Thames Valley Business Magazine Awards 2008

Picture: Alistair Campbell (last year’s guest of honour), Neil Mackley and David Mackley from Intelligent Retail, and Kevin O’Connor, director, Slough Trading Estate, who sponsored the category.

As the closing date for entries for the prestigious 2008 Thames Valley Business Awards creeps ever closer, two of last year’s winners have been talking about the benefits they achieved from winning one of the major awards last year.

In 2007, Leasedrive Velo achieved a winning performance when commercial director Roddy Graham walked away with the award for Business Management Team, sponsored by The Royal Bank of Scotland, for the second year in a row.

The Wokingham-based company has grown to become one of the UK’s largest independent privately-owned vehicle management groups and it impressed the judges with its strong business strategy and leadership, effective team work and successful track record.

Sharing the winners’ platform that night was David Mackley, managing director of Intelligent Retail, whose business was awarded the Innovation of the Year Award, sponsored by Slough Trading Estate.

His company created a multichannel till to help smaller retailers become more successful by giving them “one click” access to sell in-store, online, by phone, on eBay and more – all with one simple stock control system.

Speaking recently, Roddy Graham said: “The Thames Valley Business Magazine Awards are acknowledged as the premier multi-category awards scheme in the region, so for Leasedrive Velo to win the outstanding management team award two years running provided the whole team with real kudos.

“The award citation declares that the winners must demonstrate a truly go-ahead, enlightened, innovative, and forward-thinking approach and we believe that this truly reflects our style of management.

“We continually strive to deliver the highest quality bespoke vehicle management service and demonstrably add value to our clients through investment in people, world-class fleet management systems and totally-integrated innovative solutions. Our industry-leading totally integrated online fleet management system, Drive:Manager, has set new benchmark standards for operational and customer service quality in the industry.

“To win this award twice in a row is testament to the strength-in-depth, quality and expertise of our management team. 2007 was a very big year in our history, as Leasedrive merged with Velo at the beginning of the year. Successful integration of our two businesses, operating now off one management information system, was achieved seamlessly and within planned timescales.

“However, the success of any management team is dependent on the commitment, dedication and enthusiasm of every staff member so these awards are as much for all our employees as the management team which won it. We, and all of our staff, are very proud to have been recognised as a great team.”

The pride with which Graham and his company view the award is echoed by that of employees at Intelligent Retail, which is based in Thatcham.

Details of the award are proudly displayed on its website and David Mackley said: “We definitely go out of our way to promote it and always tell people we are an award-winning company, which reflects very positively on our business.

“To win the innovation award, I believe the key is to be able to put a business value on your innovation. It’s not just about the innovation itself, but how it has been implemented and makes a difference to your customers.

“You can come up with a great idea, but if it doesn’t mean anything then it’s no good. When we entered the award, our focus was to talk about the impact of developing our multichannel till for retailers, and we were able to explain how it had changed their business and changed their lives.”

By demonstrating its success, he said, judges could see the difference it made to Intelligent Retail’s customers.

And, he added, closer to home the award had certainly raised the company’s credibility with potential customers and, when recruiting, potentially helped it to hire higher calibre candidates.

This year’s awards sees six categories to enter – for more information visit the awards website at www.businessawards.co.uk