Channel Awards 2020 - General Category & Editor's Choice criteria

Check out the general category and editor's choice awards up for grabs this year

Below is the criteria for the General and Editor's Choice Awards. Please do have a read through before entering.

Award Name Channel Service Provider of the Year

Eligibility Is this the Award for you?

This award is aimed at independent firms (NOT IT VENDORS) that provide a service TO the UK channel. IT vendors entering this category will be moved by the judges to a more appropriate category if possible. This can be in the form of support (both technical and general), marketing, training, recruitment, product/price sourcing and finance.

Channel Service Provider of the Year

This award is ONLY open to organisations that can call themselves a channel service provider. Their business has to consist primarily of services TO CHANNEL CUSTOMERS, whether this is tech support, marketing, price sourcing and finance for example. Entries can cover services to enterprise, mid-market or SMB markets.

Entry Criteria: Your entry should be based around the following criteria, which is what the judges will be using as a basis to score each entry. Please do not address each point separately and just base the entry on these points alone -try to add some colour/personality and just incorporate them into your entry as you see fit. Also bear in mind that the judges are accepting PDF or multi-media entries, but at the very least please make sure your entries that are easy to read and digest if in plain text format.

• Outline why you are entering this category, tell us briefly about your company, your business model and what makes you qualify to be described as a true channel services provider to the UK channel - use numbers and stats to show growth and the actual percentage of your business that goes through the channel. Also ensure the entry is relevant to the UK market.
• What new products, services and support have you supplied to the channel in the last 12 months, with evidence of the impact those changes have had on your partners (stats, figures) and describe why your company stands out from the competition.
• Describe how you have assisted your channel partners to actively increase their business over the past year - this can be through additional investment, headcount and training - please use facts and figures relevant to the UK market.
• Pick a particularly successful partner (reseller/VAR/MSP/Integrator) case study from the past year (ie a partner that has seen their business grow as a result of your partnership) and explain to the judges why it was such a success, how you helped that partner succeed and ensure partner testimonials back up the case study.
• Company ethos - how important is the channel throughout your company, how do you encourage staff to ‘think channel' get the best out of your partnerships?

Entries are actively encouraged to include hard facts and figures - all of which will be kept strictly confidential and used for judging purposes only. All programmes and initiatives must have been new or further developed in 2020 to qualify. Vendors are actively encouraged to enter for more than one award if they so wish, and if the category is relevant to their business.

NOTE: The Coronavirus Pandemic has had an impact globally on companies' performances - please do feel free to mention how the crisis has affected your strategy/goals in the UK and how you have innovated around that, but bear in mind we also have special Covid-19 related categories this year ONLY.

Maximum word count: 1,000. Please read the criteria before submitting your entry. Relevant partner testimonials and supporting materials are welcome but must not exceed the 1,000 maximum word count.

Channel Achievement Award

This award is made solely by the Editor of CRN and does not involve the judging panel. But any suggestions on someone who has made a significant contribution to the industry over the past 27 years would be welcomed!

Channel Chief of the Year

We are asking resellers to submit the name of a vendor channel chief that they feel has done a particularly outstanding job over the past year (between July 2019 and July 2020) and deserve recognition. Entries need to be a paragraph of between 200 and 300 words, outlining who the person is, which vendor they work for, and what they have done for their channel partners to deserve this award. The most deserving and most nominated candidate will be selected by the CRN editorial team and will not involve the judging panel. Please send entries to Doug.Woodburn@incisivemedia and [email protected].

To enter the Channel Awards, click here. Deadline is 10 August 2020.