L-R: Stellar partners John McDermott, Grant Broadbent and Travis Barker with the AUT Excellence in Business Support Award.

Stellar Consulting, New Zealand' (BI) consultancy, was last night named a winner at the 2013 AUT Excellence in Business Support Awards dinner, held in Auckland.

The award, for the best Business Under $5m Turnover – Management Services, follows another year of rapid growth for Stellar. The Auckland-based company, which has 30 BI specialists, recently opened an office in Wellington.

Stellar Managing Director Grant Broadbent (right) with Hon Steven Joyce, Minister for Economic Development

Grant Broadbent, Stellar’s Managing Director, said: "We are really proud of this win. Excellent service is at the heart of our culture. We are delighted with this recognition for the results we get for clients and for showing what BI can achieve."

Sponsored by Image Print, the award recognises Stellar's commitment to delivering quality BI solutions to many leading New Zealand enterprises, enabling them to unlock efficiencies and opportunities from better use of information and technology.

AUT business awards judge and Associate Professor of Management at the AUT Faculty of Business and Law, Dr Coral Ingley, said: "Congratulations to Stellar for their well-deserved win. The extent to which the company has reporting and systems in place to manage their business effectively is impressive - as is their commitment to excellence in service delivery - which is reflected in their business operations and results."

Stellar Consulting Group has been selected as a finalist in the 2013 AUT Business School Excellence in Business Support Awards.

Stellar joins other finalists in the Business under $5M Turnover – Management Services category.

For Dean of AUT Business School Dr Geoff Perry, being aligned with the awards provides an important opportunity to build on the School's existing engagement with industry.

Dr Perry said: “The Excellence in Business Support Awards are regarded highly among industry, providing organisations the chance to benchmark their performance alongside others in their field. As a Business School, it’s important for us to celebrate the businesses that contribute to the economic development of our region, so that together, we can continue to add value to the changing world of business.”

The entry and evaluation process of the awards enables finalists to reflect on how effectively their organisation achieves business excellence in all key areas including leadership and planning, customer and market focus, provision of business support, evaluation and improvement, and business results.

The winners will be announced on 5 September at a black-tie gala dinner in Auckland. The AUT Business School Supreme Award will be chosen from the category winners.

Video from last year's awards:

Evaluation of all entrants will be overseen by the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation using the international Baldridge criteria. Evaluators are drawn from the Management Department of AUT Business School.

The Excellence in Business Support Awards are the only national performance measure available to New Zealand business support organisations. Now into their eighth year, the awards continue to produce high quality finalists from a large number of strong entries. The awards were set up in 2005 by Sarah Trotman, now Director of Business Relations at AUT Business School.

And so we approach the end of 2012. The world is still here, despite that little mix-up over the Mayan calendar, and summer at the beach is only a few days away.

Of course, year-end always brings lots of work - budgets to finalise, projects to complete, reports to write and holidays to cover. The Christmas break will be welcome indeed.

2012 has been a great year for Stellar. We welcomed 10 new staff, bringing our total to 25. On the "to-do" list for 2013 is a new team photo for our website!

Business Intelligence was embraced by more and more companies in 2012. We're seeing growing recognition of the importance of accurate and timely information in every aspect of business - from strategic planning to operational decision making, and we continue to evolve our product and service offerings to meet these varied needs.

It's also fair to say that at this point, despite the hype surrounding Big Data, we're not seeing a burning need for our customers to leap onto the crest of this wave. Major BI vendors, including Microsoft, SAP and Oracle, are rapidly expanding their product sets to incorporate the best and brightest innovations in the Big Data space, so our view is to let them do the hard work. By the time the opportunities offered by Big Data become a reality to most organisations, mainstream technology will be more than capable of rising to the challenge.

In the past few months, the hard work of our Stellar people has been recognised in a number of awards:

* In October, Stellar was named in the Deloitte Fast 50, as the 28th fastest growing company in New Zealand.

* In November, we were finalists in the Westpac Auckland Central Business Awards. Although the prizes went to some other great businesses, we were pretty chuffed to have been in the finals for two categories: Best Emerging Business and Excellence in Service Delivery.

* And earlier this month, Stellar was recognised as one of the 500 fastest growing technology companies (number 229 to be exact) across the entire Asia-Pacific region, in the Deloitte APAC Technology Fast 500.

With this sort of momentum, we intend to continue growing in 2013, and to bring Brighter Business Intelligence to even more New Zealand companies. Watch for the opening of a Stellar office in Wellington which, for us, means less time travelling and more time doing BI!

Thanks to all of you who have supported Stellar over the past year. It has been an honour to work with you and we look forward to seeing you tanned, refreshed and ready for success in 2013.

To close this holiday message: Blogger Timo Elliott on how Business Intelligence applies to selling Christmas Trees. Enjoy.

Best Wishes for a happy holiday season,
Grant, Travis, John and Grant

Stellar Consulting has been ranked in the Deloitte Fast 500 Asia Pacific technology companies list (at number 229).

Forty-five New Zealand firms made the list. In total, New Zealand had by far the highest representation per capita. Wellington-based businesses led the way with 18 making the index, while there were 17 from Auckland and five each from Christchurch and Hamilton - this is a top effort!

These results illustrate that for innovative Kiwi businesses the relatively small size of the New Zealand market is not a barrier to achieving stellar growth, as long as you get the business model right and remain true to your core values.

Increased digital connectivity and cloud computing have levelled the playing field for companies to achieve growth on a global scale and New Zealand companies are particularly adept at capitalising on this technology.

Being named to the Fast 500 Asia Pacific technology list is just the latest honour in a magnificent year for Stellar.

Our team have also claimed a spot in the Deloitte New Zealand Fast 50 (fastest growing NZ companies) and we made the finals in two categories of the Westpac Auckland Chamber of Commerce Business Awards.

We had a great evening last night at the Westpac Auckland Central Business Awards.

Not quite as good as winning one of the categories - but it was an honour to be named a finalist in not just one - but two - categories.

Our categories were Best Emerging Business, won by The Lovely Little Food Company, and Best Service Delivery, won by Sachie's Kitchen.

Obviously we're going to have to work on our food products for next year!

Seriously though, congratulations to all the winners and thanks to Westpac and the Auckland Chamber of Commerce.

Stellar Consulting is honoured to be in the Deloitte Fast 50 announced this evening in Auckland.

The annual list recognizes the fastest growing companies in New Zealand, and Stellar checked in at number 28, with annual revenue growth of more than 247% over the past three years.

To make the 2012 Deloitte Fast 50, companies had to achieve growth of 154%, while growth of at least 480% was required to make the top 10 on the index.

Working with a blue chip list of leading New Zealand companies and organisations, Stellar has engaged a top team of specialist consultants in Business Intelligence, and has grown rapidly from a team of five to over 25.

At Stellar, our aim has been to show the gains that can be made from better managing all the information needed in making business decisions, and to do this in a way that lets our clients choose the technology that best suits them.

The 2012 group of Deloitte Fast 50 businesses grew the New Zealand economy by $637 million in the past three years and created 1376 jobs.

For the full list of winners, visit fast50.co.nz

Thanks to all our Stellar customers and our fantastic staff who made this achievement possible.

And here are some facts and figures about the average company in the Fast 50.

A recent issue of Reseller News looked at the transition of some IT resellers from "moving boxes" to selling services - including Business Intelligence services.

But the article includes a cautionary comment from Stellar BI's Managing Director, Grant Broadbent (pictured).

"If you just drop the technology on the floor you might get some passionate soul to use it and show their fellow business unit [members] how great it is, but if that person leaves or if the business changes its focus, then a lot of those projects just end up dying. There’s a lot in BI that people don’t realise."

Paul Plester of Express Data adds that teaching users how to analyse and use data is a key part of a good Business Intelligence offering.

"That type of skill is going to be more in demand, it’s not a box move any more, there’s value add around it."

“With BI, you’re not really selling software,” says Richard Johnson,  sales director of consulting firm Cortell.

"I mean you are, of course. But you’ve got to understand [a customer's] data and then you’ve got to build the underlying data structure that you then report on and do your analysis.”