MoWorks leading the way to a post-COVID future

By Jack Hayes

With life and business after COVID-19 a much anticipated and intrigued prospect, Docklands-based creative agency, MoWorks, is carving a path to how it may look.

Born from the growing virtualisation of meetings, events and general business, MoWorks founder and managing director Mo Hamdouna and his team have created two new technologies to help small businesses who are affected by the pandemic.

The first is of these new technologies is uXport.

uXport is an international, online business-to-business platform that connects verified Australian exporters with verified distributors, which allows suppliers and buyers form cross-border trade of products across multiple categories.

“With the extra time we had, we invested in creating our own products. It is a new direction coming out of COVID for us,” Mr Hamdouna said.

“uXport is a marketing management platform for Australian exporters that has customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities and a marketplace to engage with international buyers.”

“Many local exporters rely on events or expos to showcase their products to global buyers; with this technology, we aim to remove the need for face-to-face meetings by providing the same experience on a virtual platform.”

The second of the MoWorks new technologies to be shaped by a post-COVID era is Scarlett.

“Scarlett is a mini-site and business card in one. It can be used on social channels and email signatures or sent as a virtual link meeting or Zoom call,” Mr Hamdouna said. “It can be scanned through QR code at networking events for a contact-less details exchange and printed on flyers or displays.”

“This technology was born out of the need to change to your regular business card exchange. Even when things return to normal, people will hesitant in exchanging and handling things they don’t need to, and it has the obvious benefit of saving paper and trees in the process.”

Despite admitting digital business cards were far from new technology, Mr Hamdouna said Scarlett’s Apple Wallet and Google Pay capabilities set it apart from others.

Although it has been nearly impossible to be impervious to the wide-reaching effects of COVID-19, Mr Hamdouna said he had been pleased to get to this point relatively unscathed and keep his 17-strong team still in work.

“We were fortunate that we were able to continue working. We managed to a quick transition to working from home, actually before governments told us to do so,” Mr Hamdouna said.

“It has been difficult, just like it has for many other businesses, to give feedback and work closely with one another. But we have started to introduce new things to keep everyone connected like virtual after-work drinks and yoga or stretching sessions.”

“Out of these team sessions, we have created these new products to try to meet the evolving demand of people into the future.”

Both uXport and Scarlett were created to meet the needs for City of Melbourne grants, and has formed an application for the council’s Melbourne Awards.

In addition to planting the seeds for a post-pandemic era, Mr Hamdouna is a regular contributor for the Docklands Chamber of Commerce.

By providing his insight and expertise, he hopes to help businesses in Docklands improve and better understand their digital presence and what they can do with it •

For more information, visit moworks.com.au.