The Indian Newslink Indian Business Awards (IBA) have become an important standard-bearer for business excellence in the Indian business community, and indeed in the wider Kiwi business community.
The launch of IBA 2013 has been much anticipated by both the Indian Business community and New Zealand business watchers at large.
With five years under its belt, the Awards Scheme has entered its sixth year in which the wider business community has been made aware of the quality and importance of Indian business activities in New Zealand.
The finalists and category winners at the IBA Awards Night Presentation ceremony held in November every year have been rightly fêted as outstanding businesses and have seen an upsurge in interest in their products and services.
Best Accountant
We have added a new category this year – The ‘Best Accountant of the Year,’ sponsored by CPA Australia.
This new category seeks nominations for accountants of Indian ethnicity who are providing strategic financial leadership in businesses in New Zealand, whether or not those businesses have Indian ownership and management.
The categories
The Categories available for Indian businesses to enter include (1) Business Excellence in Retail (2) Business Excellence in Innovation (3) Business Excellence in Marketing (4) Business Excellence in Customer Service (5) Business Excellence in ICT
(6) Best Small Business (7) Best Medium-Sized Business (8) Best Large Business (9) Business Excellence in Export to India (10) Best Accountant of the Year (11) Best Young Entrepreneur of the Year and (12) Best Businesswoman of the Year
The ‘Business Excellence in Export to India’ is open to all businesses registered and operated in New Zealand.
Apart from individual applicants, nominations are also accepted for the ‘Best Accountant of the Year,’ Best Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ and ‘Best Businesswoman of the Year’ categories.
Winners in the individual categories will be automatically entered for evaluation for the ‘Supreme Business of the Year’ Award.
IBA 2013 is a New Zealand-wide business award programme and Indian Newslink as the principal promoter of the Awards, is seeking to increase the number of entries received from all parts of the country.
Many of the entries in the first five years have been from Auckland based businesses, albeit some with operations outside Auckland.
However, category winners in the past have come from Christchurch and from Picton, in South Island.
Indian Newslink encourages businesses from throughout New Zealand to enter this prestigious award programme.
Simple entry
Entering the Awards is much simpler than you think.
You will have all the basic business information required readily available.
Keeping it short and to the point is a virtue, which will commend you to the judges.
You should consider forming a Business Awards team to prepare the entry – the judges are usually able to tell where a team has been involved rather than a single author, and by and large, the result is a better entry.
It is also useful to get an independent view of the completed entry before sending it; get your accountant, bank manager, mentor or a wise friend involved as a sounding board.
Workshops
We are planning more workshops this year, held at the lounges of BNZ Partners (Our Title Sponsors), and at Unitec, a category sponsor.
These workshops are essential to assist entrants to submit the best quality entry possible, and give them the best chance of being a winning entry.
The business coach programme offered by Unitec is free of cost to the entrants. It is a wonderful opportunity to get the best advice in preparing an excellent entry.
As usual, the judges will be looking for businesses that demonstrate planning for success and actual evidence of year on year growth.
The judges will always be impressed when evidence of business growth is compared to targets and benchmarks.
Companies which can demonstrate a balanced emphasis on product and service, market and sales, people and leadership, and systems and results, wrapped up in a business plan for the next few years, are the companies that do well.
Scoring guidelines
The scoring guidelines used by the judges award low marks where there is little evidence of a systematic approach, and the information provided is anecdotal, where progress is more reactive than planned, where there is little evidence of a coordinated team involvement, and where key results and trends are not reported.
On the other hand, the judges will award high marks where there is an effective and systematic approach to the business which is deployed without obvious gaps, where there is systematic fact based evaluation and learning, where the approach is well integrated throughout the organisation, and where results show that performance is excellent compared to benchmarks, and key customer and plan requirements are addressed.
The panel of independent judges is looking forward to another record entry of excellent companies, and to a gala awards night where the country’s political and business leaders, professionals and others will be present.
Chad Wilkie is Executive Director of Ignition Partner and Chairman of the independent panel of Judges for the Indian Newslink Indian Business Awards 2013.
He is an experienced company director, and adviser on shaping businesses for growth and structuring deals to achieve business growth.
Email: chad@ignitionpartner.com
For details of our Awards Scheme, please visit www.inliba.com
