National Business Excellence Awards 2008 gains momentum

“National Business Excellence Awards” have gained recognition in the business world as one of the prestigious awards schemes that takes into consideration many aspects in selecting awardees.

Applications for National Business Excellence Awards 2008 are now issued at the secretariat of the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka. So far about 50 high ranking Sri Lankan companies have applied for the competition.

NBEA is designed to recognise the business organisations that make a significant contribution to the socio-economic development of the country adopting exemplary business practices. The NBEA is a unique national awards scheme in the sense it evaluates the overall performance of the business organisations and selects the cream of the businesses in the country for awards.

NBEA uses a set of special criteria that will help maintain its high standards in selecting awardees.

Selection criteria goes well beyond the balance sheet results. Instead it considers the indicators such as financial stability, steady growth, balance business portfolio, growth of value addition, performance against the industry, width and depth of the global market, excellence in product and process innovation, acquisition of high impact knowledge through direct investment and otherwise, capital investment and other initiatives to create capacity for future growth, successful implementation of business practices in performance management, successful institutionalisation of corporate governance and successful institutionalisation of corporate social responsibility.

NBEA has categorised the business organisations into 14 sectors vis-…-vis: Agriculture, Plantation and Livestock, Manufacturing, Infrastructure, Construction, Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Hospitality, ICT & Media Services, Trading, Gem & Jewelry, Healthcare Related Services, Printing and Related Services and Specialised Banking.

Applications will be evaluated by a panel of technical experts in the first stage with site visits at the second stage.

Final evaluation is done by a panel of judges headed by Dr. Uditha Liyanage, Director of Postgraduate Institute of Management with M. R. Prelis, Company Director, Claus Astrup, Senior Country Economist, World Bank, Prof. Lakshman R Watawala, President, Society of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka (CMA) and Prof. David Evans, Visiting Lecturer, Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM) as other members.

Any organisation that has been engaged in business activities and having final accounts duly certified by auditors for last 3 years are qualified to apply for the NBEA.

Commenced in 2004 as the NBEA 2004, the National Business Excellence Awards has gained high recognition among the business community as a prestigious national awards scheme mainly due to the very high professional standards maintained in evaluating the applications.