Shine Technologies

Last night, Shine Technologies was announced as a winner at the Australian Information Industry Association awards ceremony in Sydney.

Our software product, NBV (Network Billing Validation), won against two other finalists in the category for Financial Applications.

Why we won
Over the last 3 years, the Australian software industry has seen an increasing management focus on outsourcing. If development in India is cheaper on a dollars per day basis, then why not use it? The answer is because it is the wrong measurement. Sure, it is an attractive measurement because it's so simple. There is a great quote: for every complex question there is often a simple answer - and it is wrong. We should be measuring, difficult as it may be things like quality, productivity, total cost of ownership. Or management of risk. Or staff morale. Or the value of keeping IP in your firm, or in the country. These are the big ticket items that really matter.
And whilst our NBV solution is innovative within the Australian industry, it is successful, and it has significant benefits to industry, the best part of the Shine story is that we've sold what we do - both our product and our services into the rest of the world. And what, right now, can be a better story than that? Australians, taking it to the world, and winning.
Excited? You bet we are.

NBV Product
With the advent of Full Retail Contestability (FRC) has come a number of significant changes to the way in which the utilities industry operates. One of these challenges for the retailer involve their single biggest expense - the use of the local poles and wire to distribute power ( or gas ) to the end user's home.
It is often surprising to learn that the single biggest expense in your power or gas bill is the cost associated with getting the power from the generator to your door. For a company like AGL, this expense registers in the hundreds of millions of dollars in any given month. It is by far the retailer's biggest single expense. It is bigger than the cost of salaries. Or the cost of acquiring the power in the first place. It is bigger than the cost of managing the call centre, or sending out bills. In short, it is massive.
NBV is designed to manage the risk of this expense. It works out when things should be paid. It works out why, and provides intelligent validation and error checking to make sure that every dollar spent can be justified.
We saw the need for a single system to work across the nation, on behalf of all of the retailers. And that's just what NBV now does.