Company: Achievers
Company Description: Achievers is an employee social recognition solution that helps companies recognize brilliant performance and empowers employees to choose their own rewards. Achievers designs, implements and manages employee recognition programs on our Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. Our programs include logistical support, international customer service and account management.
Nomination Category: Information Technology Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Information Technology Department of the Year

Nomination Title: Binary Experience Team

Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since January 1 2011 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Achievers developed the industry’s first single instance, multi-tenancy recognition platform which is deployed on the cloud. Our SaaS application is an integral part of our customers’ employee engagement strategy as it offers customers an easy to use web application, with extensive reporting & analytics capabilities. It also has many Web 2.0/Social features which drive user engagement & stickiness. We have consistently released software every four weeks and developed features that help our customers enhance performance within their organizations.

Although the success of Achievers has been a combined contribution from all departments, this year our nationally recognized IT Team accomplished tasks and built features that made our customers exceptionally happy, which in turn increased our revenue 108%. Our IT Team was a finalist as one of the smartest IT teams in the country and Aris Zakthinos, Achievers’ CTO, was recognized by InfoWorld as one of the 25 top CTOs.

Other highlights from the year include Achievers Growth Data Year-Over-Year:

Gross Billings: 76%
Employee Growth: 118%
Site Visit Growth: 81%
Customer Acquisition- 77%
Number of reward redemptions- 82%
Number of recognitions: 247%

IT highlights include:

Integration

Achievers integrated with Expedia, Ticket Jones, American Express Incentive Services, Benevity (point donations to over 750,000 charities), and Groupon (providing members with access to daily deals)

International Launches and Support

Achievers global footprint includes Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, North Africa, El Salvador, England, Costa Rica, Philippines, France, Netherlands and Brazil.

Pushing the Limits of Cloud Computing

All client sites are hosted on cloud-based platform servers. By using cloud computing, we are able to be very flexible and launch servers as we need them without making large upfront purchases.

Social Media Integration, Social Recognition

The future of recognition! This feature allows employees to seamlessly share recognition with the rest of their personal network through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social Recognition is a competitive advantage in the workplace; companies can build their employer brand, drive recruitment initiatives, and show the rest of the world their unique company culture.

Customer Feedback

Improve customer service through feedback! This feature allows customers to provide direct feedback about their customer experience directly to the employee who assisted them. Utilize customer feedback to drive repeat positive behaviors and align employees to the organization’s business goals. Fully customize the questions asked and the type of customer feedback that is necessary to capture.
Encourage repeat behavior by awarding points for exceptional customer experiences.

Dashboards & Analytics

All the data you need to make better decisions- now at your fingertips.
Dashboards enable human resource administrators to receive access to real-time reporting and analytics. The new Quickiew function is a high-level snapshot about the recognition program with the option of viewing different charts and diagrams with data to share with the executive team and showcase program success.

Upload a collection of supporting files and web addresses to our server to provide more background information to the judges. You may upload any number of attachments and URLs through the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above. (Do not list your URLs below.)

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:

Aris leads our IT department and has over 17 years of experience in technology development management and significant teaching experience in the same field with the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo and Cambridge University.

Dr. Zakinthinos holds an Honours Degree in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, as well as a Masters in Computer Science and a Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto. Dr. Zakinthinos completed
Post-Doctoral work at Cambridge University where he was the Naval Research Labs Post Doctoral Fellow of Secure Systems.