War in Ukraine | Rescheduling The 2022 UK National Innovation Awards Competition

Dear Colleagues,

After consultation with our judging and advisory panels, the Invitation Committee for the 2022 edition of the UK National Innovation Awards competition have decided to reschedule this year’s awards programme to the autumn.

Reason For This Decision

The UK National Innovation Awards is an annual international open competition. Technology innovators worldwide are invited to enter.

Under this year’s theme of A.I. Transforming… over 300 technology companies in more than 50 countries were invited to enter. This includes many companies based in Ukraine and neighbouring countries.

As a show of solidarity with our friends and colleagues in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region, we will move the 2022 competition timeline to hopefully enable them to participate.

Below is the new 2022 competition timeline:

Open for entries: Monday 6th June 2022
Early-bird Finalist Fee discount ends: Thursday 1st September 2022
Deadline for entry form submissions: Wednesday 28th September 2022
Deadline for Our Innovation Video submissions: Wednesday 12th October 2022
Shortlisting for the Finals begins: Friday 14th October 2022
Category finalists announced and Finalist Fees invoiced: Tuesday 18th October 2022
Finals judging commences: Wednesday 19th October 2022
Deadline for Finalist Fee payment: Thursday 17th November 2022
Finals judging ends: Wednesday 23rd November 2022
Gala Webcast: Wednesday 30th November 2022

Shortly, we will be refreshing the Entry Brochure and Entry Form to reflect the new dates.

I am available to answer any questions you may have regarding the above. Please email me back.

We hope we can count on your support for this year’s edition of these important awards.

Kind regards,

Jon Snow

Chair of the Invitation Committee

Stream 1: A.I. Transforming… Contact Centre Operations

Judges for this award stream will be mainly UK-based chiefs, directors and heads of Contact Centre, Customer Service, and Customer Operations. We may also have end-user in-house specialists in automation, AI, and RPA.

Each category will have 30-50 volunteer judges from major end-user brands. Our judging faculty does not include B2B vendors or consultants.

Our judges are interested in the business outcomes that innovations deliver. The categories below reflect the judges’ most desired business outcomes.

For each of the categories below there is a maximum of 10 entrants, from which up to 5 finalists will be chosen by the shortlisting panel.

We are seeking innovations that apply A.I. capabilities to deliver the stated business outcome:

Cat.01/01: Assisting Agents In Realtime To Improve Speed, Accuracy and CX
Cat.01/02: Freeing Agents From Repetitive Manual Processes
Cat.01/03: Answering Simple Customer Enquiries Quickly 24/7 365
Cat.01/04: Triaging and Routing Customers To The Best Agent
Cat.01/05: Automating Customer Identity Verification

Stream 2: A.I. Transforming… Customer Experience

Judges for this award stream will be mainly UK-based chiefs, directors and heads of Customer Experience. We may also have end-user in-house specialists in automation, AI, and RPA.

Each category will have 30-50 volunteer judges from major end-user brands. Our judging faculty does not include B2B vendors or consultants.

Our judges are interested in the business outcomes that innovations deliver. The categories below reflect the judges’ most desired business outcomes.

For each of the categories below there is a maximum of 10 entrants, from which up to 5 finalists will be chosen by the shortlisting panel.

We are seeking innovations that apply A.I. capabilities to deliver the stated business outcome:

Cat.02/01: Capturing Real-time Customer Emotions and Cognitive Responses
Cat.02/02: Analysing High Volume Data For Actionable Insights
Cat.02/03: Enabling Personalised Pro-active Customer Support
Cat.02/04: Learning and Predicting Customer Behaviours
Cat.02/05: Identifying The Root Causes of Customer Experience Failures

Stream 3: A.I. Transforming… Marketing

Judges for this award stream will be mainly UK-based chiefs, directors and heads of Marketing. We may also have end-user in-house specialists in automation, AI, and RPA.

Each category will have 30-50 volunteer judges from major end-user brands. Our judging faculty does not include B2B vendors or consultants.

Our judges are interested in the business outcomes that innovations deliver. The categories below reflect the judges’ most desired business outcomes.

For each of the categories below there is a maximum of 10 entrants, from which up to 5 finalists will be chosen by the shortlisting panel.

We are seeking innovations that apply A.I. capabilities to deliver the stated business outcome:

Cat.03/01: Personalising Recommendations or Offers
Cat.03/02: Personalising Email Campaign Copy and Subject Lines
Cat.03/03: Optimising Social Listening
Cat.03/04: Personalising Chatbot Customer Support
Cat.03/05: Analysing The ROI of Content Assets

Stream 4: A.I. Transforming… Sales

Judges for this award stream will be mainly UK-based chiefs, directors and heads of Sales. We may also have end-user in-house specialists in automation, AI, and RPA.

Each category will have 30-50 volunteer judges from major end-user brands. Our judging faculty does not include B2B vendors or consultants.

Our judges are interested in the business outcomes that innovations deliver. The categories below reflect the judges’ most desired business outcomes.

For each of the categories below there is a maximum of 10 entrants, from which up to 5 finalists will be chosen by the shortlisting panel.

We are seeking innovations that apply A.I. capabilities to deliver the stated business outcome:

Cat.04/01: Assisting Sales Reps To Achieve Greater Conversion and Deal Size
Cat.04/02: Freeing Sales Reps From Repetitive Manual Processes
Cat.04/03: Personalising Pricing and Up-sell, Cross-sell Opportunities
Cat.04/04: Improving The Accuracy of Sales Forecasts
Cat.04/05: Automating Early Sales Conversations and Lead Qualifying

Stream 5: A.I. Transforming… Human Resources

Judges for this award stream will be mainly UK-based chiefs, directors and heads of Human Resources, People, and Talent. We may also have end-user in-house specialists in automation, AI, and RPA.

Each category will have 30-50 volunteer judges from major end-user brands. Our judging faculty does not include B2B vendors or consultants.

Our judges are interested in the business outcomes that innovations deliver. The categories below reflect the judges’ most desired business outcomes.

For each of the categories below there is a maximum of 10 entrants, from which up to 5 finalists will be chosen by the shortlisting panel.

We are seeking innovations that apply A.I. capabilities to deliver the stated business outcome:

Cat.05/01: Generating and Analysing Realtime Employee Feedback
Cat.05/02: Personalising Employee Development and Coaching
Cat.05/03: Optimising Workforce Management and Planning
Cat.05/04: Freeing HR Staff From Repetitive Manual Processes
Cat.05/05: Streamlining The New Hire Journey

Steam 6: A.I. Transforming… Customer Journeys

Below are 10 categories focussing on the customer journeys within industry verticals.

Judges for each category will be UK-based customer-centric chiefs, directors and heads from major brands within the relevant industry vertical. Job titles will include customer experience, marketing, sales, customer service, customer contact, customer insight, and customer operations. We may also have end-user in-house specialists in automation, AI, and RPA.

Each category will have 30-50 volunteer judges from major end-user brands. Our judging faculty does not include B2B vendors or consultants, with the exception of the judges for the SaaS Customer Journey category.

For each of the categories below there is a maximum of 10 entrants, from which up to 5 finalists will be chosen by the shortlisting panel.

We are seeking innovations that apply A.I. capabilities to help transform the customer journey of the stated business vertical:

Cat.06/01: A.I. Transforming… the Insurance Customer Journey
Cat.06/02: A.I. Transforming… the Banking & Finance Customer Journey
Cat.06/03: A.I. Transforming… the Government & Public Sector Customer Journey
Cat.06/04: A.I. Transforming… the e-Commerce Customer Journey
Cat.06/05: A.I. Transforming… the Retail Customer Journey
Cat.06/06: A.I. Transforming… the Hospitality Customer Journey
Cat.06/07: A.I. Transforming… the Travel & Tourism Customer Journey
Cat.06/08: A.I. Transforming… the Education Customer Journey
Cat.06/09: A.I. Transforming… the Healthcare Customer Journey
Cat.06/10: A.I. Transforming… the SaaS Customer Journey

The UK National Innovation Awards (the Nationals) were launched in 2016 by Directors Club United Kingdom to recognise technology innovations and their impact on customer experience, operational performance and employee engagement.

The Nationals are open to all technology developers worldwide, as long as their solution or product is available for purchase in the UK (directly or via resellers).

Past winners and finalists are celebrated permanently on our Honours Board.

Uniquely, our Judging Faculty is drawn from the leadership of the functions and divisions pertinent to each award category. Judges are also members of Directors Club United Kingdom.

We do not recruit judges from consultancies, suppliers, resellers or technology vendors.

The UK National Innovation Awards competition has been an all-digital process long before the pandemic forced all events to become virtual.

Back in 2016, we wanted to reinvent the cost-model for award programme participation, and at the same time minimise the environmental impact associated with traditional award-giving.

Our end-to-end, all-digital process not only produces as-near-as-possible no environmental impact, it also removes all the costs typically associated with award-giving, including category entry, gala prizing giving attendance, travel and accommodation, and time out of the office.

Our 2020 competition only suffered a minor delay as the UK entered a national lockdown.