By Aimee Chanthadavong
Motorola Solutions has officially opened its Innovation Centre in Melbourne – the first in Australia – that showcases its range of technology solutions that is set to help drive productivity in a number of industry sectors including retail.
The Innovation Centre is a place where Motorola Solutions’ partners, software developers and customers can have hands-on access to a range of Motorola’s current and upcoming technologies, stimulating collaboration, innovation and discovery of how these can be deployed to benefit businesses and services in the moments that matter.
Gary Starr, managing director, Motorola Solutions Australia and New Zealand said at the launch the Innovation Centre would enable Motorola Solutions’ partners and customers to tap into Motorola’s global investment in Research and Development of US$1 billion.
“Innovation will always be central to Motorola’s business and it has been for the last 40 years here in Australia and eight years globally. Its fair to say Motorola was primarily focused on product innovation but a lot has changed in the last seven years and you’ll see today that we’ll compliment today’s product innovation with a deep, rich domain knowledge in a number of industry sectors,” he said.
“I’m really proud to have a place that brings the capabilities and expertise together into one centre where our customers and partners can work with us to develop new solutions that help address business challenges for our customers.”
The Centre was officially opened by Victorian Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips.
“The Victorian government sees innovation has important because we see it as improving our economy. From an economic point of view one of the challenges we face in Victoria and indeed in Australia is driving productivity growth in our economy,” he said.
“Back in the 1990s we had a wave of reform which drove very strong productivity outcomes for Victoria and Australia well above the national average. In the last decade we saw that productivity growth slow and for the last five years we’ve actually been below the national average productivity growth.
“The reality is if we want to improve the standard of living in Australia we actually need to turnaround that productivity outcome to a much stronger productivity growth. And one of the ways in which we see to drive that is through innovation and driving the uptake of technology in a broader non-technology economy.”
As part of the launch, we were shown demonstrations specifically designed for the retail sector, revealing how tomorrow’s shopping experience will be transformed for customers, while empowering retailers and the IT organisation with better and more targeted information about customers.
“There’s no doubt our traditional retailers are struggling with the online presence. They’re not personalised and they’ve not made it core to their business to be the same wherever you go. We have to change that,” David Fenner, general manager, Enterprise Solutions at Motorola Solutions
“The innovations will help them reconnect with their customers, be context aware and personalise that shopping experience.”