The Corporate IT Forum reveals winners of the 8th Real IT Awards
The Corporate IT Forum, an independent body that brings together IT practitioners from over 320 of the UK’s leading organisations, last night announced the winners of the 8th Real IT Awards.
This year’s winners represent a broad spectrum of corporate IT users, and include leading public and private sector organisations such as HM Revenue and Customs, Balfour Beatty, The Environment Agency and British Sugar, as well as high street retailers New Look and Pizza Express. The winning entries from across the 13 categories are equally diverse and range from the world’s first ever iPhone app for payment by smartphone, to a targeted flood warning service for emergency flood responders and a rapid deployment of IT project in the new Tripoli.
Zizzi Restaurant emerged as the overall winner on the night, picking up the Project of the Year 2012 Award for its ‘Pennies with Zizzi’ project. This CSER initiative involved working with The Pennies Foundation to create an electronic charity box that allows customers paying by card to donate spare change to charity. The project is already on track to deliver £100,000 of micro donations to The Prince’s Trust.
According to the judges, drawn from leading UK and international user organisations such as South West Water, DHL, GlaxoSmithKline and Laing O’Rourke, “Zizzi showed its determination to create a way of supporting casual donations in the new age of electronic payment; they paid close attention to communications to make sure all stakeholders – particularly customers – would embrace it. We were very impressed by the way this was driven by the IT department.”
The Real IT awards have almost doubled in size since last year, with new categories recognising the breadth of innovation and the growing importance of corporate IT within business. New additions for this year include Innovation in Business, Innovation in Mobile, Security as an Enabler and Social Media.
A new skills-related category, Developing Talent in Business, has also been introduced, reflecting The Corporate IT Forum’s commitment to tackling the education, training and skills challenge. In this new category HM Revenue and Customs was recognised for its ‘Capability Development Programme’, a programme of investment in employees designed to establish them as experts in their chosen field, with external accreditation of their professional skill.
Chairman of The Corporate IT Forum John Harris says, “The Real IT Awards keep going from strength to strength and I delight every year in finding out how Corporate IT is responding to the various needs of the business and of customers. The projects recognised last night represent the very best in home-grown innovation and talent within the UK’s IT industry, as judged by their peers.”
“What is particularly striking this year is that the innovation we are seeing is in areas where IT is giving something back, rather than where it is solely focused on delivering cost savings and doing more with less. This year IT is all about listening to user and customer needs - within the business and externally - and coming up with innovative ways to make things faster, easier and more efficient for them.”
Throughout the coming months the winners and runners-up will present their projects through workshops open to all user organisations. Collated learning and experience-sharing allows Corporate IT departments to be more proactive and successful in delivering business advantage – the Forum’s main purpose.
The Winners of the Real IT Awards:
Overall winner - Project of the year 2012
Winner: Zizzi Restaurant – Pennies with Zizzi
Runner-up: GlaxoSmithKline – Diseases of the Developing World
Corporate, Social and Environmental Responsibility
Winner: Zizzi Restaurant – Pennies with Zizzi
Runner-up: Balfour Beatty – Managed Print Services Multifunctional Devices
Runner-up: HM Revenue and Customs – Greening IT
Delivering Business Value and E-Commerce
Winner: Land Registry – Register Extract Service
Runner-up: Bupa – Collaborative Visual Communications
Runner-up: McDonalds – Contactless Payment Card
Developing Talent in Business
Winner: HM Revenue and Customs – Capability Development Programme
Runner-up: Bupa – Agile (BTT)
Runner-up: Kimberly Clark – IT Service Functional Technical Roles
Innovation in Business
Winner: Environment Agency – Targeted Flood Warnings
Runner-up: HM Revenue and Customs – IT Transformation Programme
Runner-up: Sabic – Futures Are Connected
Innovation in Mobile
Winner: Pizza Express – Pizza Express App
Runner-up: A&N Media – Automating Distribution for Metro Newspapers
Runner-up: GlaxoSmithKline – GSK App store
Innovation in Technology
Winner: Environment Agency – Targeted Flood Warnings
Runner-up: HM Revenue and Customs – IT Transformation Programme
Runner-up: New Look – NL Daily
Partnership
Winners: GlaxoSmithKline – Diseases of the Developing World
And: The Co-operative Banking Group – The Big Card Programme
Runner-up: Gazprom Marketing and Trading – Project LTRM
Rapid Response
Winner: Foreign & Commonwealth Office – Tripoli – Rapid Deployment of IT
Runner-up: The Co-operative Banking Group – Meeting Customer Demand
Runner-up: Pizza Express – Pizza Express App
Security as an Enabler
Winner: GlaxoSmithKline – Secure Enhance
Runner-up: Kimberly-Clark – SAP User Access Review Tool (SUART)
Service Improvement
Winner: Balfour Beatty – Platform for Growth
Runner-up: HM and Revenue Customs – End User Programme
Runner-up: Volkswagen – Business Support
Social Media
Winner: New Look – NL Daily
Runner-up: Virgin Atlantic – VAA Info Tweet Bot
Working Smarter
Winner: British Sugar – Load Slots – Optiflex
Runner-up: HM Revenue and Customs – Project to Industrialise ‘Connect’
Runner-up: McDonalds – UK Business Reporting
About The Corporate IT Forum
The Forum was founded in 1996 by some of the world's largest businesses and most admired brands. Why? Because they believe the collective experience and expertise of business professionals is worth sharing for the benefit of all.
Today, The Forum is meeting the needs of more than 320 organisations represented by the 100,000 professional staff focused on procuring, implementing, maintaining and evolving the very best processes for their business.
A totally independent, not-for-profit organisation, The Forum exudes pure, unbiased knowledge and information from the most admired companies. Its mission is to enrich the decision-making capabilities of Business and Operational Boards, Senior Business and Technical managers as well as CIOs and CTOs and their teams.
The most trusted brands recognise the importance of providing internal departments with access to quality, valid, current and practical knowledge about the best way of handling or answering any IT related challenges.
The 18 CIO strong Advisory Group directs the service to drive agreed best solutions, strategies and ways of working, across ANY IT or Business related issue.
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