The ABSL awarded the companies that contributed the most to the development of the business services sector in the Czech Republic last year and, thanks to innovative projects, raised the standard of services, customer experience, talent development and the working strategies and environment. The winning projects in seven categories were selected by an independent expert jury from fifty nominations. The awards, called ABSL Diamonds, were presented at the ABSL Digital Conference, which took place digitally this year with the participation of over 1,300 attendees.
“The move of employees from business services sector to work from home was easy in the spring, thanks to the high degree of digitization, companies managed it practically from day to day. They didn’t know, however, that a few weeks would stretch for months and the majority home office would become the new common standard, which would make it necessary to adjust and innovate a number of processes and methods of communication and services. Today, we see that the extraordinary situation caused by the pandemic has spurred a very strong wave of innovation in our industry, ”says Jonathan Appleton, Director of ABSL.
The current ABSL Survey showed that more than half of the business service centers accelerated digitization projects under the influence of the pandemic and 44% launched new automation projects. “Thanks to this, our industry manages the current difficult situation smoothly and with stable productivity. The centers are expanding their scope, introducing new services, starting to serve new regions or taking over work from sister organizations, which have to temporarily reduce their operations due to insufficient infrastructure,” says Jonathan Appleton, adding that his year’s projects nominated for the ABSL Diamonds award are very diverse and are all extraordinary advanced and innovative. The projects reflect the industry’s high degree of flexibility and resilience to unexpected situations and crises, and show how well Czech centers have coped with the challenges posed by COVID-19 and adopted a new digital standard. That is why the ABSL association has decided to award more projects this year than in previous years. Instead of 7 new diamonds, 10 will be awarded.
The winners are:
In Customer Initiative category: Dixons Carphone
In Business Innovation category: Neoris Czech Republic and CEMEX
In Community and Citizen Support category: SAP
In Education category: Novartis and Kiwi.com
In Employer Branding and People Engagement category: Zebra Technologies
In Innovative Workplace and Remote Working Strategies category: Mercedes-Benz Parts Logistics Eastern Europe and Anheuser-Busch Inbev
In Value Creation category: BlueLink International CZ
A special award for COVID-19 response goes to Comdata
Congratulations to all the winners!
