Zen Internet Wins an 'Oscar'

Zen Internet logo

Zen Internet won the Growth Strategy of the Year Award at the recent finals of The National Business Awards (Regional Finals) held on 22 July. Zen was also recognised as a finalist in the Small to Medium Sized Business Award category.

The National Business Awards, sponsored by Orange, have been recognised by The Chancellor of the Exchequer as "the UK's Business Oscars", and were launched three years ago to reward and recognise the importance of both national and regional business excellence. It is the first programme to engage FTSE100s and blue chip companies with SMEs and new ventures.

Ian Buckley, marketing manager at Zen Internet, said: "We are delighted to win this award. Once again the hard work and dedication of the entire team at Zen Internet has received the recognition it deserves."

Zen has been concentrating on increasing its workforce over the last few months. Such is the success of the ISP that it has outgrown its existing premises and a purpose built new office is being planned to house the ever-growing company. The company's plans to double in size by the end of the year may have to be placed on hold as recruitment is currently proving to be a bigger challenge than usual, with vacancies its accounts departments. This is the first time the company has experienced recruitment problems and is keen to solve it as soon as possible so that its growth plans can go back on track.

"The only way to continue our success and to achieve our goal of becoming the leading ISP in the UK is to continue to recruit the highest calibre of staff. We are always on the look out for experienced individuals and those that are motivated to learn," said Richard Tang, managing director, Zen Internet.

He continued: "We currently have over 30,000 customers in the UK and win approximately 2,000 new customers per month. In order to maintain our excellent levels of customer service and technical support, we need to rapidly expand our existing team."

As a provider of Internet services to both home and business users, Zen currently has over 90 employees across all areas of the business, such as technical support, technical development, customer services and sales. The company has doubled in size this year alone and it hopes to have over 200 employees by December 2004.

This year has been hugely successful for the company. In addition to its rapid growth, the company currently has also received a number of prestigious awards that recognise its success. It has received a place in the top 50 of The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 that lists Britain's most dynamic unquoted companies and a top ten place in Deloitte & Touche's annual Technology Fast 50 Awards. These awards track the growth rates of technology companies in seven regions in the UK and Ireland and recognise leaders in the telecommunications, hardware, software and biotechnology industries.