NZ's best business support celebrated - Uniservices makes final cut

Better business support is helping business work through the changing business landscape with ideas, information, products and services that challenge the now and prepare business to achieve its longer term goals.

Finalists in the 2010 Vero Excellence in Business Support Awards have achieved results for their business customers despite the challenges of a very different economic environment. They have spent 2009 working ‘on’ New Zealand business to ensure they are well placed and prepared to come out of the recession with improved efficiency and productivity. They have kept business vigilant on key areas such as education, research & development, innovation, sustainability, cashflow, business culture and productivity.
A record number of nominations and entries for the 2010 awards also signals this growing commitment to business excellence and business capability in New Zealand.

The Vero Excellence in Business Support Awards are in their sixth year, held annually and sponsored by Vero and BDO, they were founded by business support specialist, Sarah Trotman of Bizzone. The awards are a key event in the lead up to the annual Bizzone Business Expo, New Zealand's largest event for business. The winners will be announced on 20 May at a gala black-tie dinner attended by over 400 guests at the Auckland Town Hall.

Nominations and entries for 2010 were stronger than ever says Bizzone managing director Sarah Trotman. “New Zealand businesses have an ever improving backbone of business support organisations whose goal is to grow business and make them more competitive and sustainable” says Trotman. 
“The evaluators were thoroughly impressed by the number of support organisations achieving outstanding results for their business customers – choosing winners this year will be extremely difficult.”

The award finalists were from large, small, private, government sector and not-for-profit organisations – all with a commitment to growing business in New Zealand, Sarah Trotman says. “They included educators, business advisers, technology companies, government departments, Chambers of Commerce, local government, product suppliers, and service industry companies; altogether the support services being offered by these companies are truly excellent.”

Finalists were spread throughout New Zealand with government and Chamber of Commerce sectors having particularly strong entries; finalists from these categories included The Otago Chamber of Commerce, Rotorua Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise North Shore, Waitakere Enterprise, IRD, carboNZero and Statistics NZ.

Some of the country’s largest companies are also finalists:
Kiwibank, Bartercard, UniServices, The Interface Financial Group and Fuji Xerox New Zealand will all compete in the Large business $10 million+ category.

Individual finalists for 2010 are Rod Oram from Evanston Enterprises Ltd (Auckland), Mike Tournier, Business Development Manager, carboNZero programme Landcare Research (Christchurch) and Peter Meggison, Kiwibank (Wellington).
 
2010 marks Vero's sixth year as Foundation Sponsor of the Excellence in Business Support' Awards. Vero was awarded a Gold Medal by the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation in 2008 for its own business excellence programme, one of only two organisations currently at this level.
Roger Bell, Chief Executive of Vero Insurance, the Foundation Sponsor of the awards, says, “Having won gold for business excellence we recognise the great value of providing excellence in business support. We congratulate all of those who entered this year’s awards and this year's finalists who are providing business support in so many innovative ways to businesses throughout New Zealand. This support is invaluable to so many companies, and now even more so, as we all face a more challenging world economy.
 
“It is inspiring to see the increasing numbers of entrants who demonstrate international levels of best practice in their businesses and quality support as a key part of their business.”

The 37 finalists were selected by The New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation to provide an independent and robust evaluation process for the awards’ 10 categories.

“Excellent business support assists New Zealand businesses to build capability and capacity and in doing so they become more competitive and sustainable,” says Mike Watson, chief executive of the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation.

“Companies offering excellent business support demonstrate a clear understanding of their customers and markets, have an understanding of customer requirements and knowledge of whether or not they are meeting customer requirements. This is backed up by business results demonstrating that they are successful, for example in the areas of customer satisfaction, customer retention, referrals and repeat orders.

“In finalists we look for organisations that demonstrate they have robust processes in place to address key business and stakeholder/customer requirements. The delivery of products and services should be based on sound processes and the business should demonstrate clear direction and specific objectives to achieve success. Most importantly we look for evidence of success via the outputs and outcomes from business processes.”

The 2009 overall Vero Excellence in Business Support Awards winner was the Ministry of Economic Developments Insolvency and Trustee Service.