Catering Plus Technology Equals a Recipe for Industry Innovation

Posted by Daniel Ferguson on Wed, Sep 25, 2019 @ 01:00 PM

Anyone who has attended a corporate function can probably relate to this situation: It’s time to sit down to the food portion, and it’s an array of dry sandwiches, lifeless sausage rolls, and gritty instant coffee. Everyone accepts this fate, though, because that’s what a meal is at a business event.

In recent years, however, those within the food industry looked at that model and saw a better way to approach office catering. That included Order-In, which is based in North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Namely, this company and others like it strove to offer a blend of traditional customer service and an innovative integration of forward-thinking technology.

“Order-In takes care of all office catering, kitchen supplies, and corporate event needs for offices across Australia,” says Joo Dean, head of marketing at Order-In, “but we make office catering easier through an online ordering platform.”

Order-In_blog photo

Riding the Success of the Food Delivery Model

Order-In_logoWhen Jonathan Rowley launched Order-In in 2000, ordering food online was still in its early days. However, with the growing popularity of personal food-delivery services, such as Grubhub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats in the United States and Menulog and Foodora in Australia, people became increasingly comfortable with the business model and began seeking that convenience and flexibility in the corporate world as well.

“At Order-In, it’s our aim to continually improve Australia’s corporate catering industry by better utilizing technology,” says Dean. “Using these technical innovations, we want to make the catering process easier, more reliable, and more flexible in order to meet the changing needs of modern businesses.”

For their work in the food-technology industry, the company recently earned two Silver Stevie® Awards: one in the category of Excellence in Innovation in Business Product & Service Industries and another in the Innovation in Corporate Websites category in the 2019 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards.

Tapping Technology to Encourage Diversity and Sustainability

By making technology an integral part of the online business catering model, companies can offer greater ease and flexibility to their corporate clients, but the people behind these companies are also better positioned to operate in ways that align with contemporary professional ideologies.

“By putting everything in an online platform, which inherently removes many barriers, it allows us to build long-term relationships with our suppliers and to support local businesses, including Australian farmers,” says Dean. “We make a conscious effort to actively encourage and to include diverse, multicultural Aboriginal and not-for-profit catering suppliers into our platform, and those suppliers benefit because we offer a way to reach more customers.

“We can even work with charities and create partnerships that are in tune with our business values,” Dean continues.

In addition to promoting diversity, the online platform also allows customers and partners to make eco-conscious food choices.

“We recently implemented a sustainability rating system in October 2018 for all our caterers, which means our customers can make more informed choices about ordering sustainable catering.”

The synergy technology doesn’t just benefit the end user, though. It also improves the supplier experience, with many companies encouraging their suppliers to order biodegradable catering boxes, napkins, and cutlery.

Order-In and a myriad of other online food platforms demonstrate that technology can truly do more within the culinary industry than increase convenience for the customer; it’s also a means to help people make healthier, more sustainable food choices.

Order-In received two Silver Stevie Awards: one in the category of Excellence in Innovation in Business Product & Service Industries and another in the Innovation in Corporate Websites category in the 2019 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

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Topics: technology innovation, Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards

Call for Entries Issued for the First Annual Middle East Stevie Awards

Posted by Daniel Ferguson on Wed, Sep 25, 2019 @ 10:44 AM

RAK Chamber-sponsored Program to Recognize Innovation in the Workplace in 17 MENA Nations

MESA2019_press conference

The Stevie Awards, organizer of the world’s premier business awards programs, has opened entries for the 2020 (first annual) Middle East Stevie Awards, the first business awards program to recognize innovation in the workplace throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The awards are produced by the creators of the prestigious American Business Awards® and International Business Awards®, which receive more than 12,000 nominations each year between all Stevie Awards programs.

MESA_Facebook-1The Middle East Stevie Awards are open to all organizations in 17 nations in the Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

All individuals and organizations — public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small — may submit any number of nominations to any number of the categories, free of charge. Complete nomination details are available at http://MENA.StevieAwards.com.

Nominations that are awarded a Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie Award by the jury will be assessed a winners fee, the payment will unlock a number of benefits for the winner, including the right to claim the win, a Stevie Awards trophy, the right to use winners’ marks in promotions, and the right to receive the trophy on stage during a gala awards event in Ras Al Khaimah.

Nominations may be submitted online through two entry deadlines: November 6 and December 4, 2019. Any winners’ fees that might be payable for nominations submitted through the November 6 deadline will be discounted by $30.

Judging for the competition will be conducted by more than 100 professionals around the world. Those interested in participating on a jury may apply at http://MENA.StevieAwards.com. Stevie Awards competitions are esteemed for the rigor of their judging process and the experience and diversity of the jurors. More than 1,000 professionals around the world participate on Stevie Awards juries each year.

Winners of the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards in the competition will be announced on January 8, 2020 and celebrated during a gala event in RAK on February 8, 2020.

The Stevie Awards trophies, designed by the company that makes the Oscar and other major international awards, are among the world's most coveted prizes.

Nominations will be accepted and judged in Arabic and English, in more than 100 categories across the following category groups:

  • Web Site, App, Annual Report & Other Publications, & Live Event Awards Categories
  • Management Awards Categories
  • Company / Organization Awards Categories
  • Corporate Communications & Public Relations Awards Categories
  • Customer Service Awards Categories
  • Human Resources Awards Categories
  • Marketing Awards Categories
  • New Product & Product Management Awards Categories
  • Technology Awards Categories

Interested in receiving a 2020 Middle East Stevie Award?

Request the entry kit

Topics: Middle East, Middle East Stevie Awards

Winners Announced in 2019 Stevie Awards for Great Employers

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Mon, Sep 23, 2019 @ 09:15 AM

IBM Corporation, Toyota Turkey, and the Advisor Group Among Top Winners

Winners in the 2019 Stevie® Awards for Great Employers, an international competition, were announced on Friday, September 20 during a gala event in New York City. The awards recognize the world’s best employers and the human resources professionals, teams, achievements and HR-related products and suppliers who help to create and drive great places to work. A complete list of Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners by category is available at www.StevieAwards.com/HR

SAGE grand winner 2019

A diverse group of organizations and individuals around the world are among those recognized. The organization that won the Grand Stevie Award for Most Honored Organization of the Year is IBM Corporation worldwide with nine Gold, seven Silver, and seven Bronze Stevie Awards wins totaling 51.5 points.  Organization of the Year goes to the organization with the most award points, with each Gold Stevie win counting for three points, each Silver Stevie win for two points, and each Bronze Stevie for one-and-a-half points.

The Grand Stevie Award for the Highest-Rated Nomination of the Year goes to Toyota Turkey Marketing and Sales Inc.

Leading winners of Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevies include the Advisor Group of Phoenix, AZ USA with 10 Gold, five Silver, and one Bronze Stevie in a variety of categories. ej4 of St. Louis, MO USA won five Gold, two Silver, and five Bronze Stevies.

More than 600 nominations from organizations from 24 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 60 professionals worldwide, acting as judges. Stevie Award winners in the 35 Employer of the Year categories were determined by a unique blending of the ratings of professionals and the votes of the general public.

The Stevie Awards for Great Employers recognize achievement in many facets of the workplace. Categories include:

  • Employer of the Year
  • HR Achievements
  • HR Individual Awards
  • HR Team Categories
  • Solution Provider Awards
  • More than 60 New Product & Service Categories

The awards are presented by the Stevie Awards, which organizes eight of the world’s leading business awards shows including the prestigious International Business Awards® and American Business Awards®, and the new Middle East Stevie Awards.

Entries for the 2019 Stevie Awards for Great Employers will open in March. The entry kit will be available then at www.StevieAwards.com/HR.

Interested in receiving a Stevie Award in 2020?

Request the entry kit

Topics: human resources awards, Human Resources Department of the Year, Human Resources Team of the Year, Stevie Awards for Great Employers

Author of Stevie-winning Book: How to Develop Yourself as a Conscious Leader

Posted by Daniel Ferguson on Fri, Sep 20, 2019 @ 09:18 AM

In August of 2019, the CEOs of America’s largest companies gathered for the “Business Roundtable”, an association whose elite membership is comprised of the CEOs of the largest corporations in the U.S. This year, the all-powerful and influential group issued a pronouncement that the New York Times, on its front page, described as a major “philosophical shift.” Our largest companies would no longer focus exclusively on pleasing their shareholders; instead they would move to include caring about their people: employees, customers and “society” itself. 

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While this may have been news to many of us, it was another day at the office for Jeffrey Deckman, founder of Capability Accelerators, a New England-based leadership consultancy, who has been at the forefront of the movement to redefine how leaders lead for 15 years. Jeffrey Deckman pulled from more than 40 years of leadership experience and put it all down in a groundbreaking book,Developing the Conscious Leadership Mindset for the 21st Century,” published in March of 2019. The book was honored with Gold in the 2019 American Business Awards® and Silver in the 2019 International Business Awards® for Best Business E-Book and Best Business Book, respectively. 

A successful serial entrepreneur who launched two multi-million-dollar companies, Deckman exited that line of work in 2005 with a mission to change the way companies treat their employees and those with whom they do business. “I went from the front lines to the front office,” says Deckman. “I have done everything from customer service calls to eventually running board meetings. As a result, I saw the powerful relationship between leaders, employee engagement and ROI at every level of organizations. Engagement plunges when ‘power and control’ is in play in the C-suite; replace it with ‘authenticity, integrity and respect,’ and engagement skyrockets with profits following suit.”

This revolutionary book changes the paradigm for modern leadership as Deckman leads those who occupy C-suites and other senior positions on a subtle and highly effective journey of personal and professional transformation; it also gives leaders the tools they need to lead their teams in a similar transformation.

Deckman’s book breaks with the norm of business books in other ways as well. The book is intentionally an easy-to-read and follow – and even fun - workbook, all the better to engage an audience known to resist training. As Deckman explains: “Many leaders don’t want to admit, publicly at least, that they need training even though the truth is that most business leaders have not been trained in how to manage the complex tribal dynamics, psychological drivers and cultural influences that are the engines that drive profits in the Knowledge Economy. We – unfairly – expect them to learn all of this on their own, which few, in my experience, can.”

Deckman’s book transforms leaders as they absorb – contemplate, really – each of its powerful 52 “sections”. “Talking and telling” is replaced by “connecting and listening” (the average leader listens for seven seconds before interrupting; listening significantly improves employee engagement);“managing org charts” is replaced by “engaging and empowering tribes”; “command and control” is replaced by “communication, collaboration and facilitation"; and “getting others to do more” is replaced by “creating a supportive environment in which employees learn how to do more.”

leadership_mindset_ebook_badge-1The physical design of the book also stands out. It is a beautiful book to both look at and to hold, all the better for this discriminating audience. It also gives leaders the option of a shorter 26-week program as many leaders are busy as well as to turn either length program into a training program for their teams in order to maximize the book’s impact. As one Stevie judge aptly commented: “What a clever book. The 26-week or 52-week plan encourages the reader to incorporate and apply the ‘work’ set out in the readings.”

Since publication, top leadership consultants have posted five-star Amazon reviews pushing the book to #1 in Occupational/Organizational Psychology. Fast Company and CEO Blog Nation featured Deckman as have many leadership podcasts. Deckman’s fourth Conscious Leadership Conference is nearly sold out. Since publication, the author has also become a popular lecturer on leadership at the University of Rhode Island.

A stage 4 cancer survivor given a clean bill of health in 2019, Deckman knows that “the need for change is urgent and the time for change is now.”

As the Stevie judges recognized, this book is an agent for that change.


For more information, please visit www.jeffreydeckman.com. To receive a chapter of this book as special gift to Stevie blog readers, please email Jeffrey@JeffreyDeckman.com.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Request the entry kit here.

Topics: The American Business Awards, American business awards, best business book

International Data Corporation Predicts Big Things for Composable/Disaggregated Infrastructure (CDI)

Posted by Daniel Ferguson on Wed, Sep 18, 2019 @ 12:53 PM

Composable/disaggregated infrastructure, or CDI, is a relatively new topic in the tech world, but you may start hearing about it a lot more in the near future. Several market forecasts and industry trends seem to suggest this new approach to the cloud will soon be readily adopted and employed across businesses, whether they’re small, midmarket, or enterprise.

computer data

What Is CDI?

CDI is an emerging technology that essentially shifts the mind-set about physical technological infrastructure. Rather than treating tangible devices (servers, storage, and networking) as items that can only be configured and controlled manually, CDI allows you to abstract these entities and to treat them as services that can be controlled by code. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), CDI uses “high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects to aggregate compute, storage, and networking fabric resources into shared resource pools that can be available for on-demand allocation.” The system employs “rack-scale architecture” to penetrate physical barriers in the server, which subsequently allows storage, memory, and computing resources to be allocated in real time as needed.

The Forecasted Future of CDI

IDC, which was founded in 1964, provides market intelligence and advisory services in the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology sectors. The corporation is largely considered one of the world’s most established, respected, and premier voices in market forecasting. The company recently released a report entitled “Worldwide Composable/Disaggregated Infrastructure Forecast, 2018–2023,” which details the predicted revenue growth of that industry. The findings are substantial.

The IDC calculated CDI revenue for 2017 at $300.2 million—a relatively modest but not surprising number for a still-nascent technology. That number, however, is projected to jump to just shy of $3.4 billion by 2022. That’s an aggressive 58.2 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over a five-year period.

For their report, the IDC considers the CDI industry to be composed of three major elements: appliances and platforms, software, and associated hardware drag. While all three of these elements are projected to see higher-than-average growth over the coming years, the IDC predicts the pace will vary from segment to segment. Disaggregated hardware is projected to reach a six-year CAGR of 58.5 percent and earnings of $4.4 billion, and composable software is predicted to see a six-year CAGR of 53.8 percent and $325.6 million in revenue.

Given all that, the CDI market segment is still only projected to comprise about 4.1 percent of the entire server market in 2023. For investment-minded individuals, this could mean massive potential. By investing heavily in these CDI technologies now, it offers the possibility of gathering a significant market share in years to come.

How Smaller Companies Are Changing the CDI Game

Major information technology players, such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell, have largely dominated the headlines surrounding CDI, but the IDC report suggests this could change over the coming years. This influence of smaller, emerging companies could be the key to the industry’s potentially meteoric success. Rather than relying on a handful of established companies to carry the burden of this technology, new vendors will enter the market, solving infrastructure-related IT challenges and improving the overall viability and adoption of CDI.

cloudistics-logoCloudistics, which was founded in 2013 in Reston, Virginia, United States, and recently took home a Bronze Stevie® Award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year, is one such private cloud software solution. They work to streamline IT service delivery and to help organizations run their essential operational functions.

“Our aim is to offer organizations a new tool to accelerate digital transformation, making a private cloud infrastructure easy to implement, to deploy, to operate, and to maintain,” says Sarah Shkargi, the vice president of client relations at Cloudistics. “We’re looking to provide a premium experience paired with predictable performance and powerful operational efficiencies, including a 60 percent reduction in IT service deployment time and 40 percent savings in training and specialist costs.”

Cloudistics—and companies like it—exemplify the positive changes that have been taking place in the CDI sphere.

“Two years ago, if you wanted CDI, you were buying massive installations from a few major hardware vendors,” says Shkargi. “Now, start-ups can deliver smaller-scale, entirely software-defined CDI that isn’t wedded to legacy approaches and is suitable for organizations of all sizes. These examples offer real advantages over a do-it-yourself or hyperconverged infrastructure, and some even offer price points that are more attractive than the public cloud.”

As the infrastructure needs of companies continue to grow more complex and varied, companies are increasingly projected to realize that simply stacking management layers within on-premises infrastructure doesn’t suffice.

“The world is moving irrevocably toward a multi-cloud, multisite, geo-distributed model,” says Shkargi, “And CDI, with the innovations of industry giants and emerging vendors, can deliver the reliability, agility, and versatility companies need.”

Offerpad recently won a Bronze Stevie Award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year in the Technology Industries category at the 2019 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service in Las Vegas.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Request the entry kit here.

Topics: Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service, computer software awards

Winners of the 2019 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Companies Announced

Posted by Daniel Ferguson on Wed, Sep 18, 2019 @ 09:45 AM

Awards to be Presented at Gala Ceremony on 19 October in Vienna, Austria.

Winners were announced today in the 2019 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Companies, a feature of The International Business Awards®, the world’s only international, all-encompassing business awards program, which is now in its 16th year.

Peoples_Choice_Favorite_Company_2018

The worldwide public vote was conducted this summer, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in a variety of industries. More than 44,000 votes were cast. All Stevie Award winners in the Company of the Year categories of this year’s International Business Awards were eligible to be included in voting for the People’s Choice Stevie Awards.

The crystal People’s Choice Stevie Awards will be presented to winners at The International Business Awards banquet on Saturday, 19 October at the Andaz Vienna am Belvedere Hotel. Tickets for the event are now on sale. The winners of peer-adjudicated Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards will be presented with their awards along with the People’s Choice Stevie Awards. Stevie winners were selected from more than 4,000 nominations received from organizations and individuals in 74 nations.

The winners of the 2019 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Companies are:

  • Advertising/Marketing/PR: Publicity Genie
  • Automotive/Transport: Armormax
  • Banking: Ziraat Participation Bank
  • Business/Professional Services: Pontica Solutions
  • Computer Services: Rimini Street
  • Computer Software: XtremeLabs LLC
  • Consumer Products: Georgio’s
  • Consumer Services: Jasmine Norris Photography
  • Financial/Insurance: Thai Life Insurance Plc.
  • Food/Beverage: Rico’s Lechon
  • Health/Pharma: NMC Healthcare
  • Hospitality/Leisure: Kindersley Hospitality Endeavors
  • Internet/New Media: SideChef
  • Legal: Legally Shalini
  • Manufacturing: Makers Nutrition
  • Media/Entertainment: Link4Media UG
  • Non-Profit/Government: Megaworld Foundation, Inc.
  • Other: Zen Ecosystems
  • Real Estate: Ashby & Graff Real Estate
  • Retail: Migros Ticaret A.S.
  • Transportation: Whale Logistics

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Request the entry kit

 

Topics: International business awards, People's Choice Stevie Awards, The International Business Awards, favorite companies

Who's Coming to Friday's Stevie Awards for Great Employers?

Posted by Michael Gallagher on Tue, Sep 17, 2019 @ 12:04 PM

This Friday, September 20 brings the presentation of the 4th annual Stevie® Awards for Great Employers, honoring the world's best employers and the human resources teams, professionals, achievements, suppliers, and new products that help to create and drive great places to work.

Sage pic 3Finalists in the competition were announced in mid-August.  The Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements among the Finalists will be revealed during Friday's presentations.

The Finalists and Stevie-winning nominations were determined by the ratings of more than 50 professionals around the world on four juries.

Friday's awards presentations will be broadcast live on the awards website.

Two Grand Stevie Award winners will be revealed at the end of Friday's presentations: for the highest-rated nomination of the year, and for organization of the year, presented to the organization that won the most award points in the 2019 competition.

Here is the list of organizations that will be represented at Friday's event.

ACV Auctions
Advisor Group
Ains, Inc
AireSpring
Allianz Partners
AMERICAN SYSTEMS
Arçelik
Arvato CRM Turkey
AutoSoft
Belatrix Software
BIZIM TOPTAN
BrightSpring Health Services
CareerArc
CentralReach
Cisco
Columbia Basin Health Association
Concentrix
CyrusOne
Datamatics Global Services, Inc
Dell Technologies
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited
Digital Air Strike
Digital Remedy
DPDHL Deutschland
Eargo
ej4
Forward Networks
Glass of Learning
Globe Telecom, Inc
Hormel Foods Corporation
HUGO BOSS Textile Ind. Ltd.
Human Resources-Ministry of Interior-Kingdom of Bahrain
IBM Corp
Inno-Versity, LLC
Insperity
Islamic Affairs & charitable Activities Department
Kronos, Inc.
MHGSJH
MİGROS TİCARET A.Ş
Mphasis
Olee
Paysafe Groupe
Playa Hotels & Resorts
PointClickCare
Products Up GmbH
QNB FINANSBANK
Rabobank
RB
Recognize Services Inc
Resolute Forest Products
Roth Staffing Companies
Saudi Aramco
Swiss Re
SYKES TalentSprout
Toyota Turkey Marketing and Sales INC.
TrustHCS
UniFirst Corporation
Verifi, Inc.
Workiva

Entries for the 2020 edition of the awards will open in March.

Request your entry kit here

Topics: human resources awards, great employers

Call for Entries Issued for 14th Annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service

Posted by Daniel Ferguson on Tue, Sep 17, 2019 @ 09:00 AM

Top Sales Awards and Customer Service Awards Winners to Be Recognized in Las Vegas

The Stevie Awards has issued a call for entries for the 2020 (14th annual) Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Entry kits and complete details on the competition are available at http://www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.

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Eligible nominees include: departments, teams, and professionals from around the world who work in customer service, contact center, business development, and sales. New products and services and solution providers used by those professionals are also eligible. The 2020 awards will recognize achievements since July 1, 2018.

The early-bird entry deadline with reduced entry fees is October 16, 2019. The final entry deadline is November 13, but late entries will be accepted through January 9, 2020 with payment of a late fee. Finalists will be announced in mid-January, and the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners will be revealed during a gala awards banquet on February 28 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service feature more than 150 sales awards, customer service awards, business development awards, new product awards, and solution provider awards categories. Entrants may submit any number of nominations to any number of categories, which include:

  • Sales Individual categories such as Senior Sales Executive of the Year and Sales Representative of the Year
  • Sales Team categories like Global Sales Team of the Year and Online Sales Team of the Year
  • Sales Achievement categories such as Sales Turnaround of the Year and Sales Training or Coaching Program of the Year
  • Sales Distinction categories in 14 industry groupings
  • Customer Service and Contact Center Individual categories such as Front-Line Customer Service Professional of the Year and Customer Service Leader of the Year
  • Customer Service and Contact Center Team categories like Contact Center of the Year and Back Office Customer Service Team of the Year
  • Customer Service and Contact Center Achievement categories such as e-Commerce Customer Service Award and Award for Innovation in Customer Service
  • Customer Service Department categories in 12 industry groupings
  • Customer Service Success categories in five industry groupings
  • New Product and Service categories like Best New Business Intelligence Solution and Best New Marketing Solution
  • Solution Provider categories such as Sales Consulting Practice of the Year and Incentive, Rewards, or Recognition Provider of the Year
  • Business Development categories such as Business Development Professional of the Year and Business Development Achievement of the Year - Hospitality & Leisure

New this year, nominees may submit a video of up to five minutes in length instead of the 650-word essay describing their achievements since July 1, 2018.

New categories for 2020 include Customer Service Training Professional of the Year, Customer Service Training Team of the Year – External, Customer Service Training Team of the Year – Internal, Best Customer Engagement Initiative, Customer Service Training or Coaching Program of the Year, Sales Enablement Program of the Year, Sales Incentive Program of the Year, and White Paper or Research Paper of the Year.

2020 will see the return of the People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Customer Service, a popular feature of the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service in which the general public may vote for their favorite providers of customer service, from among all finalist nominations in the Customer Service Department of the Year categories.

Winners of the 2019 edition of the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service included Allstate, American Airlines, Birevim, Cvent, DP DHL, Deliveroo, Dubai Police, HomeServe USA, IBM, iHeartMedia, Inc., Michael Kors, Oi, Salary.com, Sales Partnerships, Inc., SolarWinds, Texas Instruments, VIZIO, Zappos, and more.

The 2020 competition will be judged by more than 150 professionals around the world.

 

Topics: Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, sales and customer service awards

Values Decide Sales Success, Not Knowledge

Posted by Daniel Ferguson on Wed, Sep 11, 2019 @ 09:00 AM

Many studies show that sales success is not predicated on arming salespeople with product knowledge and basic selling skills; it’s based, instead, on the salesperson’s values, beliefs, and attitudes.

That’s what Stevie-winner Integrity Solutions, a highly sought-after sales training company, believes.

Integrity Solutions_2

Ron Willingham founded the company, which develops sales and customer service teams, in 1968.  He asserts that “selling success is more an issue of who you are than what you know. While knowledge is necessary, sustained success comes to the person who’s driven by strong values and ethics.”

He spent decades creating and improving a unique learning process that translates knowledge and skills into real-world behaviors.

Embrace Your Team

Integrity Solutions_logoIntegrity Solutions was at the forefront of the customer needs–focused selling philosophy, which was radical at the time.

If you’re interested in creating customer-centric, value-driven leaders and sales teams, Integrity Solutions offers the perfect example of how changing leadership habits and cultural values can drive success in your organization.

“This is a critical yet often overlooked differentiator for organizations,” says Will Milano, vice president of marketing at Integrity Solutions. “We believe that transitioning your sales culture to create greater transparency and working overtly in the customers' interests are no longer options; they’re mandatory.”

Integrity Solutions sees embracing sales coaching as the number one driver that allows sales leaders to reach the best results. A critical component, however, is effectively equipping the sales organization.

This involves ensuring you have the necessary skills and mind-set to meet aggressive growth goals. Managers need to coach and empower their people with product trainings and materials that are aligned with the sales messaging.

“Successful sales training is not simply a one-time 'event’, but a behavior change process that requires the involvement and sponsorship of senior leadership,” says Milano. “Ongoing reinforcement, sales manager coaching, and a focus on unlocking people's beliefs and attitudes about themselves are also integral.”

What Does Your Philosophy Say About Your Team?

Lots of seminars today sing the praises of ethics, values, and integrity in business, but those gems of wisdom don’t always translate into actual workplace success.

Integrity Solutions operates according to their core values. If you’re interested in developing your team’s selling skills, compare your values with the following:

  • Integrity: acting ethically at all times
  • Accountability: taking proactive responsibility for results
  • Excellence: performing at the highest level
  • Abundance: sharing the wealth of opportunity with others
  • Innovation: seeking new and better solutions to problems
  • Customer focus: keeping the customer at the center of the business

For Integrity Solutions, these guidelines have led to the development of first-in-class innovations, such as Integrity Selling®, Integrity Service, Integrity Coaching, and many others. Each solution is designed to impact not only skills but also attitudes, values, and achievement drive.

Do you agree? If sales success is largely based on the salesperson’s values, beliefs, attitudes, and motivation, as the track record of Integrity Solutions demonstrates, isn’t it worth asking if your team would benefit from these methods?

“While the sales training industry has been relatively flat for several years, Integrity Solutions has grown almost 37 percent over the past two years.”

Feel free to learn more about their services and methods to compare your organization’s strategies.

Integrity Solutions recently won two Stevie® Awards: a Silver for Sales Consulting Practice of the Year and a Bronze for Sales Training Practice of the Year, both in the category of Solution Provider, at the 2019 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service in Las Vegas.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Request the entry kit here.

Topics: Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, stevie awards for sales and customer service, sales training

How to Grow a Global Business from Your Basement

Posted by Daniel Ferguson on Wed, Sep 04, 2019 @ 12:43 PM

Every day new companies are born, and for many of these emerging entities, one goal dominates: find large-scale success. How exactly does a company go about that, though, and what are some of the challenges if the company is truly starting from the ground up?

The story of Stevie-winner DATA Inc., a total IT solutions and services provider based out of Montvale, New Jersey, United States, provides some valuable insights into these very questions.

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A Brief History of DATA Inc.

DATA Inc. began in 1983, when Arun Verma, a retired officer in the Indian Army, immigrated to the United States and began a small consulting firm in the basement of his home. Beginning as a one-person operation, Verma’s vision grew into a company that thrived over the subsequent decades. It currently has several hundred employees and multiple locations throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and India. The business also provides talent to several prominent Fortune 500 companies.

Using DATA Inc. as a model, how can other companies successfully transition from a small basement operation to a global entity? Here are three tips other businesses can adopt.

Be Diverse

Companies are increasingly embracing the idea that moving forward in today’s global market requires the input, voices, and insight of all demographics, and DATA Inc. has certainly embraced this need for diversity.

“As a certified minority business enterprise (MBE), DATA Inc. understands the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce,” says Deepali Schwarz, the director of corporate affairs at DATA Inc. “We are an equal opportunity employer, and the more than 350 people that make up our U.S. team come from dozens of backgrounds and nationalities, spanning six continents.”

The company is particularly cognizant of the importance of including women not only in the company but in prominent leadership positions.

“Women play many important roles at DATA Inc.,” says Schwarz. “Our senior management team is comprised of 40 percent women and 80 percent minorities.”

An increasingly robust cache of data backs up the soundness of these business practices. McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, released a report entitled “Delivering through Diversity,” and the document asserts that companies in the top 25th percentile for executive gender diversity are an impressive 21 percent more likely to enjoy above-average profits. These benefits also don’t stop at gender. Companies with ethnically and culturally diverse C-level personnel were 33 percent more likely to experience above-average profits.

Be Adaptable

No matter what your company’s industry, adaptability to market fluctuations is essential to continued success, and in rapidly changing industries, such as technology, this becomes even more crucial.

“With the prevalence of cloud computing and the internet of things, along with social media and mobile technology, the global competition for talent has become more intense,” says Schwarz. “As we look toward the future and the new and exciting developments taking place, we remain committed to engaging the right mix of people and technology in order to understand targets and to provide the right solutions to fit company needs.”

This attitude demonstrates that adapting to changes is beneficial, but that adaptability should also be coupled with a steadfast dedication to the company’s core goals, beliefs, and practices.

Be Passionate

Entering into a business venture without drive and passion is a recipe for poor results, but DATA Inc. is an example of what can happen when those qualities are integrated into the company culture.

“A veteran founded DATA Inc., and we continue to have many veterans in senior leadership positions today,” says Schwarz. “The principles of discipline, honor, sacrifice, and selflessness are definitely reflected in our day-to-day operations.

“DATA Inc. started from extremely humble beginnings: the basement of the president, an immigrant who came to America with almost nothing but the will and determination to succeed for his family. Through tireless efforts, the whole team worked hard to make us what we are today.”

Recognition Validates Practices

DATA Inc. recently earned a Silver Stevie® Award in the category of Minority-Owned Business of the Year at The 2019 American Business Awards® in New York City. In addition to being honored, receiving this accolade helps validate the idea that the company’s business practices are successful and can serve as blueprints for other like-minded companies.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Request the entry kit here.

 

Topics: American business awards, minority-owned business