Reflections on the UKIT Awards: Zen Internet's Martin O'Donnell

Zen Internet's Martin O'Donnell says being named Best Services Company of the Year shows how far the firm has come over the past 20 years

Caption: (Left to right) Stephen K Amos, senior account manager Mark Thornton, service manager, managed services, Nitish Baliga and Computing sponsorship sales manager Jon Robson

Zen Internet won the 2015 UK IT Industry Award for Best Services Company of the Year, and Computing recently caught up with the managing director of its corporate and mid-market division, Martin O'Donnell, to find out what the victory meant for the internet services firm, and what it thought about the Awards process.

Zen's UK IT Industry Awards entry focused on its relationship with its customers. It included testimonies from customers who said the company delivered a level of service that they had "never before experienced", and others who praised the "relaxed, personal approach" of Zen's staff. The judges were left with the firm impression that Zen truly does see IT as being "down to more than products and services".

Despite having a lot of pride in its entry, O'Donnell admitted the Zen team was still surprised it won.

"We were completely stunned," said O'Donnell. "We entered the Awards because they are very credible in the IT industry, but we weren't confident that we were going to win."

This modesty perhaps reflects the fact that the 20-year-old Rochdale-based company is still a relatively small player in the enterprise IT services market.

"Zen as a business has won a lot of awards over the years, most of which have been focused around the consumer part of what we do," said O'Donnell. "While that's still very important to us - we have a very big base of residential customers - this award acknowledged, from our point of view, that we are a credible, experienced IT services company as well as that award-winning ISP business, and I think it shows that we as a business have evolved."

So what did the Zen team think about the judging day, which took place back in September at the Madejski Stadium, home of Reading Football Club.

"The first thing was, our representatives were amazed at the size of [the judging day]," said O'Donnell. "They went down on the train to Reading, and the taxi driver already knew where they were going to because there were that many people going there."

Despite the scale of the judging day, O'Donnell's team found the process surprisingly simple.

"We found the awards presentation very relaxed, and the judges were professional - not there to catch us out," he said.

"Judges wanted the organisation to present itself in its best light, so the questions that were asked were probing and detailed, but weren't trick questions. So our view was that we were treated very fairly.

"We understood why we'd done well. The entire process was transparent and it was easy to understand what the judges were trying to get out of us. We were able to deliver our message and get it across without it feeling like it was some sort of game where you're not quite sure what the other side is looking [for]."

O'Donnell said the Zen team found the whole process rewarding.

‘They said the questions were challenging, but not unfair. It was an enjoyable day, and even if we hadn't won, they got a lot of value out of the process."

• The Computing/BCS UK IT Industry Awards 2016 will take place in November