Members of the EPS team with the Deloitte Best Managed Companies certificate; Neil OToole, Joanne Treacy, Katie Murphy and Denis Buckley.
EPS has been named as one of Ireland’s ‘Best Managed’ companies in the Deloitte Best Managed Companies Awards Programme. The company, which demonstrated superior business performance for the second year running, was recognised at an awards gala dinner in Dublin on 4th March. The awards event in Dublin’s Convention Centre marked the eighth year of the Deloitte Best Managed Companies Awards Programme, in association with Barclays Bank Ireland. The awards were attended by over 800 people from the Irish business community. Frank Ryan, chair of the independent judging panel, was the keynote speaker on the night.
The Deloitte Best Managed Companies Awards Pro-gramme, in association with Barclays Bank Ire-land, recognises indigenous Irish companies across Ireland which are operating at the highest levels of business performance. The network of 115 Best Managed Companies now employs over 47,000 peo-ple around the country and has a combined turnover of almost €10bn. Recognising the importance of overseas markets for Irish com-panies, the Best Managed Companies also recorded an average growth in export sales of 161% over the last three years.
Commenting on the award, Patrick Buckley, Deputy Managing Director at EPS, said: “This is a very impor-tant award for the EPS team. The evaluation process required in order to maintain our Deloitte ‘Best Managed’ company status extended far beyond financial results, challen-ging all aspects of our business. To meet these high standards and to be retained as a Best Managed Company is testament to the hard work and dedi-cation of the entire EPS team. It is our intention to continue to use best prac-tices throughout the org-anisation going forward.”
EPS was one of 70 companies to re-qualify for the Deloitte Best Managed status. Companies that apply for requalification must satisfy the programme eligibility criteria and go through a requalification review process in order to ensure that the companies continue to uphold the Best Managed standard. The group’s requalification status means that it not only got nominated and won the award in 2015, but managed to retain the required business practices to be granted the award two years in a row.
Managing Partner of Deloitte and judging panel member, Brendan Jennings commented: “Congratu-lations to all the 2016 winners. All the companies here tonight are at the end of a long process of evaluation, which makes their Best Managed desig-nation even more rewar-ding and valuable as a marketing tool for their business. It is clear that these companies make an invaluable contribution to the Irish economy – employing 47,000 people and generating turnover of €10bn.”
Sasha Wiggins, CEO of Barclays Bank Ireland, added: “Each of the com-panies being celebrated today have demonstrated their ability to apply best practice management across a wide range of business areas – something we have witnessed first-hand as the lead sponsor of the programme for the third year in a row. It has been a pleasure to mentor and support the manage-ment teams of these companies over the past few weeks and months and on behalf of everyone at Barclays, I would like to congratulate them on this wonderful achievement.”