4th Annual 2014 Business Excellence Awards

2014 International Business Awards

Fastest Growing Private Companies in America… and rest of the World

Customer Base Growth
StartApp (New York, NY USA) 504.98%
Talon Storage (Mount Laurel, NJ USA) 316.67%
ECI – Electronic Commerce, Inc. (Elkhart, IN, USA) 52.24%
Creative Lodging Solutions (Lexington, KY USA) 49.30%
Voxox (San Diego, CA USA) 37.98%

Fastest Growing Private Companies in America… and rest of the World

Partners and Distribution Growth
Talon Storage (Mount Laurel, NJ USA) 500.00%

People Growth
Wajam (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) 400.00%
Elite SEM (New York, NY USA) 131.82%
Voxox (San Diego, CA USA) 100.00%
MediaMath (New York, NY USA) 100.00%
Replicon (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) 35.19%
SADA Systems (North Hollywood, CA USA) 30.00%
Creative Lodging Solutions (Lexington, KY USA) 26.26%
ECI – Electronic Commerce, Inc. (Elkhart, IN, USA) 8.65%

PR and Marketing Growth
Quorum (San Jose, CA USA) 50.00%

Products and Services Growth
Personify Inc. (Chicago, IL USA) 340.00%
PROLIM Global Corporation (Farmington Hills, MI USA) 200.00%
AMAX (Fremont, CA USA) 58.46%

Profits Growth
Manage.com (San Francisco, CA USA) 3,917.09%
Creative Lodging Solutions (Lexington, KY USA) 140.35%

Sales Revenue Growth
Manage.com (San Francisco, CA USA) 2,476.42%
Seal Software Inc. (San Francisco, CA USA) 192.31%
SADA Systems (North Hollywood, CA USA) 54.94%
Creative Lodging Solutions (Lexington, KY USA) 16.94%
IST Management Services (Atlanta, GA USA) 14.26%
Scribe Software (Manchester, NH USA) 11.02%
D&K Engineering (San Diego, CA USA) 10.90%
Motive Interactive, Inc. (San Diego, CA USA) 10.26%

ADVICE FROM TOP EXECUTIVES

“First, define your market and test the market with a trial offering and variations of your offering to your target audience. Consider an offering that can scale and has a marketplace big enough to support it. Your product should meet a need, have a proper price/to value offering, and your company must have high customer service standards. Find and retain the right people that will allow you to scale, constantly refine processes for improved efficiency, and lastly, enjoy what you are doing – it will show and have a positive impact on both your employees and your clients.”
Jeffrey Lacy, President and CEO – ECI – Electronic Commerce, Inc.

“Enthusiasm and passion are the natural catalysts for growth, and every fast growing company I know has those two elements in abundance. If your employees have it, it leads to marketing and PR growth because you then have a company that can’t wait to interact with the broader market to validate the internal belief. If your customers have it the sales growth will also naturally follow, because the appetite that the marketing and PR efforts created can be easily converted to revenue because of the positive feedback from other customers. Moreover, we all know that enthusiasm is infectious; it’s the force-multiplier behind all other efforts, including recruiting, financing, and all other areas of company operations. My advice to fuel growth is to make sure you’re listening both inside and outside the company – if the passion and enthusiasm are lacking, dig deeper to find it. Without it achieving aggressive growth targets is much more difficult.”
Walter Angerer, CEO – Quorum

“”Knowledge, Confidence, Execution and Trust” are the key pillars of any successful organization.”
Prabhu Patil, President & CEO – PROLIM Global Corporation

“SADA places engineering, innovation and customer service at the core of our business model – we’re able to differentiate ourselves from other key players in the field of cloud computing by being the first to go to market with the solutions which address clients’ business needs and pain-points they may be experiencing. It’s key to stay ahead of the curve, while also focusing on execution and exceptional service.”
Tony Safoian, CEO and President – SADA Systems

“What promotes growth can vary significantly depending on your market. In any industry, what promotes growth is first and foremost having a vision for growth and executing on that vision. Long term growth in the engineering and manufacturing services market comes from organizations looking to build strategic partnerships to develop their new products or next generation products. To maintain and grow these strategic alliances, engineering and manufacturing services organizations’ must have a well-defined process that is easily articulated to clients and flawlessly executed upon. Continual growth is attributed to having the right resources on a project at the right time, doing good work for clients, and completing projects on-time and on budget.”
Alex Kunczynski, President – D&K Engineering

“AMAX positions itself as a trustworthy manufacturing and solutions provider to our customers. AMAX’s strength is in engineering expertise and solution design. The technology industry is demanding the ability to build large-scale enterprise-ready solutions that are fully integrated on the hardware/software level and delivered turnkey, and AMAX is able to do this on a global scale. Growth comes from consistently delivering well-engineered and designed solutions targeting today’s specific IT and business requirements while maintaining the highest level of quality and performance.”
Jean Shih, President – AMAX

Creative Lodging Solutions’ founder and CEO, Michael Tetterton, believes in the value of taking risks to promote company growth. At each critical step in his company’s growth, from determining the right time to launch the company to turning a profit to surpassing the $100 million mark, Tetterton has undergone enormous risks to ensure his company’s success. He most recently invested one and a half year’s worth of net profits back into the company to create new jobs, increase the size of the sales department, and invest in new technology to take Creative Lodging Solutions to the next level. Tetterton’s investment paid off as Creative Lodging Solutions surpassed its goal of $100 million in revenue last year.

Success begins with a strong vision to disrupt a market. Replicon’s founders and Co-CEOs had the vision and ensured it was executed extremely well. In 1996 Lakshmi Raj and her husband Raj Narayanaswamy changed the way software is developed and delivered on the Internet by developing innovative, web-based time tracking software solutions. Replicon was one of the first companies to provide customers with SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions. The Co-CEOs have been instrumental in transforming the company from a grass-roots start up to a successful multinational enterprise providing 1.“no hassle” software that is easy to acquire, install, and use 2. fanatical and superior customer service and 3. “no hassle” implementation and training services at no cost to customers. Business today is about accelerating workforce productivity and companies are quickly realizing the value of not only tracking employee time, but understanding how that time is spent. Replicon’s guiding philosophy is that time truly is an enterprise asset, and this has driven Replicon’s growth in cloud-based time tracking solutions. With Ms. Raj’s focus on strategic initiatives for Replicon’s global operations, including market share expansion, revenue generation, and worldwide sales activities, she has been instrumental in providing global visibility for Replicon’s products and the overall future vision for the company. As a result Replicon has become the world leader in web-based time tracking solutions.

“First, execution is valued orders of magnitude over talk and ideas. Second, try to be in the right place at the right time for your customer/company. Third, move fast and try not to break stuff.”
Fred Hsu, President and CEO – Manage.com

“Recently, my firm was ranked No. 1 on Crain’s New York Business Best Places to Work list. It was also named Best Agency by the U.S. Search Awards. While some might see this as an “aligning of the stars,” I know that these acknowledgements were the result of a highly strategic plan that centered around attracting top talent. Many companies say that finding top talent is difficult or that there’s a talent shortage. Finding talent is not the issue. Attracting talent is the problem. And today, the very top talent—the type of people who both make your company a great place to work and increase the quality of the work you do—aren’t looking for a snazzy job description, and they aren’t scanning an endless stream of Twitter updates for job news. They will, however, notice a company that has a unique culture and attitude.”
Ben Kirshner, CEO – Elite SEM

“Depending on your market opportunity, growth can occur from a variety of factors. However, to start growing fast I suggest focusing on four key principles: 1) solve a big, specific customer problem; 2) work at easily communicating your business value; 3) iterate often before making plans to expand your go-to-market base; and 4) take advantage of strategic partnerships to increase your market reach. Today’s companies are all connected in some way, and figuring out your place in this ecosystem is paramount to selecting the right partners and delivering a better experience for your end customers. For private companies, acting as a lone wolf doesn’t work. The top players understand who their customers are and how to best serve them, which for private providers means creating a best-of-breed solution that solves targeted problems very well. Your solution can’t end there, however; you need to work on integrating it within existing ecosystems to offer customers access to a complete suite of best-of-breed solutions. The fact is that the majority of businesses, large and small, prefer a best of breed approach, so companies that create a strong product and tie it into an ecosystem with complementary products will experience very high growth potential. In short: to grow quickly, companies need to step back, identify and solve big problems and then develop potential partnerships that will drive the fastest growth to expand their customer base.”
Lou Guercia, President and CEO – Scribe Software

“We’ve grown a lot in the past year, both in the size of our team as well as our user base. Our team went from 10 to 50+ employees in the last year and a half, fueled by the success of our social search technology and the team culture we’ve been able to build. At the office, our motto is “work hard, play hard”. Our formula for success is to combine working on highly technical and innovative projects with fun team outings and office Nerf gun battles. By valuing knowledge sharing and teamwork, we’ve been able to recruit top talent and also demonstrate a high retention rate. Our product has also seen growth, expanding from a desktop browser solution to mobile apps. We’re actively funding research and development in order to improve the relevancy of our search results. We now have over 10 billion social recommendations indexed in our search engine. Finally, we’ve successfully found a way to make our innovations profitable. With innovative online advertising that is personalized to our users, we’re now showing more relevant ads that are actually useful! This has led to partnerships with three public companies, Yahoo!, eBay and Expedia.”
Martin-Luc Archambault, Founder & CEO – Wajam

“As the demand for our cutting-edge cloud telephony and rich communication solutions for consumers, businesses and wholesale customers rises, our need to grow a world- class team intensifies. The team we have assembled so far possesses passion, talent and drive, and we are looking to add more exceptional talent to our group, which will contribute to the growth of the local San Diego economy.”
Bryan Hertz, CEO and co-founder – Voxox

“I have always believed that if it is not broken, break it as there is always a better way to do something.”
Hal Blackman, President & CEO – IST Management Services

“Invest in the people. Creating a working environment that energizes and excites different types of people and allows for collaboration – whether it’s across departments or across the globe – is a necessity. It promotes employee success, innovation and growth, which in turn drives customer success and business growth. Furthermore, culture that is measurable is manageable, so take continual surveys of what cultural success looks like and share those best practices globally.”
Joe Zawadzki, CEO – MediaMath

In building Seal Software’s business with the goal of empowering contract professionals with the tools to have complete visibility and accessibility of their contract portfolio, Zetterberg has also made it a priority to cultivate a company culture that empowers their employees. Seal Software employees are immersed in an environment of independence with a high level of responsibility toward not only one another, but the overall company vision and its customers. Seal Software is a fast-growing company with employees traversing the globe, and because every single employee believes in the product they’re developing and the impact it can have on contract professionals, the staff works seamlessly together, regardless of title, to achieve their objectives. There is a high level of respect, camaraderie and collaboration that is truly impressive for a globally dispersed team.

“Innovation & new products development – commitment to ongoing innovation is key success factor to growth. Being flexible to changes when they occur is another important factor. • Spotting new business opportunities- it’s crucial to always be on the lookout for the next best business opportunities.”
Gil Dudkiewicz, Founder and CEO – StartApp

“Cultivate a team with a shared passion for your vision, promote creativity and reward inventiveness. You’ll end up with a team working with persistence to raise the bar not only in your company, but for your whole industry.”
Sanjay Patel, CEO and Co-Founder – Personify Inc.

Today, one of the biggest challenges distributed branch offices still face is maintaining the responsiveness to the business user needs while facilitating the adoption of consolidation and virtualized infrastructure. Many solutions have tried to create efficient file sharing and collaboration; however, these solutions lose the ability to guarantee a high quality user experience without degradation. The growth of Talon has been defined by our ability to stay focused on our plan that was initiated back in 2012. Our original plan was to first address a specific use case around distributed branch office collaboration in Microsoft based environments. Once we identified the vertical that faced most of the issues due to collaboration with and consolidation of very large files – specifically architecture, engineering and project based files – our strategy fell into place. When a company is new to the market, the advice I would give is “simple.” Don’t deviate from your focused plan until you have exhausted the potential use cases for your solution offering. Too many companies chase revenue and customers without a clear understanding of the foreseeable outcome of those actions.
Shirish Phatak, Chairman and CEO – Talon

PR World Awards

PR Campaigns of the Year

Arts, Entertainment, or Media Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Luxottica Group (Milan, Italy) for PERSOL MAGNIFICENT OBSESSIONS: 30 stories of craftsmanship in film

Awesome Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Bhava Communications (Emeryville, CA USA) for Be Bold: Turning the Right Place and Right Time into PR Magic

Best use of Broadcast Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Lippe Taylor (New York, NY USA) for FaceCake Virtually Makes Over the Media

Best use of Facebook Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Andrew Frank Communications (Vancouver, BC Canada) for Oil Spill Truths – A locally focused social media campaign produced by the Coastal First Nations and Andrew Frank Communications

Best use of Instagram Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Klick Communications (Sydney, NSW Australia) for Hotel 1888 – The World’s First Instagram Hotel

Best use of Online Communications Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Andrew Frank Communications (Vancouver, BC Canada) for Oil Spill Truths – A locally focused social media campaign produced by the Coastal First Nations and Andrew Frank Communications

Best Use of Social Media or Digital Media Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Andrew Frank Communications (Vancouver, BC Canada) for Oil Spill Truths – A locally focused social media campaign produced by the Coastal First Nations and Andrew Frank Communications

Business-to-Business Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Dodge Communications (Alpharetta, GA USA) for Accountable Care Solutions (ACS) from Aetna Media Relations Campaign

Consumer New Product Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
AMD (Sunnyvale, CA USA) for GPU14: The Launch of Next Generation AMD Radeon Graphics Cards

Global Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Luxottica Group (Milan, Italy) for PERSOL MAGNIFICENT OBSESSIONS: 30 stories of craftsmanship in film

Healthcare Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Sikich Public Relations (Chicago, IL USA) for World’s First Thought-Controlled Bionic Leg Unveiled by Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago

Information Technology (Hardware) Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
AMD (Sunnyvale, CA USA) for GPU14: The Launch of Next Generation AMD Radeon Graphics Cards

Security (Hardware) Technology Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
Fortinet (Sunnyvale, CA USA) for “Our Survey Says”

Technology Campaign of the Year
Gold Winner
SpiderOak (San Francisco, CA USA) for SpiderOak: Zero Knowledge Privacy Standard
Silver Winners
AMD (Sunnyvale, CA USA) for GPU14: The Launch of Next Generation AMD Radeon Graphics Cards
Blonde 2.0 (Tel Aviv, Israel) for A Sitting Ovation – The Launch of Viber Desktop

CMO of the Year

Most Admired People in Industry
Antonio Lucio, Global Chief Brand Officer – Visa
Bill Rozier, VP of Global Marketing – Ciena
Carter Cast, past CEO of Walmart.com and Hayneedle, and previous CMO – eBay and BlueNile
David Plouffe, Political Strategist
Elon Musk – CEO & CTO of SpaceX and CEO & Chief Product Architect of Tesla Motors
Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist – Canva
Jim Speros, CMO – Fidelity Investments
Kerry Cooper, CEO of Choose Energy and former CMO of ModCloth, a retailer of independent designer fashion and décor
Seth Godin, Author and Founder – squidoo.com

CMOs of the Year
Gold Winners
Ash ElDifrawi, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer – Gogo (Itasca, IL USA)
Elissa Fink – Tableau Software (Seattle, WA USA)
Grant Johnson – Kofax (Irvine, CA USA)
Jackie Yeaney, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Marketing – Red Hat (Atlanta, GA US)
Jared Fletcher – Arise Virtual Solutions Inc. (Miramar, FL USA)
Joe Cumello, Chief Marketing Officer – Cyan, Inc. (Petaluma, CA USA)
Karen Brewer – Ventyx (San Francisco, CA US)
Kieran Hannon, Chief Marketing Officer – Belkin International (Playa Vista, CA USA)
Lisa Arthur, CMO, Marketing Applications – Teradata Corporation (Indianapolis, IN USA)
Lisa Rhodes, CMO and VP of Market Development – Verne Global (Falls Church, VA USA)
Prakash Nagpal, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing – Narus Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA USA)

PR Companies and Performance

Geographical Based PR Agencies
Gold Winner
Klick Communications (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and Los Angeles, California, United States of America)

PR Agencies with Specialized Skills
Gold Winner
Dodge Communications (Alpharetta, GA USA)

PR People

PR People of the Year
Gold Winners
Chris Hook, Director, Enthusiast and Component PR of AMD (Austin, TX USA)
Chris Till, Director of Communications of Venable LLP (Washington, DC USA)

Media Relations Professional of the Year
Nenad Hervatin, PR, Marketing and New Business Manager of Hrenovka d.o.o.

In-house PR Team of the Year
Gold Winner
Chris Hook, Director, Enthusiast and Component PR of AMD (Austin, TX USA) – Team members include Bernard Fernandes, Robert Hallock, Stella Lee, Heather Lennon, James Prior, John Swinimer, Sam Tehrani, Antal Tungler
Silver Winner
Peter Taylor, Vice President, Corporate & Government Affairs of Carnival Corporation (Australia) (North Sydney, New South Wales – Australia) – Team members include Ainsley Pope, David Jones, Elisa Monorchio, Meg Koffel, Greg Dehn, Fiona Woolmer, Alison Bamfield, Mira Kovacevic, Jemima Clarke

Hybrid Team of the Year (consisting of members from both PR Agency and In-House)
Gold Winner
Allen Bush, Director of Corporate Marketing – Ooyala (Mountain View, CA USA) – Team members include Jim O’Neill, Caitlin Spaan, Ricardo Vasquez Sierra, Suzanne Chan, Paul Bernardini, Annie Noebel, Derek Velez
Silver Winner
Walter Bonnett, Vice President, Global Marketing of Dover Pump Solutions Group (PSG) (Oakbrook Terrace, IL USA) – Team members include Tom Stone, Dale Dean, Chris Ryan, Darren Wight, Josh Garcia, Krystal Garcia, Ethan Kline, Gary Jackson, Quint Harris, Todd West, Kathie Hess, Reese Harris,Carmen Ortiz, Nicole Durian, Andy Shepherd, Andy Speidel, Mark Weinstein, Luke Beuerlein, Chris Traczek, Eric Hirth, Natalie Hill

Women in PR
Gold Winners
Carrie Martz, CEO & President – Martz Parsons (Scottsdale, AZ USA)
Ruth Furman, Principal and President – Image Words (Las Vegas, NV USA)

Most Innovative PR People
Gold Winners
Chris Hook, Director, Enthusiast and Component PR of AMD (Austin, TX USA)

Innovations in PR

Innovations in PR
Gold Winner
Makovsky (New York, NY USA) for Service – “Wall Street’s Reputation: A Different Perspective on the Long Road Back to Recovery”

PR Case Studies

Best Case Study
Gold Winner
Weiss PR (Baltimore, MD USA) for Weiss PR Helps SafeMonk Enable CIOs to Say Yes to Dropbox

Best Website, Blog, White Paper/Reports, Online Video, and Social Media categories

Best Blog of the Year
Gold Winner
General Motors (Detroit, MI USA) for FastLane – fastlane.gm.com

Best Website of the Year
Gold Winner
Luxottica (Milan, Italy) for New Luxottica.com Corporate Website – http://www.luxottica.com

Live Event of the Year
Gold Winner
Carnival Corporation (Australia) (North Sydney, New South Wales – Australia) for Sunrise At Sea

PR Creativity
Gold Winner
Groupon (Chicago, IL, USA) for President’s Day – Alexander Hamilton Promo
Silver Winner
Carnival Australia – Princess Cruises (North Sydney, New South Wales – Australia) for The Love Boat’s Julie McCoy celebrates her 60th birthday with Princess Cruises in Australia