The best in the industry
10th International ICT Awards Philippines recognizes winners
THE CANADIAN Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (CanCham), in cooperation with the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines ( IBPAP), held the 10th anniversary edition of the International ICT Awards Philippines last March 22 at the Marriott Grand Ballroom in New Port City, Pasay City, which was attended by the who’s who in the information and communication technologies (ICT) industry.
“The International ICT Awards Philippines, held annually, recognizes the very best in the dynamic and fast-growing ICT industry,” Julian Payne, president of CanCham, said in a statement. In an interview with BusinessWorld, he added: “We see this as a way to support the development of ICT service industry in general.”
The organizers received an all-time high number of nominations for the award categories. Deliberations took place in February that trimmed the number of nominees for each category down to five. The names of the finalists were kept a secret until the gala night. Several changes have been made in recent years to the nominations process. One such change has to do with the supporting documentations: they are now mandated to be submitted in an electronic format; hard copies are no longer entertained.
Award categories have grown in number through the years. There are 15 in all, up from the eight categories that the first edition of the awards ceremony, which was launched in 2007, had.
Mr. Payne noted that the two most recent significant additions were the Best Filipino- Owned Company of the Year (at least 60% of which has to be owned by Filipinos) and the Best Company of the Year Outside NCR (at least 50% of its work force should be located in areas beyond Metro Manila) awards.
This year saw the debut of a new category — the Participants’ Choice for the Most Popular Team Leader award. It serves as an acknowledgement of the significant role that frontline managers play. “We felt that there wasn’t due recognition given to those actually doing work on the frontline, generating reputation and the profits,” Mr. Payne said.
The category has another purpose — to demonstrate the use of electronic ICT technology for voting and judging and to encourage greater participation, Mr. Payne said. An interactive application, a product of NetSuite, a provider of cloudbased business management solutions, was used this year to solicit votes for the nominated team leaders from Feb. 15 to March 15. This was the first stage of the voting process. The second stage occurred during the gala night itself. With the help of Globe Telecom and PLDT Alpha Enterprise, the event’s title sponsors, the winner was chosen through SMS voting. Several of the voting participants received special raffled prizes.
For the remaining categories, a panel of seven distinguished judges hailing from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao and representing the ICT industry, the academia and the public sector, decided who the winners would be. The judges, who were selected by CanCham and IBPAP, appraised the nominees based on their achievements and the excellence they demonstrated in 2015. Mr. Payne said the judges are barred from serving for more than two years and the panel’s chair have to vacate the position after one term. Their names were not revealed in advance of the gala night.
Some of this year’s International ICT Awards Philippines winners were Convergys Philippines (Best Company of the Year); Sutherland Global Services Philippines (Best Employer of the Year); Rajiv Dhand of TELUS ( Best ICT CEO of the Year); Lexmark Cebu (Best Company of the Year Outside NCR); and Pointwest Technologies Corporation (Best Filipino-Owned Company). Having won their respective awards three times in a row, Convergys Philippines and Pointwest Technologies Corporation have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Meanwhile, this year’s recipient of the Participants’ Choice Award for the Most Popular Team Leader was Alyssa Fae Camungol of Cognizant Technology Solutions Philippines, Inc.