Winners in three categories sponsored by HCL Technologies, to recognize the achievements of female technology leaders, were announced today in the 18^th Stevie® Awards for Women in Business, an international competition that shines a spotlight on women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and organizations run by women.

The Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie winners will be honored during a virtual awards ceremony on Thursday, January 13.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners in all other categories in the competition were announced on September 23.

More than 1,500 nominations from organizations and individuals around the world were submitted this year for consideration in categories such as COVID-19 Response, Entrepreneur of the Year, Executive of the Year, Most Innovative Company of the Year, and Startup of the Year, among others. More than 160 business professionals working in eight specialized judging committees determined the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners.

The winners in the categories sponsored by HCL Technologies, a leading global technology company, are as follows:

Excellence in Redefining the Next-Gen Workplace
GOLD STEVIE® WINNER:
BP plc, Houston, TX USA: Tracy Pyle, Head of Citizen Digital Center
SILVER STEVIE® WINNER:
Ascension Health, Milwaukee, WI USA: Meghan Hendricks, Vice President of Relationship and Demand Management
BRONZE STEVIE® WINNER:
T-Mobile, Bellevue, WA USA: Elizabeth Hunter, Senior Vice President – Technology

Leading Through Uncertainty
GOLD STEVIE® WINNER:
Rogers Communications, Toronto, ON Canada: Shannon Bell, Senior VP - IT
SILVER STEVIE® WINNER:
Stanley Black & Decker, West Hartford, CT USA: Leslie Scott, VP & CIO, IT Enterprise Services
BRONZE STEVIE® WINNERS:
SiriusXM Radio, Pompano Beach, FL USA: Christa Petros, Vice President, Product Development
The Standard, Portland, OR USA: Kelli Wilson, AVP, IT Infrastructure and Operations

New-Normal Digital Transformer
GOLD STEVIE® WINNERS:
BMO Financial Group, Toronto, ON Canada: Bindhu Alvar Thiruvenkadathan, CIO, Wealth Management
InterContinental Hotels Group, Atlanta, GA USA: Michelle Griffith, VP, Security Governance, Risk & Compliance
SILVER STEVIE® WINNERS:
Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA USA: Deepika Manglani, VP, Product and Program Management
Merck & Co. Inc., North Wales, PA USA: Denise Allen-Williams, Vice President
Weyerhaeuser, Seattle, WA USA: Amanda McKinstry, IT Senior Director - Enterprise Systems

“We heartily congratulate all of the 2021 HCL’s Red Ladder Women in Technology category winners. On year two of the COVID-19 pandemic, these organizations and leaders have shown that they are able to adapt to anything thrown their way and pivot to an enhanced virtual climate,” said Maggie Miller, Stevie Awards president.

Visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/Women for a complete list of Stevie winners by category. Registration for the January 13 virtual awards ceremony closes on January 7.

Professionals in IT operations often resolve issues by automating scripting or coding.

Why use automation?

Throughout the past two decades, technological innovations and information delivery systems have spurred unprecedented growth. The continued evolution of tech, as well as human ingenuity, present organizations across the retail, manufacturing, telecom, banking, and financial services sectors with an array of ever-expanding scenarios and challenges. As just a few examples, being connected continues to become cheaper, and device ownership is skyrocketing.

Data volumes are soaring, and billions of new connected data sources are anticipated within a few years. We are quickly approaching exabyte volumes and are surging toward zettabytes, and the growth of mobile connectivity continues to surpass fixed lines. Security is, as always, a major issue, along with regulatory complexity.

These automations, however, often only work within a monolithic and extremely predictive environment. If one thing changes in that environment, it typically results in the automation failing within the system. Once this happens, an IT professional must begin the troubleshooting process, which might take anywhere from five to thirty minutes to complete. This increases a company’s internal costs and bogs down IT resources.

Are Humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Destined to Work Together?

IT has revolutionized businesses across global industries. The way IT operates in most enterprises, however, is still very people-centric, which means the industry is prime for robotic or runbook automation initiatives. Having a fairly straightforward goal of achieving direct cost savings, these automations can reduce the manual effort spent on repetitive activities.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is great for a predictive environment, but it’s not necessarily designed for an ever-changing landscape. It lacks, therefore, the agility to successfully handle many scenarios. To see better results, the automation efforts need to be cognitive and intelligent.

While script-based automation yields quick, small wins, most organizations soon realize the accelerating pace of business-related changes, the increasing complexity of technology and operations, and rising technology-based operational risks far outmatch traditional automation capabilities. There is a critical need, therefore, for an intelligent system that can keep up with technology churn, understand business processes, and be customized to an industry domain and business model.

Many companies praise automation like it’s already the backbone of their business platforms, but human intervention within that automation is still largely necessary. Companies like Digitate try to be aware of this (currently) inescapable reality by working with top brands in virtually every industry. By continuing to improve their product capabilities, service delivery, and customer support, they can build a community of dedicated users who are excited about sharing their stories with them.

Digitate™ leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to manage IT and business operations. Their product, ignio™, enables better decision-making and ultimately solves IT operations challenges.

Other companies that also leverage machine learning and AI to manage IT and business operations are still working on developing an overarching process that can understand system needs across dynamic situations from different sectors. This is a daunting task, though, and something no one has been able to achieve—yet.

Digitate recently won a Silver Stevie® Award in the Software Defined Infrastructure category at the 2019 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The International Business Awards this year? They open for entries on February 4, 2020. 

No Additional Late Fees for Top Business Honors

The Stevie® Awards, organizer of The American Business Awards, announced today that the final entry deadline for the 15^th annual ABA competition has been extended to April 7. No additional late fees will be charged.  Entries submitted through April 7 will not be penalized in any way in the judging process.

“We’ve received so many requests for individual deadline extensions that we’ve decided to extend the deadline for everyone,” said Stevie Awards president Michael Gallagher. The original final deadline was March 15.

GET THE ENTRY KIT HERE.

The American Business Awards are widely considered to be the premier business awards program in the U.S.A. All organizations operating in the U.S.A. are eligible to submit nominations -- public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small.  The 2017 awards will honor achievements since the beginning of 2016.  Entry details are available at http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

The American Business Awards recognize achievement in every facet of the workplace. Categories include:

• Management Awards
• Company of the Year Awards
• Customer Service Awards
• Human Resources Awards
• Information Technology Awards
• Marketing Awards
• New Product Awards
• Public Relations Awards
• Website Awards, Smartphone and Tablet Apps, and other Media Awards

Close to 150 executives worldwide will determine the Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners.  The judging process has begun.

Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie winners will be announced on May 1, and the awards presented at a gala banquet on June 20 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. Attendance is not required to win.

The list of past Stevie Award winners in The American Business Awards reads like a who’s who of innovation and business success in the U.S.A.  Explore the lists of past Stevie winners here.

About the Stevie Awards
The Stevie Awards are conferred in seven programs: The American Business Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards and the Stevie Awards for Great Employers. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com, and follow the Stevie Awards on Twitter @TheStevieAwards.

The 13th annual International Business Awards, the world's premier business awards competition, is accepting nominations through June 15. This is the final entry deadline this year. The IBAs attract nominations from organizations in more than 60 nations and territories each year.

REVIEW THE ENTRY KIT HERE.

All individuals and organizations worldwide—public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small—may submit nominations to The International Business Awards. An international judging panel of more than 200 executives will determine the Stevie Award winners. Results will be announced in mid-August. Stevie Award winners will be presented their awards at a gala banquet in Rome, Italy on October 21.

Today we will highlight the IT Awards categories. These categories pertain to all information technology, software and web development professionals.

The information requirements for entries in these categories in the 2016 competition include:

a. An essay of up to 650 words describing the nominee's achievements since January 1, 2015

b. In bullet-list form (up to 150 words), a brief summary of up to ten (10) of the nominee's chief achievements since January 1, 2015

c. Optional (but highly recommended): a collection of supporting files and web addresses that you may upload to our server to support your entry and provide more background information to the judges

The categories:

H01. Information Technology Department of the Year

Enter this category if you wish to recognize everyone who works in technology functions in your organization, regardless of function, location, seniority or position.

H02. Information Technology Team of the Year

Enter this category if you wish to recognize some subset of your entire IT organization, such as a specific web maintenance, software development or infrastructure planning team, for example. The team may be multidisciplinary, may stretch across multiple organizations (your own organization, client organizations and agency or vendor organizations, for example) and may be a permanent team or a temporary team that was assembled for a specific task or assignment.

H03. Information Technology Executive of the Year

Enter this category to recognize the achievements of individual IT executives at the VP level or above.

Past Stevie Award winners in the Information Technology categories include:

• Dubai Statistics Center, Dubai, United Arab Emirates: DSC IT Department- IT Department of the Year
• Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA USA: IT Database Droids: Innovative Operational Excellence- IT Team of the Year
• TangoMe, Mountain View, CA USA: Guy Fighel, Director of Engineering, Platform Infrastructure- IT Executive of the Year
• …and more!