As the year comes to a close I would like to reflect on some of the award successes we have had this year, since the topic of awards has come up several times in the blog over the last few months.

The most recent news is that one of our clients, Legal & General Retail Savings, won the Ventana Research 2009 Award for Operational Intelligence.  This is a fantastic achievement and we would like to congratulate Paul Lewis, Customer Services Director at Legal & General Retail Savings, and his team once again.  Read more about this impressive operational intelligence win.

On 3 December the hard work of the last few months truly paid off with the announcement that eg was the winner of the ‘Technology Vendors – Most Innovative Financial Services Solution’ category at the Financial Innovation Awards.  We identified this award as a key target for eg after the category was launched last year as we believed the eg operational intelligence® software suite fulfilled the award criteria so were really pleased with this win. 

Two of our entries, including Nationwide Regional Brands, have shortlisted in the ‘Back Office’ category of the Professional Planning Forum (PPF) Innovation Awards  The competition is closely linked to PPF’s annual conference on 20 April 2010 with the winners being announced at an awards ceremony on the evening.

This week we submitted several entries into the the Financial Sector Technology Awards.  Last year two clients – The Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) and Legal & General Retail Savings – were shortlisted and CFS received a ‘Highly Commended’ for their project with Capita.  Hopefully one or more of this year’s entries will be shortlisted in the New Year.

With our own eg operational excellence® awards in November, being shortlisted in the UK IT Awards and receiving a ‘Highly Commended’ in ICT Cluster Awards, the last few months have been very exciting and we hope further success will follow.  As usual, look out for awards updates in the news area on the website!

We were really pleased to win the title ‘Technology Vendors – Most Innovative Financial Services Solution’ at the Financial Innovation Awards last week.

It’s obviously great promotion for our proprietary software, the eg operational intelligence® software suite, but it also means that the term ‘operational intelligence’ is becoming more widely understood and accepted.

Do you have any examples of developments you have seen the ‘operational intelligence’ space or ideas as to how the profile of the term could be raised?

Since Catherine’s post (‘Award winning customer service’) we have been evaluating awards in general.  We posted a question about this in a couple of our groups on LinkedIn and had some interesting feedback – ranging from negative comments such as ‘awards are just media hype’ and ‘publicity stunts’ to positive reasons to enter such as ‘they demonstrate the quality of an organsation’, ‘improve team morale’, ‘raise profile’ and ‘celebrate success’.

Personally I am becoming slightly sceptical of some industry awards as we enter a number of these seeking external recognition for our business, people, products, software development and innovation, yet whilst having been recognised we have rarely won.  This could well be for a whole host of reasons but the fact is we just don’t know.  Feedback or advice on how to improve is rarely given – why is this?

The cynic in me thinks it could be part of the money making machine called vanity and it is the taking part (and paying the hefty entrance or gala dinner fees) that counts – not about industry best practice.

That is why when eg launched its own awards for clients to recognise and celebrate team commitment and reward the hard work and success of Team Leaders, Managers and their teams, the purpose was to raise the bar of performance and recognise outstanding achievements.

I am sure we all know why we need recognition from time to time and the benefits it brings.  The two basic types of recognition are external and internal.

External: tangible, outward forms of recognition – certificates, trophies, awards, etc.
Internal: less tangible; includes pride of accomplishment, self-satisfaction, and member’s personal belief that he or she accomplished, contributed, and did better today than
last week.

The eg operational excellence® awards are now in their 5th year and yes like other industry awards not everybody wins as that would be counter productive.  However, the reasons why clients enter these awards year after year is that:

All entrants are recognised and the demonstration of exceptional achievement and best practice are then awarded.  Feedback is given to every entrant at both a company and organisational level.

This way you know what you have to do to improve, where you fell down and actions that you can take back to the workplace to make it happen and improve.

So lets not have awards for awards sake – let’s hold them and reward for the right reasons or else they won’t mean a thing.

What awards in your industry do you rate and which don’t you rate?  Share your reasons why so we can get some debate on what works and what achieves the objectives of industry awards.

Following on from Rachel’s update last week, I wanted to share a good demonstration of the positive impact the implementation of operations management software and principles has on customer service, as can be seen in the case of one of eg’s award winning clients.

eg was so impressed with the achievements of an internal customer service programme undertaken by the General Insurance area of Legal & General that we nominated the company in the category of ‘Most Innovative Customer Service Programme’ in 2007.  To our delight, they subsequently won the award.

The project involved a far-reaching initiative to shape the business, improve customer experience and drive cultural change.  This resulted in providing Legal & General with better performance information, increased staff motivation, improved customer service scores and increased operational effectiveness with room for year-on-year opportunities for growth and improvement.

We worked in partnership with Legal & General, implementing the eg operational intelligence® software suite and the eg principles of operational management®.

At the time, Gary Millner, Director of Corporate Relations and Communications at the ifs School of Finance, said:

“The ifs Financial Innovation Awards are now firmly established as one of the most prestigious in the financial services industry. Entries from organisations across the globe combined with a rigorous judging process mean that those who win one of the award categories, such as Legal & General, can take pride in having truly excelled in the industry. Put simply, the awards have again provided a great opportunity for innovators in the financial services industry to gain recognition for their efforts.”

eg enters the Financial Innovation Awards every year and this year has finalists in two categories following a nomination for Legal & General Retail Savings and our own software suite in a technology vendors category:

Most Effective Operations Management Initiative
• Bank of Valletta – The Bank of Valletta Process Management Framework Initiative
• Barclays Local Business (Clearlybusiness) – SPIRIT
• Fortis Insurance – Fortis Claims and Operations Way
• Legal & General Retail Savings – Legal & General Retails Savings
• Lloyds Banking Group – Wealth Planning Service

Technology Vendors – Most Innovative Financial Services Solution
• Algorithmics – Algo Real-time Credit Engine
• Calypso Technology – Calypso Trading & Risk Management System
• eg solutions – The eg operational intelligence® software suite
• Linedata Services – LongView Live

This year’s awards event will take place on Thursday 3 December at the Grand Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden, London.  Hopefully I’ll have some positive news to report on this at a later date – finger’s crossed!

In the meantime, I’d like to know what you think the value is of industry awards such as these?

We organise our own annual awards for clients – the eg operational excellence awards™ – and we get some great feedback, but I’d be interested to know any positive and negative experiences you have had.  Send me your comments via the blog or you can email me directly: catherinestaite@eguk.co.uk.