RAY Keefe started Successful Endeavours as a home office business in 1997.
“By 2005 I realised I didn’t know how to make this thing grow,” he said.
Mr Keefe went looking for a business mentor and tracked down the right one in 2008.
He rebranded the business, repositioned it in the market and moved out of home into commercial premises.
“Four months after that we won Casey Business of the Year,” he said.
This year he took home the Casey Cardinia Business Award for Business and Professional Services.
“It’s the people behind you that make things possible,” Mr Keefe said.
“It’s one thing to have a vision. It’s another thing to get people behind you to make that happen.”
This year, Successful Endeavours was nationally recognised for its ability to innovate.
Three of its projects vied for four categories at the PACE Zenith awards in Sydney on 11 June.
The small business was a finalist at Manufacturing Monthly magazine’s Endeavour Awards on 28 May.
Its ABB CQ930 three-phase power factor correction controller and Internet of Things (IoT) Monitoring Platform were up for the Australian Industrial Product of the Year.
Mr Keefe said the controller cleaned up power as it was distributed through the network.
“So that you actually burn less gas or burn less coal or whatever it is you’re generating power from, to get the same amount of power,” Mr Keefe said.
Uses for the IoT Monitoring Platform include remote and apartment water metering.
“It talks to a cloud or a web service so you can get your data from wherever it is in the world back to somewhere central and then do something with it,” Mr Keefe said.
Successful Endeavours’ Telemetry Host IoT web platform vied for the IT Application of the Year.
“This allows us to collect reading, send device updates and change the operating configuration of remotely deployed devices from our office in Berwick,” Mr Keefe said.
“I was really stoked. So much in manufacturing in Australia we’re just focusing on big things.
“To have small appliances like this actually get recognised is really good.”
