CBA’s latest skunkworks project releases first app

CBA's latest skunkworks project releases first app

CBA has teamed with X15, the bank’s recently launched and standalone incubation hub, releasing one of the pair’s first co-developed projects – a new SME-targeted app designed to assist business owners with decision management tasks.

Christened Vonto, the app works by consolidating data from multiple business apps and platforms to generate personalised “insights, and recommended actions” for business owners.

This may include, for example, cash flow outlook, website traffic, social media engagement and product performance, according to CBA. “And going a step further, Vonto pulls together these data sets to generate holistic insights.”

Managing Director for Vonto, Elliot Cousins, praised X15’s purpose-built collaborative environment as key to “accelerating across all aspects of the venture building process”.

“The fact that we’re backed by CBA, and get access to X15 partners like Microsoft, provides us with a tremendous advantage,” Cousins said.

Cousins believes the app will streamline everyday business decisioning, helping to reduce the number of apps that are typically used by business owners to run their operations.

“More than 80 per cent of small businesses are using up to six business apps to run their operation, potentially meaning six logins to six different systems, every day, just to see the status quo,” Vonto Managing Director Elliot Cousins said.

So far, the app has limited integrations to five widely used business management platforms: accounting platform Xero, Google Analytics, e-commerce platform Shopify, Facebook and Vend. X15 said it would test the waters with customers with the existing platforms to determine future integrations. However, CBA stressed, further integrations are in development.

Together with Vonto, X15 also released Home-In, a digital home-buying concierge, as part of its official launch.

Vonto is free to download for iOS and Android users.