What motivated your company to participate in the Global Tech Awards?

The Global Tech Awards is an industry benchmark. Being recognized as a winner shows that HERE plays a vital role in increasing productivity and maintaining security in the AI-era, particularly for regulated industries. The enterprise browser space is still misunderstood, since people assume browsers like Chrome and Edge are “good enough” for the workplace. In the AI-era, they’re not. Being recognized as a winner of the Global Tech Awards gives us the opportunity to challenge this assumption. Beyond the recognition, participating in awards like this creates the opportunity for the category to grow. The use of enterprise browsers reflects a large shift and the more mainstream the conversation becomes, the more organizations will benefit.

Could you share an overview of the project or innovation your company submitted?

We submitted HERE Enterprise Browser, the first and only browser purpose-built for work. Browsers have become the most-used applications in the modern workplace, however, Chrome and Edge were designed for consumers, not for the security, workflow and compliance demands that are required in regulated enterprise environments. HERE closes that gap. Developed in collaboration with leading financial institutions and built on Google Chromium, it combines zero-trust security architecture with a suite of productivity features that address what we call the "toggle tax" — the time and cognitive energy lost every day to switching between applications, hunting for information and manually moving data from one tool to another. The key innovations include: Supertabs, which unify applications and data into a single view; SuperSearch, a universal search interface that pulls results across all enterprise apps and returns them in an actionable format; AI Center allows organizations to embed proprietary or third-party AI models directly into workflows without compromising data control; and Notification Center centralizes alerts, allowing users to triage and act on updates without breaking their workflow.

The results speak for themselves. Clients report $8M in annual savings per 1,000 employees and 60% workflow improvements in contact center and compliance environments. Specifically, a top-tier investment bank has reported $75M in productivity gains. Enterprises can deploy it in under an hour and are assured that HERE’s architecture supports MiFID II, SEC/FINRA oversight, GDPR and global compliance frameworks, giving IT and risk teams complete visibility into digital activity. The future of work isn’t just about what tools you use — it’s about where you use them. With HERE, that place is finally purpose-built.

How has your team worked together to bring this innovation to life?

HERE was designed through careful study of how employees work in the real world. We performed “time and motion” analyses to understand employees’ habits and behaviors. We then feed that research back into our development process to make HERE’s design even more efficient. We know what makes workers distracted. We know what burns them out. And we know how to help them stay productive and engaged. We created HERE with the belief that the human employee should remain the protagonist — even in the age of AI. We’re not putting employees “in the loop” or turning them into AI managers. We’re using AI to enhance their work.

What impact do you anticipate your innovation will have on the tech industry or society at large?

AI is no longer a future consideration. It’s taking over desktops in the workplace. The biggest question isn’t about whether to adopt it, but how to incorporate it without creating new risks or complexities. Many organizations rely on a “human in the loop” model, where employees supervise AI agents. While it sounds efficient, the reality is that it’s not. Research from UC Berkeley shows that managing multiple AI systems creates cognitive strain, often referred to as “brain fry”, causing increased errors, decision fatigue, and burnout. HERE works with leaders at some of the largest organizations in the world, and putting humans in the loop is the furthest thing from their minds right now. They want to take advantage of AI. They’re worried about falling behind. But they want to fold AI into the work their people are already doing. And they want to do that without ceding control to any AI vendor.

Are there any specific challenges you faced during the development process, and how did you overcome them?

The hardest challenge wasn't technical, it was convincing enterprises to question an assumption they’ve held for decades that browsers are one-size-fits-all. Enterprises have been using the same browser for both personal internet browsing and also for complex work that requires security and compliance. This puts their data at risk and hampers employee productivity, but when Chrome and Edge have near-universal adoption, inertia is a formidable opponent. As much as we’d like to take credit for the turning tide, the reality is that two macro trends (security and AI) have convinced many enterprise leaders that they need a dedicated browser for work. In the face of escalating security threats, CISOs have recognized that the browser is the critical control point between employees and sensitive data. At the same time, the need to both secure AI and also make employees dramatically more productive with AI means the browser needs to operate very differently than what it was ever designed to do. At HERE, we’ve been at the front-end (pun intended) of solving this problem, working with some of the most complex regulated organizations in the world.

How does your company foster a culture of innovation?

We stay close to our customers. Innovation at HERE doesn't come from brainstorming sessions or trend reports. It comes from listening carefully to the people who use our product every day and understanding where the friction is. We also embrace a certain productive dissatisfaction. Our team is never fully satisfied with what we've built, because we know the gap between what enterprise software is and what it could be is still wide. That mindset keeps us moving. And we hire people who care about craft. Building something that works in a regulated enterprise environment at scale requires rigor. But building something that people actually want to use requires empathy. We look for both.

What advice would you give to other companies striving to make an impact in the tech space?

Start with a problem that the industry has learned to live with, then solve it. The biggest opportunities are often found in the gaps everyone has accepted. Consumer browsing dominated the enterprise workplace. No one questioned it because everyone used it. That kind of thinking is worth interrogating. Build with people who feel the pain most acutely. HERE was developed in direct collaboration with leading financial institutions. Your earliest partners should be pushing you hard to solve a problem. Think carefully about the environment, not just the applications. Tech companies are building powerful tools but then ignore the context in which they’ll be used. It’s critical to keep the interface, cognitive load, and integration with everything else top of mind.

What are your company’s future goals, and how do you plan to drive advancements in your industry?

Our goal is to establish the enterprise browser as the standard expectation for how knowledge work gets done. In the same way that Slack set the standard for work messaging, we want to set the standard for work browsing and we believe the time has come for a purpose-built browser for work. In the near term, we're deepening our AI capabilities. Organizations want the benefits of AI without surrendering data control to outside vendors. They also don’t want to be forced into choosing AI that is bundled with other products they’re using whether that’s their browser or other productivity tools. We're also expanding beyond financial services into healthcare, government and defense — sectors with the same high compliance burden and the same unmet need for a browser that was built for their world. The long-term vision is simple: every knowledge worker deserves a work environment that was actually designed for work. That’s what we’re building.

Are there any emerging technologies or trends your company is particularly excited about?

We're paying close attention to agentic AI, the shift from AI as a tool you prompt to AI as a system that acts. This is where the stakes get highest, because agents operating inside an enterprise environment need guardrails, auditability and human oversight built into the architecture from day one. The browser is a natural control layer for that, and we think HERE is uniquely positioned as agentic workflows become standard.

More broadly, we believe the era of consumer-grade infrastructure in the enterprise is ending. Security, productivity and AI are converging, and the browser sits at the intersection of all three. That's exactly what HERE is designed to solve.

To dive deeper into Here’s award-winning work, visit their website at https://www.here.io/