How the Amazon Innovation Accelerator changed the way iCOR Systems works

In the early days of building a business, critical knowledge usually lives inside one person's head. Over time, that starts to become a risk. Decisions get harder to prioritise, innovation can become reactive and scaling becomes more difficult. 

Tamma Carel, co-founder of iCOR Systems picked up on this risk in her business 18 months ago. So, when an opportunity to apply for the Amazon Innovation Accelerator in Newcastle found its way to her inbox, she decided it was time to take action.  

Getting space and time to think 

iCOR Systems is a compliance platform that helps businesses manage health, safety and environmental legislation. Established three years ago, the team has now grown to four people. As co-founder and compliance expert, Tamma started recognised that critical information was living in isolation across the team. 

I have all the legal knowledge, so what if something happens to me? And the flip side is that my co-founder is the product developer and designer. If something were to happen to him, could we maintain the business?

That question sat unanswered for a while, but not through a lack of will: 

As a founder, you have to stop working in your business to work on your business. The accelerator gave us the time, space and tools to really think about the actual problem we were solving and for whom. 

Transforming risk into a plan 

Tamma’s focus for the programme, a custom AI agent called TALOS, had been brewing for a while. The idea was to get legislative information more efficiently so the team could support customers easily and to inform the development of the core platform. 

Prioritisation has been one of our biggest hurdles. That’s what Amazon’s Innovation Accelerator gave us. Looking at the end goal and then reverse engineering how we would achieve that. We use the Working Backwards model quite a bit now. 

Bringing structure to the team 

That new discipline didn’t stay confined to software. The accelerator also shaped how Tamma thought about leadership and encouraging autonomy in her team. 

“As we had just hired our first employees, the leadership principles really helped us make sense of how to lead a team. Things like being responsible for ourselves as individuals – it sounds simple, but it has helped us a lot.” 

Tamma has also been inspired to bring more structure into daily operations:  

The change I’m most proud of is the structure we’ve brought in. The weekly scrums and bringing the team on the journey – getting out of my own head, communicating better and having a process for testing new ideas. 

From reactive to proactive 

Since the programme, Tamma has seen a tangible impact on the business: 

Innovation has sped up. We go from product concept to materialisation in about six to eight weeks. The new modules we’ve added bolt onto our existing service, which has created a new revenue stream for us. 

While the accelerator hasn't changed the direction of iCOR Systems, it did help the team to build a clear way to grow more quickly: 

Without the programme, we would have been less prepared for road bumps. The Amazon Innovation Accelerator has helped us become proactive instead of reactive. As a result, we’ve been able to progress more quickly.