Published by olivia.wright@dontpanicprojects.com
Published Date 31.07.2023 
The Digital Agency of the Year category is one we know well, having won it last year. We are excited to be in the mix for a second time, and – although the competition looks formidable – hope to defend our title.
Founded in 2008, Rocketmakers is a one-stop-shop for taking innovations from inspirational ideas to finished digital products, and seeks out projects which are truly innovative, are built using robust, scalable, architecture, and make the world a better place.
One great example of this type of project is our entry in the App of the Year category, made for our client Biscuit Pet Health.
The app, called “Biscuit,” is a pet wellbeing mobile app which rewards pet owners who support their pet’s physical and emotional health, and empowers pet owners to become better pet parents.
The app’s ambitious design presented several challenges for our team. There were multiple complicated third party integrations, including a rewards programme, a multi-channel marketing platform, and an external credentials system. Because of the complex geolocation tracking features that the application design required, the dev team recommended the Capacitor runtime system, combined with a robust, well tested plugin, but not all of the integrations were compatible with Capacitor. To fix the problem, Rocketmakers developed a custom plugin, allowing for smooth communication between the app and the back office systems.
The Biscuit MVP was released in the autumn of 2022 and quickly became a smash success, hitting the #1 chart positions on both Google Play & the Apple App Store in the Health & Fitness category in December. Biscuit currently has over 60,000 users per month, and 200,000 registered users in total.
The nominations in the Tech Company of the Year and Digital Agency of the Year categories are also a huge honour for Rocketmakers, recognising the multiple technological and commercial successes we have enjoyed in the last year.
These include a new internal tool called BitRot which was recently rolled out. It monitors dependency versions across every production state of every app with a support contract. This saves substantial time, and ensures apps are updated efficiently.
Support contracts themselves are also a new innovation for Rocketmakers. Despite being a new service offering, they have quickly become a substantial part of our work and a growing source of revenue.
Rocketmakers achieved a longstanding goal when it received B Corp certification in January 2023. Recognised for balancing profit with people and the planet, the list of B Corp certified companies is growing in the UK, and Rocketmakers is delighted to join the list.
We also launched the “Rocketmakers Collaboratorium” in Autumn 2022, which donates 2,000 hours of development time to tech-for-good projects. Two projects have been accepted so far.
And lastly, after fifteen years of operation with a science-fiction corporate theme, we recently worked on a real-life space-related project for the first time this year for Spire Global, one of largest commercial satellite operators in the world.
After Rocketmakers’ success at the 2022 UK Business Tech Awards, CEO Richard Godfrey was keen for the team to make another run this year.
“We honestly weren’t expecting to be named Digital Agency of the Year at last year’s UK Business Tech Awards,” he explained. “It was our first year to enter, and the other finalists in the category were all well-known agencies with great track records.
“Winning has brought us a lot of benefits. Winning a national award was a great boost for everyone, and injected renewed confidence into the team. It’s also helped develop new clients – more than one has told us they had seen the award win, and that had encouraged them to get in touch with our business development team.
“I’m really pleased we were named as finalists in three categories for 2023, and it would be wonderful to pick up a second award in our second year of trying. The competition looks very tough again this year, though, so there are certainly no guarantees!
The 2023 UK Business Tech Awards will be presented at a gala dinner held on 4 October at the Montcalm Marble Arch hotel in London.
