Creo Developed App Wins Innovation in Business Award

Creo-Developed Geco Connect Helps SOD Group Win Innovation in Business at Glasgow Business Awards 2026

There are website projects, app projects and software builds.

Then there are projects where the technology has the potential to genuinely change how an entire sector works.

Geco Connect is firmly in the latter category.

Developed by The Solutions on Demand Group, with Creo’s development team playing a central role in bringing the platform to life, Geco Connect was at the heart of the Group’s success at the Glasgow Business Awards 2026, where The Solutions on Demand Group was named winner of the Innovation in Business Award.

It was one of two awards won by the Group on the night, alongside Best Performing Small-Medium Business, at the 28th annual Glasgow Business Awards at DoubleTree by Hilton Glasgow Central.

For our team at Creo, it is fantastic recognition for a project that demonstrates just how far bespoke digital development can go beyond building websites.

What is Geco Connect?

Geco Connect is an AI-enabled digital platform developed specifically for organisations supporting children and young people across residential care and specialist education.

The idea behind it is straightforward:

Professionals should be able to spend more time supporting children and young people, and less time duplicating paperwork.

Residential care and education teams are required to record huge amounts of important information.

Case notes.

Wellbeing observations.

Care plans.

Education updates.

Outcomes.

Reports for local authorities.

Inspection evidence.

The problem is that this information can end up spread across separate systems, documents and processes, creating unnecessary administration and making it difficult for teams and leadership to see the complete picture.

Geco brings that information together within one platform.

Information can be recorded once and then used more effectively across care, education and reporting, helping reduce duplication while giving teams greater visibility of each young person’s experiences, wellbeing and progress.

Technology Built Around the Sector

Geco was not created by simply deciding that the care sector needed “an app”.

The project has been developed through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the University of Strathclyde, bringing together technology, academic expertise and practical experience from professionals working within residential care and education. Glasgow Chamber of Commerce : home

That distinction has been incredibly important.

Bespoke software works best when the development process begins with the problem rather than the technology.

What are people currently doing manually?

Where is information being duplicated?

What takes too long?

What does leadership need visibility of?

What information do external organisations require?

And where could technology genuinely make someone’s working day easier?

Those questions shaped Geco from the beginning.

Supporting GIRFEC and SHANARRI

Geco has also been developed around the frameworks already used by professionals supporting children and young people in Scotland.

That includes Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) and the SHANARRI wellbeing indicators – Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible and Included.

Rather than asking organisations to abandon established ways of understanding wellbeing, the technology supports them.

Case notes and observations can contribute towards a clearer picture of outcomes over time, helping professionals identify changes, demonstrate progress and provide stronger evidence around the support being delivered.

The platform also helps leadership teams maintain greater oversight of information relating to care, education, outcomes and inspection readiness.

Where AI Actually Adds Value

There is understandably a huge amount of discussion around artificial intelligence.

For us, Geco represents the type of AI project that is particularly interesting: one where the technology isn’t there because AI happens to be fashionable.

It is there because it can solve practical problems.

The aim isn’t to replace the professional judgement of care workers, teachers or leaders.

It’s to help them use the information they are already recording more effectively.

AI-assisted functionality can help organise information, support reporting and surface useful insights from large amounts of data.

The technology does the heavy lifting where appropriate.

The people remain at the centre of the decision-making.

From Bespoke Development to an Award-Winning Platform

Geco has evolved significantly since its earliest development stages.

What began as a solution to challenges experienced within residential care and education has developed into an independent platform with ambitions to support organisations across the sector.

And the Glasgow Business Awards recognition is not happening in isolation.

Earlier in 2026, Geco Connect secured £90,000 through Scottish EDGE, with the funding intended to accelerate development and support expansion. Glasgow Chamber of Commerce : home

The platform has also previously received recognition through the ROCCO Innovation & Technology Awards and the Federation of Small Businesses Innovation Awards.

It is increasingly becoming a strong example of what can happen when sector knowledge, software development and a clearly identified business problem come together.

What Geco Says About Bespoke Development

At Creo, we regularly talk about building technology around a business rather than forcing a business to work around technology.

Geco takes that philosophy considerably further.

Not every organisation needs another off-the-shelf CRM.

Sometimes the requirement is too specific.

The workflows are different.

The reporting requirements are different.

The people using the platform need something designed around the realities of their working environment.

That’s where bespoke development becomes particularly powerful.

A custom digital platform might be designed to:

• Replace spreadsheets and disconnected systems
• Automate repetitive administration
• Connect different departments
• Improve reporting
• Provide management dashboards
• Create customer or staff portals
• Manage complex workflows
• Integrate existing systems
• Surface information more effectively
• Use AI to support specific business processes

The end product might technically be described as a CRM, portal, web application or business system.

The terminology matters much less than the problem it solves.

The Development Work People Don’t Always See

When people think about Creo, they may immediately think of brands, websites, marketing, photography or video.

Projects like Geco demonstrate another major part of what our team can deliver.

Behind the finished interface is a considerable amount of work around user experience, data, workflows, functionality and development.

Building a platform that people depend on as part of their working day is very different from simply creating a digital brochure.

It has to be intuitive.

It has to reflect real processes.

It has to handle information correctly.

It has to be scalable.

And, particularly when sensitive information is involved, security has to be considered throughout.

Geco uses measures including role-based permissions and multi-factor authentication to help organisations manage access to sensitive information appropriately. Getting it right for every child

Innovation Should Solve Something

The word “innovation” gets used a lot.

For us, the most interesting innovation isn’t technology for technology’s sake.

It’s finding a better way to solve a genuine problem.

With Geco, that problem was clear: highly skilled professionals were spending significant amounts of time documenting and pulling together information across fragmented processes when that time could be better spent supporting children and young people.

The answer wasn’t simply to ask people to work harder.

It was to build a better system.

That’s why seeing The Solutions on Demand Group receive the Innovation in Business Award at the Glasgow Business Awards 2026 means so much to everyone involved in developing the platform. Glasgow Chamber of Commerce : home

It’s recognition of the thinking, collaboration and technical development behind Geco – but, more importantly, of the real-world problem the technology is trying to solve.

Building What’s Next

Geco Connect continues to evolve, and so does the scale of the digital development work being delivered by Creo and the wider Solutions on Demand Group.

From websites and eCommerce platforms through to completely bespoke digital systems, increasingly our role is not simply to ask:

“What do you want us to build?”

It’s to ask:

“How does your organisation currently work, where are the problems, and could technology create a better way?”

Sometimes the answer is a website.

Sometimes it’s a CRM.

And sometimes it becomes an award-winning digital platform.