The Digital Marketplace Contenders, 2: IMS, Australia

In the latest in 24n's 'Digital Contender' profile slot of new tech SMEs applying to G-Cloud-7, we meet Daren Jay of IMS

Can you tell us a bit about you and your company?

Interview Management Solutions (IMS) is a new tech company based in Sydney, Australia that's recently launched an interview planning and management software tool designed to assist police officers to plan, conduct and evaluate interviews with suspects. I founded and head up the company as Director.

What's the value proposition here then, Daren?

Police interviewers receive advanced training in strategic interviewing, but until now they have been trying to tactically plan for interviews using paper-based interview plans. Our system is a SaaS solution, TILES, that delivers a digital footprint across the interview process and so gives officers a strategic advantage over the suspect who might be inclined to misrepresent the truth. Think ‘Minority Report’ for the interview room!

How precisely does it offer such an advantage, though?

The TILES system reduces the time required for police to prepare interview plans and enhances the strategic vision of the interviewing team and so enhances the strategic capacity of an interviewer, leaving them able to conduct shorter, more focused interviews that result in better evidence. Digital interview plans can also now be shared remotely online across the entire judicial system, from front line interviewing officers, through to police supervisors and even prosecution legal teams.

Great - is anyone using it yet?

The software is already being piloted amongst serving police detectives undergoing development training at Charles Sturt University in Australia. Early feedback has been very positive, and we already have users in Europe and the UK, too.

Why are you going on the The Digital Marketplace (G-Cloud)? What do you expect to get out of it - and why now?

UK G-Cloud represents an obvious choice as a path to market strategy for us as a company. With our software being aimed at law enforcement, intelligence groups and other public sector agencies in the UK, we quickly identified the G-Cloud to be a significant source of potential business. IMS welcomes the G-Cloud concept as it provides a trusted platform upon which public sector clients can take advantage of shorter procurement timelines, engage software companies directly. The framework is also a great leveller that allows us to stand tall and compete amongst some big players in the software as a service/cloud tech space.    

How did you find the process of applying? The government makes a lot of noise about how easy all this is now. Did you get any help? What could be done to simplify or rationalise the process from your point of view?

The application itself, although daunting at first, was actually quite straightforward. For IMS, a major advantage was that our UK and Australian based staff could work online on the application in collaboration with each other. Plus, the whole ethos of the G-Cloud seems to be about making it ‘simpler, clearer and faster’ for public sector agencies to buy what they need; if you can focus on this ethos whilst preparing your submission and include a clear and transparent pricing framework, you’ve got to be in with a chance of selection. For us, that ‘simpler, clearer and faster’ way of doing business fits snugly with our software value proposition, and it also mirrors our corporate business values, so the G-Cloud seems to be an ideal fit. Although we’re currently offshore, we're expecting to have a UK presence established in 2016 and the G-Cloud framework seems to be an ideal digital ‘shop-front’ in the meantime. 

Great, and good luck! To close, what you see as the future for cloud as a delivery mechanism for UK public services?

Our research tends to indicate that there are still a number of public sector agencies in the UK that don’t know about the benefits of cloud. We hope that the government maintains its efforts to promote all that through the G-Cloud, making it the go-to place for the public sector to do its digital business. After all, cloud offers public sector agencies a flexible and scalable IT option, and we feel that more and more savings will be delivered to the public sector as Cloud becomes the norm. Process efficiencies and cost savings will surely be the reward for agencies seeking to go digital.

To find out more about the G-Cloud-7 Digital Contender, go here

We are looking for other companies entering the Digital Marketplace and would love to feature your experiences in this new on-going editorial series. Please get in touch with us here to kick start process: gary.flood@24n.biz

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