BusinessCloud’s inaugural UK Business Tech Awards are set for November and will recognise the individuals and businesses who are making the most impact in the world of technology.
Every day we are highlighting a different category ahead of a glitzy ceremony at London’s Montcalm Marble Arch on November 20.
There will be 18 gongs up for grabs including Digital Agency of the Year, with five finalists shortlisted by our stellar line-up of judges: Clicky Media, Connect, Digital Six, e3creative and Volume.
We profile them below. Tickets are available at the Business Tech Awards website.
Anyone interested in sponsorship opportunities should contact [email protected].
The judging panel included David Hardman, MBE, managing director of Innovation Birmingham; Louize Clarke, co-founder, ConnectTVT; Elizabeth Clark, CEO, Dream Agility; former director of Tech North Richard Gregory; Tom Cheesewright, founder of Applied Futurism Practice; former Vodafone exec Rob Mukherjee, director of Greater Sport; Chris Dymond, director, Sheffield Digital; and Scott Henderson, managing director of Jumpstart.
DIGITAL AGENCY OF THE YEAR SHORTLIST
Clicky Media is a multi-disciplinary agency offering web design and development, digital design, website maintenance and management and digital marketing – paid ads, SEO, content marketing, conversion rate optimisation and strategy and insights/research.
With a HQ in Chester and offices in Nottingham and London and 49 staff, it is celebrating its 11th anniversary this year.
Using a data-driven approach and insights, it helps its clients grow through bespoke solutions and this year won some of its biggest clients including Raleigh and Little Mistress. In March 2018 it launched its biggest ever web project for Halton Housing, which was seeking to transform its ageing online presence, and helped it build an innovative, cutting-edge website which saw a vast improvement across all metrics.
Clicky has also launched a custom-built CRM system, Space, which enables staff to do everything from accessing to-do lists and contracts for clients to applying for expenses and requesting holidays. Its focus on internal training and development has led to an 85 per cent retention rate among employees.
Connect is specialist digital technology agency based in Liverpool. It blends creativity, technology and data to help organisations accelerate and innovate in the digital landscape – building award-winning websites, apps and intranets.
Its 20-strong team has more than 180 years’ professional experience, working across design, development, operations, finance, HR, bid management and strategy. Clients include the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Hewlett Packard, UK Government Investments and the Ministry of Defence.
It is also a trusted partner to a number of blue light and NHS organisations, providing mission critical services to the likes of the London Ambulance Service, the North West Ambulance Service and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust among others.
The level of trust it has established with these organisations is built upon transparent communication and collaboration.
Established in 1999, Digital Six is one of the UK’s longest standing eCommerce specialists. It designs and develops inspiring websites that deliver an exceptional user experience and results, as well as provide clients with ongoing website and marketing support.
Its clients are based throughout the UK and internationally, including Celtic FC, National Trust for Scotland, ETB Technologies and Oxford Medical Training, and are from a broad range of industries such as sports, luxury retail, food and drink, homeware and fashion.
Celtic turned to agency Digital Six to design and develop a new cloud-based eCommerce site on Magento which would enable the club to scale up to cope with increases in traffic during peak times. The new Shop by Player feature enables visitors to select any of Celtic’s players from the main navigation which takes them to the player’s page with all of the products associated with the player, whether this is a shirt or a signed mug.
Digital Six’s team of in-house developers are highly skilled specialists in SEO-focused eCommerce development which gives clients’ websites an unbeatable technical edge.
e3creative is a fully integrated digital agency that intermixes art and science to create award-winning digital stories that function seamlessly whilst providing high commercial return.
Now employing 56 full-time staff, the firm is projected to turn over £3.6m this year. Its turnover of £2.6m last year was an increase of 47 per cent on the previous year while it has grown steadily every year since 2014.
e3creative outgrew its office in Manchester city centre and expanded to a second floor to double its space to 6,600 sq ft. The larger studio provides a dedicated floor for the production team and a separate floor to better serve clients with collaborative working space, event space and meeting rooms.
e3creative has also launched The Mara Foundation established in the name of Mike Mara, an inspirational designer that lost his battle to cancer a couple years ago, to provide professional opportunities, sparking a paid internship programme with Salford University and a Code Club at Manchester Youth Zone teaching young people the foundations of digital and encourages them to dream big.
Volume’s mission is to transform marketing from a ‘push’ discipline to a ‘pull’ discipline. Its objective is to help any organisation transition its digital, social and online touchpoints to artificial intelligence-powered conversational and visual interfaces.
Volume was established in 1997 and employs 100 people across four offices: Wokingham (HQ), Plymouth, Colombo, Sri Lanka & San Jose, California. Over the past two years the agency has become recognised as a leader in its AI field and is the first company globally to replace its website with an AI-powered conversational platform, ‘Lusy’.
Lusy was fast followed by ‘Cody’ in Asia and ‘Arti’ for Artesian Solutions, based in Reading. The launch of Lusy et al has led to Volume developing the world’s first training & testing-as-a-Service for natural-language data models (QBox).
In its last financial year, turnover stood at £9.4 million. This year it expects much of its investment into AI-related projects to manifest into a new customer base across myriad industry sectors.