PQ Magazine Awards 2016
Photo above: L to R – Simon Deane, Graham Hambly and Prue Deane
We submitted our entry for the PQ Magazine Awards back in December for the “Accountancy College of the Year (Private Sector)” category.
In January, we were notified that we were a finalist and an invitation to the awards evening in London duly arrived!
The big day came – during the morning Simon and I attended an event in Exeter and then dashed to catch a train up to London for the PQ Awards evening which was held at the Café de Paris (for those rural folk like us who didn’t know, the Café de Paris is a west end nightclub just off Leicester Square – for us, getting frisked and getting your hand stamped were distant memories!)
The evening was hosted by PQ editor Graham Hambly with entertainment by ‘Abandoman’. After a sumptuous meal of ‘taster dishes’, the time had finally arrived for Graham to announce the award winners. David Bowie tracks playing in between each announcement added to the excitement and good humour of the evening.
Our award category announcement was here – NO, unfortunately we did not win it, but many congratulations to the organisation that did.
Were we majorly disappointed? Well, a little bit… But for us, just entering the award was a steep learning curve and to be short-listed at our first attempt was brilliant!
Also the process made us realise that Awards like this play a significant part in promoting the accountancy profession, encouraging best practice and helping to push the boundaries of creativity.
Awards entry applications are detailed, so it does make you take an in depth look at your current course delivery – what you deliver and how you deliver it. How are we doing? Could we do it better? This in turn leads to the development of an improvement programme to make things even better, in terms of delivering a high quality service that offers excellent value for money – “beyond the best, there is a better”.
It is always very revealing seeing and hearing about what other providers do. We all do things slightly differently and occasions like this provide everybody present the opportunity to learn from each other. It also focusses us on the sort of provider we want to be, the things we would like to do and also the things we don’t want to do.
Watch this space for next year’s PQ Magazine Awards. In the meantime, the AAT Awards are looming up fast, so pens at the ready again!
