I-care named Enterprise of the Year 2020
I-care, a Mons-based company specialising in Artificial Intelligence solutions for industry, received the Enterprise of the Year 2020 trophy for the francophone regions of Belgium on 7 December from Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, the 25th time this award has been made. Meanwhile David Clarinval, Minister for SMEs and the Self-Employed, conferred the title of ‘Scale-up of the Year’ on Proxyclick.
The ‘Enterprise of the Year’ awards, organised by Ernst & Young in partnership with Belgian business journal L’Echo and BNP Paribas Fortis, celebrated their 25th running this year. And the awards are no less prestigious for the fact that this time the ceremony had to be conducted remotely.
I-care, Belgian standard-bearer in technology services
I-care is a pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence applied to predictive maintenance in industry. Founded 16 years ago, the firm currently employs 450 staff – half in Belgium, the rest spread across ten other countries, including the United States, Australia and South Korea. The company has created one of the world’s best-performing digital platforms for managing the state of repair of industrial machinery.
I-care’s solutions ensure that industrial equipment remains safer, more productive, more profitable and less polluting. With its expertise, its technology and its ambitious growth strategy, I-care intends to become world leader in predictive maintenance by 2025, achieving turnover totalling €100 million.
Laurent Levaux, who chaired the Awards Jury, was especially won over by the innovation demonstrated by I-care, pointing out: "I-care has filed for no fewer than ten patents since March, in spite of the COVID epidemic! The company has also achieved impressive growth of 35% annually for each of the last 15 years, both here in Belgium and not least all over the world.”
Proxyclick, the rising star of Belgian entrepreneurship
Voted ‘Scale-up of the Year’, Woluwe Saint-Pierre-based Proxyclick provides solutions that enable both office premises and production sites to ensure security and data protection when they receive visitors.
Proxyclick currently has clients in over 100 countries worldwide, including L’Oréal, Airbnb, UCB and Sodexo. Constantly in search of new staff, the company intends to step up its business in North America, which already accounts for 40% of its turnover. The current target set by Proxyclick is to pass the milestone of one billion visitor registrations by 2025.
"The Proxyclick service range positions the company at the centre of an ecosystem encapsulating entry control, meeting room management, WIFI access, plus automated processing of visitor-related documents," underlined Jury chairman Baron Pierre Rion, adding: "By providing fully-integrated management of these various flows, Proxyclick has succeeded in becoming an indispensable partner to a number of world-class players.”
Our Bank supports entrepreneurs
Responding to the announcement of this year’s Award winners, Didier Beauvois, Head of BNP Paribas Fortis Corporate Banking, stressed: “This year, businesses have faced sizeable challenges and have had to show creativity and flexibility in order to meet them. I-care has done so by bringing to market its thermometer 4.0 and speeding up its transition to digital tools. Proxyclick meanwhile has developed a new visitor registration technique in the middle of a health crisis. Both the Award winners have shown great resilience during these difficult times and posted fine performances. Both are helping to create a positive business climate in Belgium. Once again, I’d like to congratulate all the companies that made it to the final. I’m really looking forward to continuing to support and assist these business people, who do so much to take the Belgian economy forward.”
The Dutch-speaking region of Belgium ran its own separate 'Onderneming van het Jaar' (Enterprise of the Year) and 'Scale-Up van het Jaar' (Scale-up of the Year) Awards process, for which trophies were presented on 8 December.