“A pretty neat bit of IP”: How Accelerate Tech tripled sales with integration platform, GenAI work

Sydney-based Microsoft business applications specialist Accelerate Tech has been making a name for itself helping state and local government clients integrate their IT systems and use generative AI.

In the 2023 financial year, the firm onboarded 20 councils to its ePlanning.io local government integration platform.

Built on Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, the solution integrates council IT systems with their respective state planning portals.

Accelerate Tech also worked with Queensland government to build out its internal OpenAI chat capability, and went live with the first instance of Microsoft Sustainability Manager in ANZ, for Arnott’s Australia.

All this helped the firm grow sales by 212 per cent to $3.6 million dollars, landing it in third place in the 2023 CRN Fast50.

We spoke to Accelerate Tech’s co-founder and managing director James Diekman about the company’s growth.

He described its work in the government sector and the rollout of ePlanning.io.

“We expanded pretty significantly in the New South Wales government – so, the Department of Planning and Environment, the Department of Customer Service,” Diekman said.

“We also developed a pretty neat bit of IP that connects the New South Wales planning portal to local government council systems, which use things like TechnologyOne or Infor or Civica for their property and rating systems, and there was a bit of a gap there from data flowing between a planning portal and these council systems.”

“Once we had that built out with our first customer, which we did with Cumberland Council, word quickly spread that we had a solution that solved that problem.”

“I think there were about 20 councils that we brought on board in that financial year. We found another really good gap in the market.”

Other wins in the 2023 financial year included work with Arnotts and the Queensland government.

“One of the biggest wins was we went live with Arnotts – they were the first within I think APAC – for Microsoft Sustainability Manager,” Diekman said.

“We were the first partner to do that; we've got a bit of background in the sustainability and carbon market side of things from our business partner. We’re really focusing on that area moving forward.”

“And we started work with Queensland government on their OpenAI QChat service to the whole of the Queensland government.”

QChat is a private platform that allows Queensland government employees to access large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4.

It is part of the government’s AI platform which Accelerate Tech is helping develop with Azure, using Azure API Management as the backbone.

Diekman explained the firm’s work developing QChat.

“The objective of this project is to provide an internal government-only, secure, locked down, enterprise ChatGPT, so that Queensland government staff members don’t go out and use OpenAI’s ChatGPT and potentially leak information, and it's not stored within Australia,” he said.

“They wanted to get on the front foot and stand up an internal capability, and we initially did that with the QChat application.”

“It was a customised web application that we built from the ground up, all branded within Queensland Government theming and brand colors, and secured by the government identity broker as well.”

“That was the initial part that rolled out to a few agencies and then we have stood up the API backbone within their actual tenancy so that other Queensland government agencies can consume OpenAI through the Queensland customer and digital group; so a centralised service for chat-based applications, but also for development activities as well.”

Adding more government clients and expanding its services is next on the list for Accelerate Tech.

“Next for us is we're expanding our local government presence, we've got new solutions that we're currently signing up customers to, expanding across all states of Australia for our local government practice,” Diekman said.

“We’re heavily investing and starting to win a lot of clients in the sustainability and ESG space, so [we’re] building a customised solution on the back of Microsoft Sustainability Manager.”

“We've signed up a few more customers this financial year on to that, on the success of Arnotts, and [we’re] also expanding that part of the business to include audit, assurance and advisory as well.”