New Year’s resolutions – Smart50 winners reveal their plans

A new year is nearly upon us, and in our last week of coverage before the holidays SmartCompany has asked some of our top Smart50 winners what resolutions they will set for their businesses.

Everyone is expecting growth, but they know it won’t come without effort. A lot is based on the preparation work done this year.

From increasing staff knowledge of wine, to “going to the moon”, all of their plans show they will remain businesses to watch.

Andre Eikmeier, chief executive, Vinomofo

We’ll be focusing on our team with a few moves to increase happiness among staff. We will do less managing and more mentoring of staff to increase empowerment. We’ll introduce employee profit sharing. We’ll invest in our environment to make the space, the processes and internal communications more inspiring and delightful. And increase wine education opportunities for the team.

Dean Weinman, director, Plan B

Next year we’re looking at significant growth. We’re going global and considering opening offices in strategic locations overseas after proving the model in Australia. Our products will integrate too, making an end-to-end system for our clients.

Danny Gorog, director, Outware Mobile

We’re anticipating solid growth in 2014 similar to 2013. Demand for mobile apps continues to increase and it is now considered a primary channel. To deal with that demand we will respond by building our team. We haven’t hit 2014 yet and we have three more staff starting in January!

We are always looking for new platforms to develop for and 2014 won’t be any different.  We are watching platforms like Windows Mobile expand, but the exciting development will be in wearables, like wristwatch style displays, Google Glass and the rumoured Apple wearable.

We are already making significant investments in this area. We’re not convinced 2014 will be the year wearables go mainstream but it’s an area of interest for a many of our clients.

Brad Berryman, owner and director, Modus Projects

We’re going to go to the moon, bro. We want to continue to build on our development with Caltex and look at similar businesses to them. Last year we went through an extensive process of spending on health and safety compliance tools and next year we will consolidate the use of the tools.

Igor Stjepanovic, managing director, GIS People

All we wish for in 2014 is to exceed our performance in 2013 – and start a new office to support our expansion plans.

Tristan Sternson, managing director, InfoReady

InfoReady will work on developing new products to bring to the big data and data management market next year. We expect the market to grow so want to grow with it. InfoReady is looking to expand into an Asian capital city, building on our prior Dublin expansion, and being as we have visited Singapore previously that looks likely. The only other thing is to keep improving our community involvement with sport teams and so on.

Adam Schwab, managing director, AussieCommerce Group

Our New Year’s resolution is to continue our strong growth from 2013, partially by launching new verticals and taking baby steps towards international opportunities. We’ll also maintain real staff engagement in the business. It’s something we’ve always done but it’s never enough.

Rob Erskine, joint managing director, Pioneer International Logistics

Two weeks ago we went completely paperless in the office. Next year we’re looking at three areas of change. We’ll be launching a new service offering to the market which is not currently available. Something which is driven towards medium to large importers, it will deliver structural cost savings not currently available. It will take us down a different path.

We’re going to be doing some vertical integration, we’ll bring an outsourced business in-house and create a new company. This is the business doing what it needs to do to grow. We’ll continue to make efficiencies internally and invest in systems so we can be scalable.