BCX Innovation Award winner’s app is revolutionising emergency response

Innovation in providing service delivery in real time is what Response24, winner of the 2021 BCX Digital Innovation Award in the SME category, has achieved in the field of emergency response. 

The company's CEO and founder, Marlize Holtzhausen, came up with the idea to develop its award-winning Response24 app, which provides users with access to armed response and other emergency services at the touch of a single button, after a traumatising and brutal attack on her family.

The Response24 app is powered by a communication platform that connects multiple service providers together so that they can mobilise a co-ordinated response.

By providing first responders with accurate information, including the exact GPS location and type of emergency upfront, it adds the essential ingredient of speed that can save lives. 

“We have evolved into a software as a service (SaaS) platform that can connect fragmented environments to enhance response times,” says Holtzhausen. “It activates specific on demand resources and helps response centres overcome legacy issues within their systems. Most use multiple systems that don’t talk to each other and require an operator to navigate through them all to enable the response.”

Response24 simply integrates and connects the fragments, creating a single view dashboard from which the operator can see available resources in real time.

The company started out by working with first responder services and is now moving into other on-demand services, where it can focus on last mile service delivery.

Because the majority of companies deal with third-party service providers, whether insurance or medical, there is a need for a platform that provides line of sight into information. This is a gap in the market that Response24 ambitiously aims to fill — and is already filling in SA and abroad.

“Our platform is designed to save cost and risk for companies so they can manage any form of service delivery in real time,” says Holtzhausen. “We have already captured more than 50% of the SA market in the security and response services sector, and we are attracting interest from countries such as Singapore, who want to use the platform for facilities management.”

“Now we are at the stage of growth where we are funding to scale internationally and actively engaging with investors to manage this,” she says.

The fast-growing company entered the BCX Digital Innovation Awards because the opportunity to partner with BCX, Africa's leading information and communications technology solutions and service provider, was incredibly important to the team.

For Response24, this was the right avenue to take to open doors and get in front of customers faster. 

“We wanted to go up against the best of the best, to really face up to the tough competition that these awards attract and to use the opportunity to learn from others,” says Holtzhausen. “We use it to benchmark ourselves, get honest feedback from people who are not traditionally in our sector, and grow our capabilities. This is the standard of innovation, and an opportunity to build partnerships that will take us even further.”

This article was paid for by BCX.