Applause Wins Three Times at 2020 International Business Awards
Applause won gold in the Company of the Year category, while also taking home silver honors in the Most Innovative Tech Company and Best New Product of the Year categories, at this year’s International Business Awards (IBAs).
The International Business Awards are the world’s premier business awards program. The 2020 IBAs received entries from organizations in 63 nations and territories. More than 3,800 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories.
Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 250 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from July through early September.
“Despite the unprecedented impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on organizations and working people worldwide, the number and quality of nominations we received in this year’s International Business Awards attests to the continued outstanding performance of many organizations. The commitment we’ve seen through these nominations to maintaining the success, health and safety of employees, customers and communities is truly impressive,” International Business Awards president Maggie Gallagher said.
Since it won gold in the Company of the Year category, Applause is now up for a People’s Choice Award for Favorite Company. Voting is open to the public, and you can vote for Applause as your favorite company here.
Applause has been recognized for company and product excellence throughout 2020. Earlier this year, Applause received two gold honors at the American Business Awards. The company was also named a best place to work by both Inc. Magazine and the Boston Business Journal.
Company of the Year and Most Innovative Tech Company
Innovation was a key focus for Applause in both 2019 and 2020. That’s why we launched Applause Labs in late 2019, and have continued to roll out offerings like the Applause Quality Score™ (AQS™) and the Applause Accessibility Tool.
The AQS is the industry’s first and only quality benchmarking tool built for the enterprise, and serves as the software quality equivalent of a credit score. The Applause Accessibility Tool is the only automated accessibility tool that helps developers identify and resolve key accessibility issues almost immediately by providing an automated fix or recommendation to resolve each issue. Recently, the Applause Accessibility Tool went open source.
“We are committed to consistently innovating and bringing new products, features and offerings to market, and Applause Labs is a critical part of this process,” said Jonathan Zaleski, Senior Director of Engineering and Head of Applause Labs. “The Labs structure enables us to quickly ideate, build and pilot new ideas. The successes we’ve seen with the Applause Quality Score and the Applause Accessibility Tool have validated this process. We have some new projects in flight that we are excited to share with our clients in the coming months and quarters.”
The innovations from Applause Labs impressed the judges and helped Applause achieve gold in the Company of the Year, and silver in the Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year, categories.
“Applause has also become an innovation hub – Applause Quality Score (AQS) and the Applause Accessibility Tool are becoming industry standards. This speaks volumes about the growth of Applause in just a few years.”
Best New AI/ML Product
On a product level, judges recognized the Applause AI Training & Testing solution with silver in the Best New AI/ML Product category.
Leveraging our global community of highly vetted, professional testers, the Applause AI Training & Testing solution helps to train AI algorithms and then test the resulting outputs to ensure that the systems respond appropriately and don’t have elements of bias included. The Applause Community can quickly deliver any data set required to train an AI algorithm, including text, images, speech, handwriting, documents, intents and biometrics.
Applause’s AI Training & Testing solution fills a gap for organizations that want to launch an AI algorithm, but lack the ability to source the quantity, quality and diversity of training data they need — and lack the resources to manage a project like that at scale too.
“Sourcing data on your own is extremely challenging at best, and potentially near impossible,” Kristin Simonini, VP of Product at Applause, said in a recent webinar, Sourcing Training Data for AI Applications. “You might not have access to the number of people you need and even if you do, you still need to ensure you’re getting quality data. If you do get quality data, you need a team to annotate and label the data. And even if you do all that, you need to think about diversity and being able to evolve over time...It’s a massive challenge of logistics and overhead.”
This solution enables organizations to build AI algorithms that will properly respond to customers’ needs, as well as avoid problems with AI bias. And, as noted by one of the judges, it is a solution that is becoming increasingly important in today’s world.
“This is a product that is one step ahead of the market. As AI algorithms and processing power becomes more readily available, the user community will need a marketplace where training data can be hand vetted. I wouldn't be surprised if more players enter this market.”
You can vote for Applause as your favorite company in the People’s Choice Awards here.
