Public vote reaches fever pitch on TELCA deadline day

A tightly fought battle ushered in the end of public voting yesterday in the first ever TELCA awards for Consultancy of the Year in the SME and I&C sectors. Hundreds […]

A tightly fought battle ushered in the end of public voting yesterday in the first ever TELCA awards for Consultancy of the Year in the SME and I&C sectors.

Hundreds of votes from business energy users flooded in with a rush just before the vote closed yesterday at 5pm, when the shortlist for the two categories of Consultancy of the Year had been settled with ten apiece.

The Energy Live Consultancy Awards (TELCA) are an exciting new awards programmed supported by headline sponsor npower highlighting the best energy consultancies in Britain. In its inaugural year it has 12 categories including best customer service and most trusted all to be judged by a panel of well known energy managers who will create a shortlist to go infront of an independent judging panel.

But two awards, I&C and SME Consultancy of the Year were shortlisted purely on a public vote and it seems there must have been a lot of last minute lobbying as yesterday just before the polls closed there was a flurry of voting. In the end Maxim Eyes and alfa energy appear to be the all-rounders, comfortably making it into both SME and I&C shortlists for Consultancy of the Year. E&CM and Inenco Direct also got into both categories.

In the SME category, Make It Cheaper and alfa energy look to be the front-runners after getting 27.4% and 15.5% of the vote respectively. Also in the top ten are Energycentric, Utilities Direct, Select Energy, Utilitywise and Catalyst Commercial.

Strong contenders for Consultancy of the Year in the I&C category are Schneider Electric and Amber Energy, while other firms jockeying for position are Utilyx, ESP, Inspired Energy and family-run business CUB.

Geoff Curran, Commercial Director of Energy Live News which is running the awards said: “There was a flood of votes just before the deadline and the I&C category in particular was so close, literally 0.1% made the difference between going through to the top 10. It’s clear the idea of a public vote has struck a chord with the audience out there and many of the consultancies have been getting their vote out, it’s great and exactly what we were hoping for.”

However the final titles will be awarded by an independent judging panel of energy end users and energy experts, headed by ex-M&S energy manager Mervyn Bowden. Joining him are trade body Energy UK’s chief executive Angela Knight, Sarah Nottidge of Associated British Foods and Tesco’s James Summerbell.

The judges will look at the public vote, taking into account the number of clients firms have – to make it fair for smaller firms which may have proportionally better feedback from their clients.

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