Melita, thank you so much for joining us. I'm just hoping to ask you a few questions about the Innovation & AI Competition, about your win, and about what’s been happening at Flip since. So, why don’t you start by telling us a bit about Flip’s journey so far?

Sure! So, Flip started in Stuttgart in 2018 when our founders discovered a gap in how communications and processes were run on the front line. There’s a lot of manufacturing in Stuttgart, and one of our founders used to work as a Project Manager at Porsche, so the use case was already there. They just asked the question; how can we take that experience and make it better?

And it just grew from there! They began with a few frontline-heavy businesses, like manufacturers and supermarkets, and then when the AI boom came along, it felt like there was that hole in the market again. Or rather, a hole in the employee experience. All the desk workers were getting all the good stuff and the frontline weren't! So, it made sense for Flip to go ahead and start approaching the frontline with AI and
agentic processes that could really help with their day-to-day. As we started to become more global, HR Technologies UK popped up on our radar. The UK is now one of our key markets, so it was a natural fit. HR Technologies UK is obviously a great event for businesses like ours, and we’d attended in the past, so we decided to exhibit and share how Flip works and how we're helping employees around the world.

How was your experience exhibiting at HR Technologies UK and competing in 2026's Innovation and AI Competition?

It was great! We had a booth with a very handy claw machine to get people excited about chatting to us. We also held a seminar on the first day, which I hosted, about how workflows can easily automate a range of HR and communications processes. The objective was to influence and inspire people to approach automation in a helpful way for the front line.

I was also quite inspired by all the interesting and different ideas. The booths are incredibly impressive, people clearly put a lot of effort into them. It's great to see what people are building and what's going on. That energy in and of itself made it really exciting for us to take part in the competition and take note of the ways in which everyone is approaching AI at the moment. It made us consider, how are we approaching it? What is the benefit? What's the… not niche, but what's the real, applicable way of using AI to meaningfully help your end user?

What do you think it was that gave Flip the winning edge in the competition?

I think it's the real-life application of it all; we solve something that’s a very real problem. I think a lot of people would say frontline workers are often overlooked when it comes to comms or the rollout of technology - especially technology and processes regarding HR.

So, we put the emphasis on the front line, how they‘re spoken to, how they're incorporated into the company and their day-to-day experience – and on helping them actually get work done, from HR processes to operational tasks. I’d say that's the winning edge as well. I think it’s also the numerous approaches to AI we have at Flip. We've got solutions like Ask AI and Flip Intelligence, our suite of AI tools. That includes Flows for workflow automation, Fusion, our secure AI app builder, and our Agent Gateway, which connects the AI agents companies already build. You can pick and choose what fits, from communications and internal knowledge to HR and operational processes. And of course, it’s very useful to have all that on your phone. If you're going to be out and about, travelling through offices and going to different locations, you need an efficient way to work on the go. I feel that Flip does that really well because it's made for being on the go and not behind your desk. You don't have to be logging in and out of different systems, you can have one place where you can find everything you need.

Who did you see as your biggest competition on the day?

During the final, I found I really enjoyed StaffCircle’s and WorkFlex's presentations. Again, it was interesting just seeing how they were applying AI to a real-life issue. WorkFlex’s travel solution, for example. You wouldn't think something like travel would cause so much friction with companies, but it really can. So that eases the processes for a lot of people at a lot of companies, which is good to see.

How has everything been at Flip since your win? Is there anything exciting in the works you can tell us about?

We've had a great year, actually! In June, we hosted an event in Germany called Forward, and we launched some really cool things like Frontline Identity, which gives every frontline worker one-touch access to all their work systems, even without a corporate email address. We also raised $25 million for the business, which was exciting. It allows us to keep pushing on Identity and keep pushing on something that we call Flip Fusion, our secure AI app builder, native inside Flip. Companies can build any frontline use case themselves, and every app automatically inherits their users, roles and permissions.

We've had more customers coming in and using those AI tools, too. KFC, for example, has joined us, and there's a large German supermarket chain called Edeka. We have them and loads more customers coming in and using Flip Intelligence and Ask AI, which is really exciting.

The rate of adoption has really shot up, too. It feels like the big AI shift happened maybe over a year ago, and now everyone has started truly embracing it and innovating with it. It’s incredibly cool to see, especially in sectors like retail, where frontline teams are quickly becoming some of the biggest adopters.

What advice would you give to other companies entering 2027's Innovation & AI Competition?

I would say I noticed that the judges were very keen on numbers. You can talk the talk, it's very easy to talk about AI and innovation, but you need to anchor it with numbers and prove that this stuff is working, prove that what you're making is actually good. So, I’d definitely say to think about numbers.

I would also say, think about the real-world problems you're trying to solve. You may have built the coolest thing ever, but if it's not actually helpful to anyone, then it's just a cool idea. What makes it really cool is that it's actually doing something for people, helping them in their day-to-day work. Everyone works so many hours in a week. If you have something that can really help them with that, then people – the judges in particular – will empathise with that.

You need to be on time and you need to be very succinct. It's very short, 5 minutes goes very, very quickly. So, you've got to make sure you've got all your good points ready to go.

Finally, just make sure you're really showing off what you're building, even if you've got lots to show off, and I feel like Flip did. Just try to ensure that they’re getting the wow factor, that what you're showing them is communicated in a way that’s impressive.

And finally, how did you celebrate the win?

Well, it was very warm that that week, right? It was one of those peak heat wave moments. So, my German colleague and I walked over to the River Thames and had a lovely beer and cocktail in the sun. And it was just after one of those busy, hectic days. It’s a big room and there’s so many people, you know? So, we just needed that hot sun, cold beer and the river. It was the perfect place for a nice, very chill debrief.

Thanks to Melita for her time, and another congratulations to Flip for their well-deserved win! Flip is the #1 Frontline Agentic Operating System (OS) to build, automate, and orchestrate any frontline use case on a foundation of secure identity and comms with strong UX. If you have any questions about Flip and their solutions for frontline workers, be sure to visit their website at getflip.com and get in touch with the team.

If you’re a solution provider in HR & People technology and you’re interested in entering the next edition of the Innovation & AI competition, why not let us know? We’d be happy to explore exhibiting solutions with you.