Obelisk Support, the lawyer resourcing company, has bagged £50,000 ($63,000) in UK Government funding to help build remote working technology. The software development will be done inhouse by the group’s own tech team.
At the end of the six-month project, it will deliver a remote-working productivity tool that can help businesses manage an entire workforce that is operating with a blended office/home model.
The tool will allow businesses to have an ‘overview of the skills, availability and workload of staff, so that they can match incoming work to the right people, and then track the progress and time spent on completing the task’ Obelisk said. This ensures the business can leverage all available skills and time efficiently.
The tool will build on two platforms Obelisk has already created:
- Buzz, which allows administrators to manage and match workers and tasks according to availability and patterns of flexible work, alongside time logging and invoicing; and
- Profile, a worker-facing web/mobile app, through which they manage their contact information, preferences, availability, background, work offers and time logging.
The cash came via the Innovate UK agency following a £40m Government competition that encourages innovation in response to Covid-19. The maximum award is £50,000. The agency received 20,000 applications.
Founder and CEO, Dana Denis-Smith (pictured above) told Artificial Lawyer: ‘I am super delighted to be able to build on our tech for a wider market by focusing on productivity.
‘Obelisk has already create a curated and efficient matching engine for legal talent that allows quick access to great lawyers at speed, primarily for our enterprise clients, but also to support the larger business community that needs more flexible and affordable legal support.
‘We have a focus on optimising the use of flexible legal talent and we learnt a lot from our remote-first approach about how people work; those lessons will help us build a product that will be easy to adopt for businesses that have to operate a hybrid model of working – on/off- site in the office.
‘But, personally I am keen that the move to a hybrid office that will be the new reality for all of us does not lead to more inequality and a penalty for those that want to continue to work remotely – women or those with caring responsibilities or those shielding should be able to work remotely confidently and with our tech product they will be equally visible.’