During the fifth edition of the ABSL Awards Gala, held online, seven companies were awarded for their successful projects achieved last year.
The most valuable projects carried out by companies in several categories such as innovation, business excellence, CSR, colleague of the year, were judged and presented to the audience.
“ABSL Awards Gala is a long-awaited event by the whole industry, that’s why we preferred to organize it even in this context, in online, but during the period in which we organize it every year. We are glad that over 75% of our members have submitted projects and their number has increased by 20% compared to last year. The ABSL jury appreciated the creativity, innovation and dedication of the participating companies”, says Dragoș Ștefan, President of ABSL.
The winners of this edition are:
- The Business Leaders in Business Excellence category is won by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, followed by Wipro Technologies and OMV Petrom Global Solutions in 2nd and 3rd place.
- The Business Leaders in Business Innovation category is won by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, followed by Accenture and British American Tobacco – GBS in 2nd and 3rd place.
- The Business Leaders in Customer Experience category is won by Veeam Romania, 2nd place – Genpact and 3rd place – Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
- The Business Leaders in CSR category is won by Societe Generale European Business Services, the 2nd place is occupied by Wipro Technologies and the 3rd place by Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
- The Business Leaders in Talent Development & Education category is won by DB Global Technology, the 2nd place went to Michelin Romania and the 3rd place to Office Depot Cluj SSC.
- The Business Leaders in Vibrant Workplace category has on the 1st place the Vertiv company, on the 2nd place – Molson Coors GBS and on the 3rd place – Micro Focus.
- Elena Șandru from HP Inc. won in the Collegue of the year category.
The jury of this gala consists of representatives of business services industry:
- Andreia Stanciu – Head of ACCA – South-Eastern Europe
- Elena Ardelean – Dealer Business Manager Central Europe | Steelcase Inc.
- Ema Iftimie – Head of Leasing | Globalworth
- Maria Florea – Key Client Director | JLL Romania
- Mădălina Vilau – Managing Director | Marketing Insiders
- Mihaela Perianu – Managing Partner | Dale Carnegie Romania
- Raluca Stanislav – Business Development Manager, Skanska Property Romania
- Richard Perrin – Advisory Partner, Head of Advisory | KPMG Romania
- Sándor Bodnár – Managing Director | Hays Romania
Presentation of the winning projects:
The Business Leaders in Business Excellence category seeks to recognise the projects that brought the highest productivity, significant improvement in results and contributed to achieving business excellence through enhanced process quality, reduction of operational costs and therefore overall contribution to the enterprise.
THE WINNER IS HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE WITH THE SWORD PROJECT
The project refers to a 2-year initiative run by the company’s Credit and Collections aiming at reduction of debt forgiveness. As part of Collections activities, a write-off of customer debt occurs when the company is unable to resolve customer disputes/decides to forgive the debt as a commercial gesture or is unable to collect payments after exhausting all efforts. These write-offs are rather small amounts coming from the different product lines in the 120 countries we cover and may appear insignificant concessions for a company of our size, but sum-up to million dollars throughout a year. Following a 2-year project, the team managed to reduce small write offs by 38% achieving a significant cost saving for the company.
The Business Leaders in Business Innovation category focuses on rewarding the development of innovative solutions or a successful delivery of complex or advanced services.
THE WINNER IS HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE WITH THE ALBERT PROJECT
HPE developed the first fully operational homegrown Artificial Intelligent system. This automated solution, consisting of a squad of independent robots managed by a control tower, was developed using machine learning technologies. Its role is to detect and report content experience issues before they are noticed by the Portal users such as broken links, empty pages, outdated branding, or mixed localization on the same page. The robots are designed to self-regulate in case of errors and to recognize the same issue re-occurring and they do this 99.92% faster than a human being and with 99% accuracy for content in English. Thus, this solution is a time saving for employees who were able to turn it into added value for digital consulting services.
The Business Leaders in Customer Experience category aims to identify and reward the company-wide project that has delivered concrete solutions and achieved tangible results through delivery of superior customer experience.
THE WINNER IS VEEAM SUPPORT WITH THE OPERATING MODEL OF VEEAM SUPPORT TEAM
One of the contributing factors differentiating Veeam Support from competition and helping maintain this high result is the design and the operating model of this Support team: 500+ highly qualified technical engineers (90+ of them being in Romania); the 1st point of contact is always a technical resource (as opposed to call centre model common for competition) which has the effect of solving most problems from the first call.
The Business Leaders in CSR category aims to recognise the initiatives that improve the lives of the employees, other stakeholders and the larger community in which the company activates.
THE WINNER IS SOCIETE GENERALE EUROPEAN BUSINESS SERVICES WITH THE REDUCE, COLLECT, RECYCLE AND BREATH PROJECT.
With this initiative, in partnership with NGO Ateliere Fara Frontiere, they equally reduced their CO2 footprint and improved their waste management strategy, by selective collection of the un-used equipments and re-inclusion of the old electronic and electric products into the economic life-cycle, while promoting sustainable and eco-friendly behaviour among their 2500+ employees, and helping the needy people.
In the Business Leaders in Talent Development & Education category are appreciated companies that are taking an active role in educating the workforce by either investing in own training programs or in collaborating with education institutions or other educational partners for building the capabilities needed in the labour market are the ones to be awarded.
THE WINNER IS DB GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY WITH THE MASTER IN FINANCIAL COMPUTING PROJECT
The company set up the first 2-year master’s programme organised in partnership with Politehnica University. The first module was launched in October 2018 and a new series started in October 2019. The curriculum is designed and delivered by this company’s employees in collaboration with Politehnica University, Computer Science Department. This program is accredited by ARACIS and enables students to work in large multinational teams, delivering enterprise software for critical infrastructure, specific to large financial organizations.
The Vibrant Workspace Business Leaders category seeks to promote companies that creates working environments that are inspiring and vibrant for their employees, by investing in programs that integrate employees’ holistic well-being, diversity, and inclusion.
THE WINNER IS VERTIV WITH THE PROJECT OWN YOUR JOURNEY
During this project, every employee in this center has 10 extra days off yearly and 3 hours of flexible worktime daily. Also, they moved to a new building with a vibrant cafeteria and terrace, where employees were involved in designing the office space, chose the colours, plants, desks etc. Also, within the project, employees moved from formal to informal so 60% of the meeting rooms are now in open space.
Their employees’ engagement drastically increased, with 83% recently stating in internal survey that company fully supports their personal and professional growth.
The Colleague of the Year category seeks people whose positive energy is contagious, who mobilize resources and make things happen, who are mentors, always volunteering and open to embark in new challenges.
Elena Șandru from HP Inc. won this year.