Professional services firm Deloitte has won the prestigious 2011 Australian Business Award Winner for Product Innovation for Bamboo, a smartphone platform which is revolutionising how organisations manage their business continuity and emergency response. Deloitte developed Bamboo to assist clients and their employees access critical information and tools during a crisis.
The award recognises organisations that have made significant contributions to their industry through the introduction or improvement of an idea, method, technology, process or application resulting in an economic, environmental, educational and/or social benefit.
“We developed this product to fill an important need, which was identified by our business continuity team of consultants. It is a unique solution,” said Deloitte Risk Services Managing Partner Ron Loborec.
Designed and built by Deloitte in Australia as part of its national innovation program, Bamboo is a smartphone platform which stores clients’ continuity management procedures and action plans in a user friendly and practical way on employees’ mobile devices such as a Blackberry, iPhone and Android.
Iron ore producer Fortescue Metals Group has rolled out Deloitte Bamboo across the company’s two mine sites (Cloudbreak and Christmas Creek), operations and expansion areas. The application will be accessed and used by a growing team of employees as the company expands.
Fortescue Chief Executive Officer Nev Power said, “The rollout of Bamboo was part of the company’s strong commitment to excellence in safety and emergency response in the mining sector.”
“We believe the key to its effectiveness is how it allows our people, during an incident, to easily access critical information from their mobile devices while improving our leaders’ response times”, Power said.
Deloitte Risk Services Partner Oliver Binz said “Bamboo was designed to create clarity during an emergency situation. This tool is about helping employees and employers access critical information in an emergency when they need it. Using “push” technology, it ensures that people have the latest up to date information right there on their smartphone.”
“Paper based plans have lots on limitations. Even if you can keep them up to date, most people simply don’t have access to the files when they need them most. Many Queensland businesses learnt this the hard way during the Christmas floods and Cyclone Yasi. With Bamboo, staff are able to access their individual action plans, regardless of location or mobile network connectivity,” said Binz.
“Bamboo also leverages the capabilities of smart devices to deliver many additional benefits, such as being able to locate team members subject to network availability, direct people to evacuation sites or communicate easily with specific teams using email, SMS or phone.”
“For organisations, effective incident management is all about minimising the negative impact on its people, its customers and its operations. Bamboo does exactly that.
We are very proud to have received recognition in the form of this award, and also to be working with Australian mining icon Fortescue.” concluded Binz.