What Are You Waiting For? Register For CIO100 Right Now!

The annual CIO100 Awards program celebrates 100 organizations (and the people within them) that are using IT in innovative ways to deliver business value, whether by creating competitive advantage, optimizing business processes, enabling growth improving relationships with customers, or digitally transforming the business. Receiving a CIO100 Award enhances your reputation as a leading innovator. It generates positive PR and provides tangible, companywide recognition of the IT organisation’s hard work and accomplishments. There is a reason why it is referred to as “the Oscars of the IT industry.”

The CIO 100 awards, now in its 12th year, recognises 100 organisations for their achievements in technology innovation.

Winners are chosen by a team of external judges (many of them with intricate knowledge on the art of being a CIO) on their use of leading-edge IT practices that produce measurable results. The award is an acknowledged mark of enterprise excellence.
The Awards consist of a two-day high-energy celebration of IT excellence, marked with networking opportunities and knowledge sharing that acknowledges the mark of enterprise excellence in the region.

Why Nominate?

A CIO 100 Award is an acknowledged mark of enterprise excellence in business technology, enhancing your organization’s reputation as a leading innovator. It generates positive PR and provides tangible, companywide recognition of the IT organization’s hard work and accomplishments. Executives from the winning companies will be recognized among their peers and colleagues at the CIO 100 Awards ceremony, in Naivasha, Kenya. Organizations with innovative projects may be invited to present at the CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony,

What Do The CIO 100 Awards recognise?

What Makes A Winning Nomination?

Applications that focus on the business goals and results of the project or use of technology have a better chance of winning. Applicants must provide data and examples that support their claims of innovation and show exactly how the business value was delivered.

The most successful applications are written by the CIO or another business-oriented IT manager, with input from both business stakeholders and technical staff. Winning applications should also include narrative examples or anecdotes that illustrate the results of your project, such as descriptions of how employees work differently, how customers interact with your company in new ways, or the impact the project has had in your market.

Can Technology Vendors Apply For This Award?

Yes, but please be aware that this is not an award for IT vendors’ products. If the outcome of your submitted IT project (i.e., the business benefit) is to produce a technology product or service sold directly to IT buyers, it will be disqualified from consideration. However, if your innovative project produces an *internally* beneficial technology or service (i.e, one not designed to be sold to customers), you are welcome to apply for a CIO 100 Award. If you are an IT vendor who would like to nominate a customer or partner for a CIO 100 Award, we strongly advise you to enlist the CIO or IT project leader within the organization you wish to nominate to submit the application.

Who Can Nominate?

Anyone may nominate a company or organisation. Technology vendors and their PR representatives are also invited to submit nominations, which can be a great way to recognize your clients and their customers. The nomination must be on behalf of the customer’s project/initiative.

When nominating a vendor’s customer, you must name the customer as the nominated organisation and provide contacts at that organisation in the appropriate fields. A few pointers.

-We strongly advise that you engage the CIO and/or top project leaders at that organisation in crafting your entry.
-Make sure the entry is written from the customer’s point of view.
-You must sign off on having notified the customer of your entry prior to submitting it.

The customer will be named on the award if your entry wins.

Is There A Fee To Nominate? No. There is no fee to nominate yourself, your organisation or your partner.

How Are The CIO 100 Awards Judged?

After an initial review by CIO100 Team, the applications are evaluated and scored by four regional external judges chosen from our panel of more than 20 judges (including industry experts, academics, business executives, and former CIOs. The judging is based solely on the information submitted in this online application.

Here is the criteria.
To be selected for a CIO100 Award, you must demonstrate excellence in:
• Technology innovation: The extent to which your organisation uses/ is using IT in a new way or enabled new ways of doing business, whether internally or externally.
• Business value delivery: The measurable impact backed up by supporting data that your project or initiative has had on your organisation’s business results. CIO100 judges rate each application on the criteria measuring innovation and business value, for a possible total of 20 points. All individual scores are kept confidential and will not be released publicly, nor will they be discussed with any applicants.

What Judges Look For In A Winning Application

Complete, clearly written text about your project or use of technology, showing:
– Context of the project in the broader business or industry picture (i.e, is your company breaking new ground in your industry? Or demonstrably ahead of the pack?)
– Before and after descriptions of project impact on the business or within the IT organization
– Candour about the challenges along the way (i.e. problems solved, company cultural changes required, etc.)
– Solid metrics showing clear business value, such as ROI, increased profitability, cost savings or efficiencies, etc. (This specific information can be kept confidential and not published.)
– Personality in the writing style that engages, tells a story, shares details in a first-person voice (vs. marketing language and buzzwords)

How CIO Uses Your Information

The information you provide in your CIO100 application will be used by CIO East Africa for judging the awards and for articles on www.cio.co.ke, in our magazine or as other publicity material relating to the CIO 100 Awards.

Application information will be used for editorial purposes only, apart from contact information and vendor information, which may be used for contact purposes. If you have information about your project (such as internal metrics) that you would prefer not to be published, but which you would like us to consider as part of your application, please note this in the text box where the information appears or where asked to do so specifically in the application. Information not labeled in this way will be considered by the CIO Editor-in-Chief to be publishable.

Award Categories

The Awards Categories include Plus One Awards, Industry Awards and Main Awards:
Here are some of the Awards:
o CIO 100 CIO of the Year: This is a peer award where CIOs and the judges nominate a CIO or equivalent. One they think has excelled in managing the IT leadership function in an organisation.
o CIO100 Infrastructure Award: CIO100 honours leaders who made their mark with an imposing repertoire of frameworks built to excel. The Infrastructure special award will facilitate top IT implementation aimed at maximising returns from their IT infrastructure.
o CIO100 Green Edge Award: – CIO100 will acknowledge the Master of Technology practices that are sound, sustainable, and eco-friendly. The Green Edge Award will recognise the topmost eco-friendly IT initiative in the region.
o CIO100 Plus One Awards / Industry Awards: These are given to the leading company within a specific industry.

Marks of excellence awards depend on the applicant’s rank. The highest-ranking receive the Gold mark of recognition followed by the Silver mark, Bronze mark, and finally, the Ivory mark. Organisations with innovative projects may be invited to present at the CIO 100 Symposium.

The Application

The CIO 100 application forms contain the following:

Part I: Seeks details of the nominated project
Part II: Seeks to understand the business value of the nominated project.
Part III: Asks for information about the nominated organisation.
You can leave the website and return as many times as necessary to complete the application by bookmarking the page in your Web browser.

Do not click the “Save & Submit” button until your application is complete.

If you have started an application and cannot get back to it, contact Melissa on the following email address: melissa.dorsila@cio.co.ke.

The Event

The CIO100 Symposium and Awards Ceremony is the CIO’s most powerful regional gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. This exclusive event will be held in November at Naivasha, Kenya.

Leadership, innovation, and business strategy conversations will dominate the event. With an agenda geared towards fostering greater interaction among attendees, industry experts, and honourees, the Summit explores how ongoing digital transformation and greater experimentation with innovative ideas are changing today’s competitive business landscape. Over the course of two days, more than 200 CIOs and senior business executives will engage in thought leadership sessions, panel discussions, interactive workshops, and much more.

The symposium concludes with a gala dinner and awards ceremony recognizing CIO 100 honorees.

Contacts are tel: +254725855249 Cell: +254731814939 Email: events@cio.co.ke,cio100@cio.co.ke

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