A look behind the scenes at our Partner Event

We have been running our Partner event for almost 20 years now and it has become an important milestone in our annual calendar. For our Partners old and new, we hope it also resonates as a key event in your own calendars. 

Here is a little insight into what goes on behind the scenes when we are planning the event.

Choosing the venue

For us at Zen, choosing the venue, with a supplier that has similar values to ours, is nearly as important as the event itself. When we first came across The Slate, Coventry our interest piqued. You may have learned during your visit that it is BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rated for sustainable design, construction and operation and the hospitality business itself runs on a goal to reduce any negative impact the business may have on the environment.

Those of you familiar with our story will know that we believe business can be a force for good and we are keen to have a positive impact on people and the planet so we can play our part in creating a more sustainable future. A topic both our Founder & Chairman Richard Tang and our CEO Paul Stobart are passionate about and drive constant awareness of at Zen.

We hope you enjoyed the venue.

Planning the content

Throughout the year we listen to our Partners to understand what matters most to you all and what support you want from us. We have a Partner Experience Team that is on the pulse of what’s happening channel wide and is there to support our Partners in whatever way we can. It is these insights that help us shape our presentations for the event. This year it was clear, from a technology perspective, that we needed to update you all on the latest developments with the Zen network infrastructure including the evolution of our network, our journey to 700 and what’s happening with our data centre.

Looking at the business side of things, Paul Stobart understood that we need to address the elephant in the room – aka the cost-of-living crisis – and the incredibly difficult trading challenges we all face. Paul’s closing note addressed the strong headwinds the UK economy is facing and he touched on the unfortunate subject of all the price hikes that continue, advising us as an industry to brace ourselves for more to come.  

If you would like to recap on his musings and some useful tips for navigating these challenges, watch the recording here.

We hope you enjoyed the sessions.

Arranging the logistics (and entertainment)

Our dynamic marketing team coordinates the event, from A to Z to ensure our guests have as smooth an experience as possible and that all bases are covered. We consider ourselves fortunate to have the expertise of an inhouse photographer and videographer who captures all the detail, along with some of the fun stuff, so those not able to make it, can revisit at a later stage. We’ve packaged this up into bite size snippets so you can revisit anything you might have missed, picking out the areas of most interest to you. Links to these can be found throughout our newsletter and also on our YouTube channel here.

The same team coordinates accommodation, event timings, food and beverage offerings, and of course, the entertainment. Love it or hate it, we hope you got value out of the Jukeboxes duelling piano bar.

Choosing the award winners

Every year choosing our Partner Awards is a much discussed and debated topic internally. There are so many strong contenders and our Partner Experience Team, alongside the marketing folks and our Partner MD, Stephen Warburton, spend lots of time on the run up to the event evaluating our Partners to ensure we’ve given this careful thought and attention.

A reminder of this year’s winners:

• Partner of the year: Pinnacle
• Connectivity Partner of the year: Firstcom Europe
• Service Provider of the year: VoiceHost
• Sustainability Partner of the year: Cobalt
• New Service Provider of the year: RM Education
• New Partner of the year: Bistech

And in our Circle of Excellence Awards our partners Bellcom Communications, Myson Pages and RPS Telecom were successful this year, with RPS being the overall winner.

We hope you enjoyed the awards delivery.

Looking towards the next one!

Sam, that inhouse videographer we mentioned earlier, is now working away to edit a showreel which we will use on the run up to next year’s event. We are also collating all the feedback we received and will work through this and make any necessary adjustments to ensure the event remains as relevant as possible for our Partners as we plan towards next year’s event. If you have any feedback you’d like to share, please email: partnermarketing@zeninternet.co.uk

We hope you enjoyed the event!

To find out more about our Annual Partner Events visit our website here.