Our Story
What We Strive For With Clients
We develop strong relationships as your technology partner. The communication from our friendly team is simple and concise. Ember Technology understands your organisation. We are proactive, deliver on our word and are responsive.
World Class Client Experience
We’re dedicated to exceeding our client expectations with proactive planning, exceptional service, attention to detail & delivery on our word.
Achieve
Your Potential
We nurture an environment of innovation and continuous learning to unlock the potential of each other and our clients.
Foster Team Spirit
We build strong relationships through open communication in a positive, inclusive and fun environment.
Our vision is to do more than our fair share to make Aotearoa a better place to live and work.
We assess our impact by:
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Measuring clients time and cost saved from our projects
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Remaining net carbon zero
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Enabling enterprises and SMEs to have more impactful sustainability programmes by using GreenHalo, our proprietary environmental management software
Our Story
2010
Earthquakes & Early Days
Ember Technology was established in Christchurch in May 2010. It was then named i.t.online and just a few months later the Canterbury earthquakes proved the advantages of cloud computing to local businesses. Founders, Scott Lilly and Matt Cook, knocked on doors to build a client base and slowly brought on staff, some of who are still with Ember Technology today.
2017
Clarifying Purpose
The owners of Ember Technology have always given back to the community and environment. In 2017, The Aoraki Project was created where some profits and equipment were reinvested into community charities and our not-for-profit clients. We switched our fleet of cars to electric vehicles and gained net carbon zero certification in 2020.
2020
Achieve Your Potential
One of our core values is Achieve Your Potential, and several members of our IT team were looking for opportunities to specialise and grow their leadership capability. At the time, we didn’t have the scale to support this. To address this, we acquired RTFM in 2020 and UPBEAT Business Computing in 2022. Their teams joined Ember Technology, and the increased scale has enabled us to offer deeper, more comprehensive IT services to our clients.
2020
Moving to Saas
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At a 2022 planning session in the Southern Alps, the owners raised the idea of a software platform to automate the measurement of carbon and improve business productivity. Our recent carbon zero certification had been time-consuming and painful. We couldn’t find a solution that did what we needed yet we had the team to build it. GreenHalo is now a leading environmental management system used by enterprises and SMEs throughout Aotearoa and we’re about to launch into Australia.
2024
Implementing Generative AI
From 2024, Ember Technology observed a growing shift across workplaces as organisations began engaging more deeply with AI tools and conversations. Many of our clients were in an exploratory phase, prompting us to focus on workflow automation and identifying efficiencies within existing processes. As the industry rapidly moved in this direction, we leaned into this momentum, supporting clients as they navigated and adopted emerging AI-driven solutions.
2016
Switching to being Customer-led
In 2016, Ember Technology switched into a customer-led business. The company’s values centred around delivering ‘world class client experience’. We took time to understand what clients were trying to achieve and our role in supporting them. We crafted What We Strive For With Clients and it pushed us to be more relationship focussed, proactive and simple in our communication. The team structure changed to ensure customers worked with the same team members every time to build trust and understanding.
2018
Tip Toeing Toward Innovation
By asking our customers about their pain points, it became clear we needed to deliver new services. The idea of delivering robotic process automation (RPA) was hatched beside a hotel pool in Vietnam in 2018. Within a few months, we had delivered our first RPA project for a multi-national business of over 3,000 staff and they’re still a key client today.
2020
Growing Demand For Innovation
As RPA demand grew so did our confidence to step into new areas of technology. Our customers wanted more so, from 2020, we built a whole new Innovation Team from scratch. We expanded our automation tool set, established data warehouses, delivered machine learning projects and created data dashboards for business managers to make better decisions. Software development was a commonality across projects, so we hired developers and now build customised mobile and web apps. In 2022, we began our first robotics engineering project - a robot stacker for a recycled plastics manufacturer.
2023 & Beyond
Why Ember Technology
2023
Why 'Ember Technology'
In 2023, we changed our name because it didn’t reflect the breadth of our new services. We’ve never wanted to be a ‘cool’ IT company. We prefer being a warm and friendly team. Ember Technology it is!
2026 & Beyond
The Future
In many ways, nothing will change at Ember Technology. We will be driven by the needs of our clients and the pace of tech. We will remain heavy on relationships and fiercely protect our team culture. Decisions to grow will be based around their positive impact on our vision. Yet, the services we will deliver in future will most likely be unrecognisable today.
