Based on votes by business leaders in and around Lesotho, office automation company, Itec Lesotho, has won a Century International Quality ERA gold award for excellence in leadership and business management, quality and excellence, technology innovation and expansion, and business and brand name prestige.
The award will be presented to Itec Lesotho in Geneva, Switzerland in April 2009.
The Century International Quality ERA awards are made in association with Business Initiative Directions (BID), whose founder, Jose E Prieto, established the QC100 module of Total Quality Management (TQM).
TQM has been a global standard for quality management since the 1940s and is based on the participation of all members of an organisation in improving processes, products, services, and the culture in which they work.
The QC100 TQM model aims for long-term success by focusing on customer satisfaction - providing guidelines to business leaders for improving processes and systems. The model forms the basis of the criteria for the Century International Quality ERA awards.
“We had no idea we were in the running for the award, as BID independently polls companies for their votes about their suppliers or business partners,” says Lesotho Itec owners, Marco Martins and Rico Jardim. “Of course, this makes the award that much more gratifying, because it means not only that our customers voted for us but that the people they talk to also voted for us.”
BID ratifies the votes from business leaders against information about nominee companies obtained from the media, advertising agencies, consulting firms, embassies, national chambers of commerce, special trade fairs, and publications in written and digital format.
Winning companies receive coverage in 26 international printed, online, and electronic media all oriented towards change and market trends, with an emphasis on innovation, growing brands, technology, new products, business news and finance.
“Itec Lesotho's achievement is all the more remarkable because companies from 74 countries were nominated for this year's awards,” says Itec Distribution CEO, Philip Perkins.
“It's extremely gratifying for the whole group that an independent, global, quality-focused organisation has identified one of our offices as one of the best in the world.”
Although Itec Lesotho was established less than 18 months ago, it quickly became the market leader because, Jardim believes, “we offer solutions rather than machines. For example, we were able to save the Independent Electoral Commission millions of rands by pointing out to them that outsourcing their printing was unnecessary if they got the right machines in-house.
”Also, I had the entire technical team on standby, on site, during the elections in Lesotho. That kind of commitment motivated the IEC to recommend us to corporate clients such as the University of Lesotho, Central Bank of Lesotho, United Nations, Min of Education, American Embassy and Government Printing which are all currently looking at installing Itec production printing systems.
Martins says: “For such a small and poor country, Lesotho has given us the opportunity to strive as market leaders in Lesotho.” Furthermore, he says that as a new player in the market, Itec Lesotho has become the market leader in production systems as it has five production systems in the field, four of which are colour systems.
Itec Lesotho ensures its team of 14 is customer rather than target-driven. “We all realise that it's better to know about a problem and fix it,” they say.
For further information about Itec, please visit www.itecgroup.co.za.
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