Management Team AWARDS
Winner (under £25m turnover): Premier Group Recruitment
Winner: (over £25m turnover): Furniture Village
Greg Kalym (2nd left) and Andrew Woosnam (centre), Premier Group, collected the award from Robin Barnes, RBS, (right)
Fiona Bruce announced a change to proceedings. While the category winner needed to be a management team that had driven its business forward using knowledge and creative ideas and developed strong leadership and teambuilding skills, the judges had a raft of top quality entries.
They had decided to split the award into under £25m and over £25m turnover categories.
The magnificent seven in the under £25m category were: iPresent, the producer of a dynamic interactive sales app for smart devices, and recording its second award nomination of the evening; NewVoiceMedia, which offers call centre solutions and cloud services worldwide, and was also claiming its second nomination of the evening; P2i, the world leader in liquid-repellent nano- coating technology, headquartered at Milton Park, Abingdon; Premier Group Recruitment, one of the UK’s leading recruitment agencies, with headquarters in Reading, and offices in London, Manchester and Dubai; The Knowledge Academy, located within Reading’s Forbury Square, is a global provider of bespoke training and consultancy solutions; Thomas International, Marlow- based experts in people assessment through psychometric testing, with offices in 60 countries; and, ULS Group, the Thame-based specialists providing comparison software to the property, legal and financial markets.
RBS regional director Robin Barnes announced Premier Group Recruitment as the winner. The Knowledge Academy took second place, Thomas International the third, while the remaining finalists received Highly Commended certificates.
The judges said the Premier Group Recruitment THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – DECEMBER14/JANUARY15
Peter Harrison (centre) and the Furniture Village team collected the award from Robin Barnes, RBS, (right)
team was a “highly dynamic and focused group who have developed an effective and efficient company, resulting in fantastic recent organic growth, something that the team are justly proud of. By implementing a solid structure, breeding a culture of people development and improvement, it would appear that they are on course to meet their future growth ambitions.”
Andrew Woosnam, managing director of Premier Recruitment, explained afterwards that the company’s management team ethos was focused on growth. “We have great business owners, great managers and our business empowers people, allowing them to focus on their career paths, develop themselves, and overall this has certainly proved successful.”
And so, we moved to the over £25m turnover classification, where the nominated management teams were: Furniture Village, the largest privately-owned furniture retailer in the UK opened its first store in 1989 in Abingdon; Hammer, a specialist value-add distributor and provider of data storage, servers and end-to-end IT solutions, operating from Basingstoke; Henley Business School, the international business and executive education specialist, with campus facilities at University of Reading and Greenlands, Henley-on-Thames; and, Pegasystems, the leader in business process management software, with an HQ in Reading.
Robin Barnes of RBS assisted by Nick Hewer, revealed that Pegasystems had been highly commended, third place had gone to Hammer, second to The Henley Business School, and the winner was Furniture Village.
“This management team is quite simply one of the
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most passionate, honest and dedicated teams that you are likely to come across in business,” was the judging panel’s assessment.
“The company has experienced one of the most challenging trading conditions in recent history. However, through their proactive, strategic and enthusiastic management, the team has weathered this storm successfully, strengthened the business and now find themselves in an even stronger position to capitalise on the improving economic landscape.”
Fiona Bruce asked Furniture Village chief executive Peter Harrison how the company had come through those poor trading conditions: He highlighted determination, talent, belief, and “…never ever giving in. We have learned to dance in the rain, when there were no umbrellas around. Now, we are looking forward to some exciting times. The sun has come out, and there are also loads of umbrellas around now.”
BUSINESS MAGAZINE AWARDS 2014
THAMES VALLEY
SPONSORED BY Celebrating its 20th year
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