Issue link: http://endeavor.uberflip.com/i/547512
28 JEAN PICK GreatSoft Pty Ltd South Africa BRUNO PIEROBON ZUP Brazil JEAN PIERRE KLOPPERS Brandseye South Africa GreatSoft's practice management software saves accounting firms 4-12 hours (~$500) per employee per month. Winner of the First National Bank (FNB) Business Innovation Award, GreatSoft is the first company in Africa to provide a cloud-based solution for professional services firms. Unique features include compatibility with multiple languages, currencies, and compliance standards to handle multi-jurisdiction operations and the option to host the software on private servers to protect sensitive data. GreatSoft serves the regional branches of major multinationals such as Deloitte, KPMG, EY, and Grant Thornton in 19 African countries. ZUP uses a wide variety of software applications to accomplish everything from interacting with suppliers to collecting payments from consumers. Companies spend up to 40% of their IT budgets integrating all these applications across programming languages and databases - an arduous process that is necessary to introduce new products or streamline processes. In vast contrast to the high-touch consulting firms that characterize the integration industry, ZUP offers a single platform that allows companies to integrate their software applications seamlessly. The company's roster of clients includes Brazilian giants such as Natura, Santander, and Vivo. With one in four people using social media around the world, humans cannot process the volume of online conversations. While computers can compile and sort the conversations, they struggle to interpret relevancy and sentiment. BrandsEye's proprietary platform enables consumer-facing brands to listen to what their customers say about them across online blogs and social media in order to better inform their business strategy. The platform incorporates a crowd-sourcing layer to add nuance and emotion to the raw information, which in turn makes BrandsEye's data more accurate. SIRA PEREZ DE LA COBA Shot & Shop Spain Shot & Shop is the first image recognition and retrieval technology able to identify accurate visual matches in real-time, without having previously seen the image, pattern, or verbal tag. Shot & Shop's proprietary technology has a host of commercial applications. In its first application, retail brands and digital advertisers are using Shot & Shop to better understand consumer preferences and improve the relevance and efficacy of targeted marketing, which drives online sales. The technology is especially equipped for real-time digital ad-bidding, and is the only visual search technology able to make real-time digital ad-recommendations based on a publisher's visual content.