Peter Montgomery, Clever First Aid’s CEO & Founder, spoke to us about their mission to improve health and safety through smart safety devices, and using Orchestra across their New Zealand and Australian companies to efficiently manage their share register and stakeholder information.
Clever First Aid helps customers improve their duty of care and safety for employees with smart first aid stations. The stations record all first aid events and incidents automatically and monitoring is done 24/7, so they are stocked and ready for when staff need them. They send alerts to customers, automate a lot of first aid management tasks supporting companies to meet their regulatory health and safety requirements.
The Clever First Aid app compares station use across sites, providing companies with real-time insights so that they can see key trends and make informed decisions about their first aid. Managers can get a view across all of their locations across the whole country, and with this visibility, develop tactics to help improve safety.
The vision for a smart first aid system began with an incident in a QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) when the restaurant first aid station was opened and medical supplies were missing, causing further distress to the injured staff. This incident highlighted the challenges of maintaining first aid stations in fast-paced workplace environments. So Clever First Aid was developed to meet the operational requirements of QSR and food-related industries.
Clever First Aid started in New Zealand and has since expanded into Australia, and while the focus has been on the QSR industry, we provide systems for other customers including airports, airlines, food processing companies, and supermarkets.
I have previously been the CEO of a company with a large number of shareholders and while we used a full registry service, it was always a challenge communicating with shareholders and being across key changes. We run Clever First Aid to a similar standard as a public company, and have a number of different shareholders.
Previously I was managing all the share register details and shareholder information on an excel spreadsheet, which was very manual and hard to align with the New Zealand Companies Office. We have regular changes in our share details, so when I was updating the old spreadsheet manually it was easy to make mistakes, or get the details or formulas wrong.
I was introduced to Casey (Orchestra founder) through the Snowball Effect.
When I saw what Orchestra could offer and the time savings it would give me, it was an easy decision to sign up.
“The ease of use for people who are managing businesses across Australia and New Zealand is a real winner in my view”
It is very easy to do share transactions in Orchestra- a lot quicker and less painful than previously. I also like the alignment and integration with the NZ Companies Office to ensure that all of our details are correct and compliant.
We use the document repository for shareholders to access company updates and presentations, so it provides a one-stop online reference for shareholders to visit for key information.
We also have our Australian entity on Orchestra, and the ease of use for people who are managing businesses across Australia and New Zealand is a real winner in my view.
In Australia it’s great to have an ASIC agent working on our behalf and managing updates, rather than negotiating complex government department websites by ourselves.
As the CEO of a growing company, I have so many different pulls on my time, so the time saving from using Orchestra is valuable. It has reduced many pain points of company shareholder administration which I previously had- anything that simplifies my life is going to be viewed very favourably!
It is a very important part of my role to ensure that company administration is correct, but Orchestra has made the tasks quicker, so it’s now a breeze for me.
“Anything that simplifies my life is going to be viewed very favourably!”
Our aim is to provide QSR’s in key markets with the highest standards of first aid, making it easy for them to administer first aid, and improve customer well-being while ensuring staff safety. In terms of next steps, Clever First Aid is expanding to the US and adapting our system and product based on the local regulations and requirements.
We are building a wider ecosystem to connect safety devices and provide real-time insights on their usage. This includes connecting AED cabinets, plaster dispensers, and eye-wash stations to provide real-time usage information and insights to customers.
On a continuous basis as it frees up my time from administrative tasks, so I can concentrate on other vitally important areas like business strategy.
As we expand to other countries beyond New Zealand and Australia, then hopefully we can use Orchestra in those countries too! It’s good to know that employee options or share schemes can be managed in Orchestra to keep in mind for the future as the business and team grows.
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