Picture won the 2006 prize in recognition of its vision, commitment to its objectives and the training in place to ensure effective leadership principles are implemented throughout the company. In addition, Picture’s commitment to excellence and its drive for improvement across the entire business through effective leadership, were key factors in its success within the category.

As an energetic and inspiring company Picture is keen to support organisations from any industry that demonstrate a ‘best in class’ philosophy. Picture’s aim is to develop its people and partnerships to deliver innovative processes and exceptional customer service. We believe in supporting other organisations that share this ethos.

Catalyst’s mission is to ‘Enable Results’ for clients by accelerating the rate of performance improvements, and extending the deployment of world-class best business practice.

We provide training and consultancy solutions covering a range of business improvement activities. Our primary focus is with Six Sigma and Lean, Process Management and Measurement, Culture Change and Business Excellence.

Catalyst has seen huge benefits gained by organisations focussing on managing and improving their processes, from simple problem solving through to major Lean and Six Sigma roll-outs. Whilst many of these techniques were developed in large, manufacturing organisations, Catalyst has also been very successful in adapting them to smaller organisations and into a service/transactional environment.

The transition from a function led to a process led organisation is one many organisations find daunting but the EFQM framework facilitates this journey. Catalyst hopes that by sponsoring this award we can encourage organisations to focus on understanding how their organisation works, shine a light on where it can be improved and reap the significant benefits of process improvement.

Our mission is “Excellence in Environmental and Manufacturing Solutions in Europe”.

The Business Excellence Model continues to serve as a powerful improvement tool and provides the basis of our performance management system alongside our ISO9000: 2000 and ISO 14001 Quality and Environmental management systems. It also helps identify ‘Best Practice’ both within the Manufacturing sector and beyond.

In manufacturing, customers and legislative bodies throughout the world are becoming increasingly “Environmentally Conscious” and we believe that environmentally friendly business practices will provide an important competitive advantage within the marketplace.

We aim by our sponsorship of this award to encourage organisations throughout Wales to integrate environmentally sound business practices into their drive for business excellence and continuous improvement.

The delivery of Quality Services to our citizens is our top priority and believe that the Wales Quality Centre training programme for EFQM assessors will contribute to any organisation’s improvement programme. Assessors who are well trained will contribute to this programme by being able to robustly assess the performance of the organisation, learning alternative evaluation techniques, being able to construct and feedback key messages from the assessments that will help the executive team to drive improvement throughout their organisation.

We hope that by sponsoring this Training Programme we can play a part in encouraging organisations in Wales to implement the EFQM Excellence Model as part of their drive and commitment to continuous improvement.’

ScottishPower recognises the crucial role quality plays in business and is delighted to continue its support for the Wales Quality Award.

As a company we manage regulated and competitive businesses in the UK.

ScottishPower has a long involvement with initiatives focussed on continual improvement and recognises the value our customers put on quality of service. We firmly believe that quality is a key element of our strategy in exceeding customer expectations and improving our
business.

The Wales Quality Award plays an important role in helping organisations to analyse their operations in order to improve their business.

ScottishPower's continued support for the Award is
founded on a desire to encourage and nurture quality business and service throughout Wales.

Hyder Consulting is a leading international consultancy offering a multi-disciplinary engineering, environmental and management services throughout the world. However, our local office structure enables us to provide our clients with the knowledge and understanding of local issues that they would expect. Our diverse workforce and multidisciplinary nature of our organisation enable us to provide integrated and dedicated teams to drive projects from inception to completion.

Over the last 20 years Hyder Consulting has played a leading or supporting role in many of the major infrastructure projects that have shaped a new Wales. As a consequence we have extensive experience of delivering high value, commercial, financial and technical expertise in a timely and cost effective manner. We work with our clients to address economic, social and environmental issues to enable them to deliver sustainable solutions that also offer best value.

We are committed to providing holistic solutions that are focussed upon both the client’s and the local community needs, and to ensuring that we work in partnership with all stakeholders to provide them the best value in terms of sustainable, imaginative and practical solutions. We were delighted to have been awarded last year’s prize for “Sustainable Development” in recognition of the real and sustainable benefits we deliver to our customers.

These benefits can only be delivered by our most valuable asset – our people. We therefore place great emphasis on the recruitment, development and wellbeing of our staff. Our journey towards Business Excellence has lead to tangible improvements not only for our people but also across all aspects of our business including our products and customer satisfaction. As a Partner we seek to encourage other organisations to reap similar rewards by participating in the Wales Quality Awards 2007.

Dwr Cymru Welsh Water’s focus as a not-for-profit company without shareholders is solely to deliver what customers want – quality services whilst keeping bills as low as possible, and a better environment.

Since 2001 Dwr Cymru Welsh Water has been owned by Glas Cymru, and returns financial surpluses to customers in the form of a ‘customer dividend’, and in additional improvements to services. The company is investing £1.2 billion in its water and sewerage network between 2005 and 2010.

And over the next ten years the company will help to deliver more progress to make our beaches the best in Europe – as well as making our rivers and waterways even cleaner.

Dwr Cymru Welsh Water is rated in the top quartile of best performing water and sewerage companies in England and Wales.

Through our sponsorship of this award we hope to highlight the importance of demonstrating excellence in customer service.