Since 2002, The National Business Awards in partnership with Orange have honoured the best and brightest businesses and business minds in the UK and now entries are open for 2011 which celebrates the tenth anniversary of these prestigious awards.

If you believe your business has achieved outstanding success or innovation over the last year then now could be your time for recognition.

Over the past decade the awards have witnessed both the boom and bust periods of the last ten years, acting as a barometer for British Business success. From how businesses have changed in the past ten years to where the most significant growth sectors are in 2011, compared to 2002, the awards process by its very nature provides us with a fascinating insight into this.

To add further depth to discussion, research has been conducted with previous finalists and winners, collating their insights into the shape of British business in the last ten years, as well as the next.

In this live webTV show, business futures analyst and strategist James Bellini, Martin Stiven the Vice President of Business at Orange, CEO of WOW! Stuff Richard North and Alex Evans, Editorial Director of National Business Awards who organise the awards will be discussing future predictions for British business over the next decade. In this show, the first of a series of three, they will also provide valuable advice, answering your questions live, on marketing your business, with a past winner of the awards also offering insight into the benefits that such an accolade can offer to your business.

Business futures analyst and strategist James Bellini, Martin Stiven the Vice President of Business at Orange, CEO of WOW! Stuff Richard North and Alex Evans, Editorial Director of National Business Awards join us live online on Wednesday 13th April at 1pm to discuss the tenth Orange Business Awards

For more information visit www.nationalbusinessawards.co.uk/

H: Jayne Constantinis, host

A: James Bellini, Business Futures Analyst

B: Martin Stiven, Vice president of business for Orange

C: Alex Evans, Editorial Director NBA

H: Today we’re going to be looking back over the last 10 years of business and looking ahead to the next 10 years, and using the National Business Awards to help us track what business success looks like

Titles

H: Hello and welcome to the program, I’m Jayne Constantinis. The National Business Awards in partnership with Orange are now in their 10th year. As we celebrate this notable anniversary we’ll be looking back at the importance of these awards to the business community and discussing how business has changed in the past 10 years. We’ll also be taking a look forward to some of the possibilities for the next 10 years. I’m joined here in the studio by Martin Stiven, Vice President of Business for Orange and James Bellini, a notable business futures analyst. Thank you for joining me today. Now some research was conducted just last week among previous winners of the awards. It takes a look at business trends and asks what changes to these trends we might expect over the next 10 years. James, let me start with you, you spend your working life looking at the future and anticipating what might happen. What did you make of the research and the responses in it?

A: First thing is that we are obviously now looking over the next 5-10 years for a big recovery in the UK economy, UK PLC, if you like and one of the findings in the report which looked at past winners of this award was actually they’re remarkably optimistic over 75% said they’re going to see some strong growth or whatever. Quite a large proportion of them say they expect those companies to be 100% bigger by 2020 / 21 so they’re pretty optimistic bunch. I found that a bit surprising. The downside was a lot of them, more than half said it’s going to be a tough environment to start up a business in the next few years. Not difficult to see why, money’s pretty tight, banks for various reasons we all know about are going to be reluctant to lend to small start-ups and start-ups need to seek finances, it’s the lifeblood of a new business so it’s going to be tough. The good news is the technologies are going to be there so they can seize the advantage

H: And Martin as vice-president for business with Orange what do you find most interesting in the research findings?

B: There are a couple of things for me that were particularly interesting and certainly mirrors the trends that we’re seeing as a business, and that is that more and more businesses, in fact I think it was ¾ of businesses said that they could see that remote working would become the way that they would be doing business more and more, allowing employees to work from home or work more flexibly and of course the technology that underpins all of that is now more and more available, so we’re taking advantages of those trends.

H: You’ve both mentioned the word technology at the beginning of your answers. Is technology the key to the future of business, and how is more technology compatible with a healthy work / life balance?

A: That’s exactly the point, as the research showed a large number of those polled did say that they expected business to be more remote, more virtual in years to come, but when they were asked what the reason for that would be a large number of them, particularly women actually said that it’s because it would create a better work / life balance, but a more efficient and cost effective business, a better work / life balance, so it’s very strong up there and that’s not technology, that’s an attitude

H: But does technology make us more efficient?

B: Well I think technology has the capability of making us more efficient and I think what – you know the trick to making it successful, absolutely is to get the cultural piece that fits around the technology to work more effectively so that actually we’re thinking about people, we’re thinking about their working environment, and we’re really leveraging the abilities of modern IT and networks to deliver those sorts of solutions

H: But presumably only certain types of businesses can thrive with this remote working or the virtual office that you’re talking about?

A: Yes and no I mean the important thing about the awards that people should know is that it’s not for companies putting rocket ships up into space and mining helium 3 on the moon and all the rest of it, it’s about any company, and as past winners demonstrate quite clearly you can be a toy company, you can be making umbrellas, if you can harness these modern technologies to become more efficient, to get to market more effectively, deal with your customers more engagingly, then it’s going to be successful, so really awards like this should say look, it’s for all businesses as long as you’re living in the modern era

H: Just elaborate a bit for us, could you about the start-ups. We said earlier it’s a tougher environment

B: Yes

H: For start—ups

B: Yes I think that whilst a lot of existing businesses see that they can grow out of this recession and can really, you know really make some steps forward, I think that James made the point about finance; finance is becoming incredibly difficult to get hold of since the bank crisis, so I think many people who want to start a business can see there are some bigger barriers now than there were before. I still think they’ll find a way through that, lots of people coming out of university, lots of people looking at this as an option to university, who I think with the advent of technology can probably start to have a business more easily than at any time in history if they can get the finance

H: Is it cheaper to start up a business now? You know we keep coming back to technology; some of it can be quite expensive

A: Much cheaper and as you say Martin people think to start a business you have to get an office and get 20 people and pay the tax man and all the rest of it

H: Well you do have to do that; you actually do have to pay -

A: With modern technologies you can start with one, you know you can start out of a bedroom. There was a famous case a couple of years ago, a guy called Alex Chew wanted to pay for his tuition fees and he invented something called the Million Dollar Home Page here in the UK by the way, the Million Dollar Home Page – he sold the pixels on a website page for a dollar a time, he made a million dollars – it cost him nothing. He invented it in his bedroom. He said it came to me one night when I was sleeping and thinking about life in general, it came to him so it doesn’t have to cost anything

H: Certainly it is possible to appear to be a much bigger operation than you are from using technology

B: Yes I think that’s a great point and certainly the sort of technologies that are available today, and you know you can think of something that we call Pocket Landline where you know very very small businesses can publish a number of fixed telephone numbers that simply forward to their mobile phone while they’re out and about, so they can make themselves look like they’re a much bigger business, and when you think of the web presence, they can use technology to really maximise you know their presence in the market

H: Interesting. A lot of food for thought there and we’ll be back with more on the value of the awards in the second half of our program when James sadly will be leaving us but we’ll be joined by Alex Evans whose the editorial director of the National Business Awards. First of all though let’s take a look at a short video to see how leading business figures view the National Business Awards

Video Footage

Julie Meyer, CEO Ariadne Capital and NBA Judge: The National Business Awards are really the granddaddy of award schemes, there’s lots of award programs but because these are the National Business Awards these are the ones that people really look to and say well you know who has won and who has been nominated and what’s going on with the National Business Awards. As a judge in the National Business Awards I’ll be looking for really exceptional leadership, management teams and CEOs and companies which are executing their strategies extremely well, leadership qualities but also an understanding of how markets are developing and how they’re seizing those opportunities. It always comes down to execution combined with leadership

Prof. Dominic Swords, Economist and Co-Chair NBA Judging: I think the National Business Awards give us a real sense of where growth is coming in the market, it gives us an early sign of new businesses, new ventures, new innovations that businesses are devising in the marketplace, and therefore it gives us a hint of what is coming round the corner. Looking at businesses over the last 12 months, I actually expect to find a few surprises in the awards in terms of the kind of sectors that businesses have been devising, ways of finding growth in, but clearly export markets are going to feature I think, green technology, clean technology, wind energy, all areas that we’re actually quite strong in terms of manufacturing and technology in the UK. I think they may well come out as quite strong this year. Over the next 10 years we’re going to see quite a different relationship between private and public sector organisations, and a very much more dynamic and innovative relationship and I think that the sense that in the past innovation has gone from the private to the public will be reversed, although I think it makes it all the more important to celebrate, spotlight and really reflect on success in those two sectors

Richard North, CEO Wow! Stuff, 2010 winner and NBA Judge: Winning the award for innovation at the National Business Awards has really put us on a pedestal and said yes what these guys do is fabulous, it is very innovative, and that’s opened up lots of doors for us, both here in the UK but also internationally. Only a few months ago we were with a major retail customer in America and making a presentation right at the very forefront was this – look what we’ve won – today, a few months later we have a listing of 14, 15 products with that retailer which is multiple millions of dollars in sales for us. So yes I’d advise anybody who is thinking of entering the awards, just go for it. If you get anything like the response that we’ve had you’ll be onto a winner

Alex Evans, Editorial Director and Co-Chair of Judges, National Business Awards: The National Business Awards in partnership with Orange has always been an opportunity to shout about your success. Over the last 2 or 3 years it’s been a very, very tough environment for business and it’s been in many ways the perfect storm for business, it’s been the perfect circumstances for businesses to go one step beyond because they’ve had to, because they’ve had to save here and there, they’ve had to be more innovative to make up for fewer staff. So now more than ever, regardless of how big you are as a business or how small you are as a business, it’s the perfect opportunity to prove that you’ve gone one step beyond

Caroline Jackson Levy, MD, UBM Awards: The National Business Awards have really evolved in the past 10 years since we launched them. The gravitas and prestige of winning an award for organisations has really increased over that time, and also the number of organisations who have entered the National Business Awards has grown, even during the recession the National Business Awards saw an increase in the number of entrants from businesses around the country, and I think the reason for that is that there have been difficult times, businesses want to be recognised, they’re digging deeper, they’re becoming more innovative and entrepreneurial and they see the National Business Awards as a real platform to show off their success. I’d encourage all businesses, all sizes wherever you are in the country, go to NationalBusinessAwards.co.uk

H: Welcome back. As you can see while the video was running we’ve had a little bit of a reshuffle here in the studio, Martin’s now been joined by Alex Evans, welcome. And we were meant to be joined by previous winner Richard North who you saw in that VT just now but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances I’m afraid he can’t be with us. This part of the program we’re going to be talking about the awards themselves and remember you can put your questions to our guests here in the studio via the box underneath the screen and we’ll be dealing with those a little bit later. So Alex let’s begin if you would by just – talk to us about the awards, how you enter, and what they mean to the businesses that win them?

C: Ok the National Business Awards were created in 2002 and the fundamental idea was to recognise excellence in business across the private and the public sector, from organisations ranging from start-ups, SMEs all the way to the FTSE 100. It’s very easy to enter, all you have to do is to have been trading for 18 months, accountable for the last 18 months, you just visit the website National Business Awards.co.uk or call 020 72348755 and it’s literally 10 or 11 questions about your business. Dissecting it in terms of how you deal with customers, how you market your business, how you nurture innovation, how you led a strategy – it’s a really good review of what you’ve done over the last year and it’s a good way of finding out whether it’s better than other businesses

H: So you’ve used the word excellence, that’s a fairly generic term. What sort of qualities are the judges looking for?

B: Well the interesting thing about the awards is there are 17 categories so everything that you can think about in the way that you normally run your business, how do you go to market, what’s your marketing strategy, you know what’s your sustainability strategy, so what have you done to innovate, you know there’s the Orange Innovation Award that recognises that. I think the really critical thing about this is that there is you know a very level playing field, so whether you’re the smallest business or the largest business, actually you can enter the same category of award and you can try and win that award to show what you’ve done against the, against the other guys, and we’ve had some great examples and you saw Richard North of Wow! Stuff, they actually won the Orange Innovation Award last year ahead of a FTSE 100 company, in the same category, so it’s about real excellence across a number of categories ,and everybody can join in, that’s the great news really

H: So what was it that you recognised in Richard’s company?

C: I mean excellence is fundamentally going one step beyond and I think over the last couple of years, certainly in the recession, with less resource than people had, whether that’s people or money or whatever, it’s been a lot harder to go one step beyond but people have had to, so in the excellence as in defined over the last year for example was making up for that lack of resource, having the ideas, having the creativity, innovating across process or coming up with good ideas and making them happen in a better way than their competitors, I think Wow! Stuff was a fantastic example of not just a business re-designing an industry, I mean it’s a toy designer and a marketer and it’s innovative in those two ways, but it’s created a culture of innovation within the business which spans every part of it, so it’s constantly nurturing ideas and supporting ideas and investing in them

H: I mean it’s nice to have awards but it can sometimes be quite onerous and you say it’s only a 10 question form but I bet it takes more than 10 minutes to fill in. Why should businesses, especially small businesses consider applying?

B: I think there are a number of reasons really and I think if you talk to the businesses that have applied, what you discover is that just the process of applying in itself is quite a rewarding one because what it actually does, the process forces you to write down all the big, great things you’re doing which in its own way works to sort of reinforce those things back to your employees. I think then when you enter the awards and you get shortlisted, you come to the final in London, you can network with lots of business leaders, lots of other businesses who are the same sort of size of you, you know that you are, it’s a great evening and you know if you’re the winner then of course you can use that award to market yourself and to build your reputation in the market. So yes there is some effort to put in, we kept it as simple as possible but if you do apply I mean you’ve got to be in it to win it as they say, but if you do apply then absolutely there are benefits all the way through I think

H: Ray Thomas in fact has touched on that; he says “will entering the National Business Awards really make a difference to my business?” So you’ve mentioned marketing opportunities, and obviously networking at the event. Are there any other sort of more tangible benefits?

C: I mean Richard North, he said that in the VT earlier on I mean he presented to a retail partner, or potential one in the States, and at the time of his presentation he mentioned the fact that he was a winner of a National Business Award and he won that contract, you know that was 14 products in a retailer, that’s worth millions to his business. I think it’s like anything, it’s what you do with it that counts and I think some winners and even finalists have used their recognition to impress new clients, impress new partners, even find investment, and you know even talking about funding from banks, it’s not going to persuade a bank but it’s certainly going to make the bank –

H: Look more favourably

C: Look more favourably because you’ve got a business plan and you’ve made it work

H: Yes

B: I think I’d just add to that to say that the National Business Awards is seen as the Oscars of the business world, and so this isn’t something that’s given lightly. I mean Alex and I were there in the Gherkin last year judging some of the awards, these are incredibly thorough and serious awards, they’re very highly regarded across the whole of business, so to put that stamp on your letterhead

H: Yes third party endorsement is important yes

B: Is truly impressive

H: Rebecca Lewis has sent a question in -“have you seen a difference in the types of businesses winning awards over the past 10 years?”

C: Certainly I mean we get entries from local authorities, police forces, to schools, healthcare trusts, but also FTSE 100s, dot coms, manufacturing companies. I think there does seem to be a reflection of the economy of time, I think 10 years ago there was certainly more dot coms, there was some construction businesses doing very well, now we’ve almost come full circle with that, and we kind of hit recession but what we are seeing is a renaissance in the dot come, we’re seeing a burgeon in e-commerce, companies like ASOS coming through, but we’re also seeing the Renaissance of manufacturing as well, so again Orange leader of the year last year was Dyson, which shows again a small business in South West that’s taken a very good idea, or a few good ideas and has delivered on the world stage

H: Very specific question from Jean Simpson – “if you entered in the past can you enter the competition again?”

C: Yes

H: Yes, simple answer, good. A little bit on the submissions, people are asking some detailed questions about how much detail you need to put into the submissions, how can you make your business stand out against the competition

B: Yes it sounds like my son applying for university this does. Yes I think put as much detail in as you can that you think is going to be relevant, so think about all of those great things that you’ve done, think about all of the unique things that you’ve done and don’t underestimate the power of the things that you have done and think about the questions really carefully. I don’t know Alex, what would you say?

C: I don’t know I mean detail is good, but not too much detail. I think sometimes it’s too easy to cut and paste the website and stick it in an entry form. I think it’s reading the question, the entry form now has more guidance on what the judges are looking for so there’s less space to waste, and I think judges and Martin’s been a judge as well, they want a story, they want a picture painted about the business and I think it’s that process of reviewing what you’ve done, things will stand out so present the stand-out pieces

B: Yes what is it that you’ve done differently since 2 years ago, what was your strategy, what was the thing that you spotted that you needed to do, what did you do and you know can you say what the 5 bullet points are and if you can then you can tell a story around that

H: It’s interesting that you say the process of filling out the form is quite useful as a business exercise isn’t it, because you should be able to do the whole thing in 5 bullet points or 15 seconds shouldn’t you?

B: Indeed, indeed

H: So are those the entries that have really stood out for you in the past few years, can you tell us about a couple?

C: Yes I mean Wow! Stuff again is a really good example of someone that knew exactly how he’d been successful but presented it in a very dynamic way and again the process of the National Business Awards is before the short-listing stage it’s on the entry form but after that you present live to a panel of judges, Dragon’s Den style so again it’s definitely good to send someone who’s going to engage with those judges and know the business inside out, so the MD, the CEO is always the best representative. But at the other end of the scale, I mean Co-operative group for example, I mean a huge business, 14 billion turnover, what stands out about that business is it’s obviously commercially successful but it’s embraced sustainability and ethical practice and it showed how that’s worked in the business world and I think that’s an inspiration at the very top end of business in the same way that an SME that innovates is an expression of that business

H: As you say it’s a story isn’t it?

C: Yes

H: James London – “Is there a fee for entry?”

C: Yes, £190

H: £190. So it’s a fee, entry form and then live presentation

C: Yes

H: That’s basically the process is it?

B: Yes if you’re short-listed then it’s live presentation, yes

H: I hear people cringing all over the country at the prospect of doing that

B: It’s a great opportunity, you know because you know come to that environment and bring what you’ve got, bring some things that you’re making, bring some visual aids you know we’ve seen all sorts of different –

C: Naked Wines was very good because they bought wine so that was –

H: That’s called bribery isn’t it that’s different

B: Well Naked Wine were very good last year in the Innovation Award because what they actually did was they brought a wine producer all the way from Peru, who could tell the story so there was some really innovative ways that we saw people present. At the end of the day it was a very strong feel but the Wow! Stuff actually stood out on that one for us

H: And just to answer finally, I’m afraid we’re out of time, Peter Wilson from Beckenham – “is there a minimum or maximum size of business eligible to enter?”

C: Not at all, no I mean in our SME category it’s up to 25 million turnover but we have 5 million, 4 million, 3 million entering that category

B: I think I really want to emphasise these awards are for everybody, any category of business of any size, you can apply and you should apply and there’s lots of great examples of smaller businesses who have used that to win the awards and to move on

H: Excellent. Sadly we’re out of time, thank you very much for coming in to talk to us about the Awards and if you’re thinking of entering then you can, go to the website which is NationalBusinessAwards.co.uk. Good luck, thank you for watching. Bye bye