Strengthening our Ecosystems real and virtual a priority for 2023

Line of Defence Magazine correspondent Jennie Vickers continues her coverage of LandForces 2022 with a profile of BenchOn and the ecosystem approach that drives their tech development and strategy.

Advocating for New Zealand businesses into the Defence sectors in both New Zealand and Australia, is a habit I am hopefully never going to give up.

During my four years as CEO of the Defence Industry Association (up to June 2020) I had the opportunity to create an ecosystem into which SMEs from New Zealand and Australia could get into the orbit of defence projects and buyers from both countries.

We were in a unique and privileged position to do this, so that membership of the association was not seen as a pre-requisite of joining these conversations. Value in a community comes initially from connections, not revenue. Everyone gains when the widest possible ecosystem is created to enable organisations to find each other and then to collaborate.

I became a fan of BenchOn when they were introduced to New Zealand by Hanwha back in 2019. Hanwha was a new entrant into the New Zealand market at a time when the Broader Outcomes principles were in their early days. Hanwha realised that to be seen as serious about New Zealand they needed to build a viable supply chain and build the right local relationships.

BenchOn started life as an AI driven platform established to support a sharing economy ethos and meet a gap in the market for short term staff resource demand and supply matching. The ecosystem approach drives their tech development and strategy.

Along the way the team realised that their technology had the ability to solve a related but different problem: the matching of SMEs with capacity or capability into Prime supply chains quickly and efficiently. The key difference that distinguished BenchOn from the existing platform being used in Australia (and used in New Zealand 15 years ago) is the use of AI to assist in efficient matching of capability and need.

Their tech platform development plans nicely match the industry ecosystem philosophy.

Fast forward to 2022 and with the support and encouragement of AMDA (the organisers of LandForces 2022) BenchOn launched a big new initiative at

the event. The Meet the Primes Programme enabled over 350 SMEs to meet with 17 Primes, and 164 meetings were facilitated. BenchOn is proud that they can already point to the signing of approximately five contracts as a result of this meet and match event.

The good news is that BenchOn is already committed to bringing its ecosystem to both Avalon in March 2023 and IndoPacific in November 2023.

Previous Forum attendees should remember Michael McLean from Goal Group in Australia. Mick is a good friend of New Zealand and he reminded us at LandForces about the Defence Ready Seminar Series, which is a joint initiative between Hunter Defence, Office of Defence Industry Support (ODIS), Goal Group, and Australian Industry & Defence Network NSW.

Every opportunity I get, I take to remind Australians that New Zealand is part of sovereign capability and under free trade counts as local content. We all need to take every opportunity to talk about this local content status and to get Kiwis into, for example, this Defence Ready programme. In the meantime, setting up an entity in Australia is not that hard, so that route may be an option too.

Back to BenchOn. Companies that move into a BenchOn ecosystem connecting to Primes do better and faster if they have done the groundwork via a programme like Defence Ready.

“BenchOn has saved us time, effort and cost in resourcing our programs and has also made it easier for our suppliers to pursue opportunities with us,” said the Director Service Delivery from Jacobs Australia says. “Our aim has always been to create a mutually beneficial supplier relationship where selection for subcontractor roles is based on merit and supports a Best for Client outcome. This portal has definitely achieved that.”

So, wrapping up December seems like a good time for a New Year’s resolution on the part of government and industry to find a way to ensure that New Zealand businesses are welcomed into the Defence Ready Training Programmes and that Primes use the best available technology to build strong supplier relationships between New Zealand and Australia.

BenchOn has shared some of the changes it is initiating for the Meet the Primes Programmes at Avalon and IndoPacific in order to give New Zealand companies advance notice on what to prep for. The Primes are keen. They will share their capability needs and NZ SMEs will have a chance again at these events to pitch their matching solutions, both in person and virtually.

Why the bloody hell would we not want to be there? But hopefully we can go by Air New Zealand this time!