Three finalists and a win at the inaugural Utility Awards

The inaugural Utility Awards were held in Melbourne on Tuesday 27 October. Three of our team were finalists, across three categories, and Cohen Robinson came away with Rising Star in Utilities.

The awards are run by Utility Magazine and Prime Creative Media, across categories spanning energy, water and waste. These three recognise individuals rather than companies, which is a useful distinction. Utilities work is done by people who learn a portfolio well enough to spot what is wrong with it.

What links the three nominations is the principle this business was built on. A client should be able to point at any charge and see exactly what it pays for, which is why ours is written into the authority every client signs.

Adem Ali, Utility Person of the Year

Adem is our founder and managing director. He started Utilizer nine years ago on the view that a client should always know what their adviser earns, and then built the business to prove it could be done that way. The category drew its field from network businesses, water utilities and service providers across the country, which is the company a nine-year-old advisory firm does not usually keep.

Cohen Robinson, Rising Star in Utilities

Cohen won. He is our director of strategic growth and operations, and he joined straight out of university. In the seven years since, he has shaped a great deal of how this business runs, from the way we validate every client invoice to the rollout of the Empower Portal to our clients in April, which gives them direct visibility of their contracts, usage and market position. Most of it started as his idea.

It was a big field. Nine finalists made the Rising Star shortlist, drawn from energy, water, waste and facilities management.

Chris Koulianos, Customer Experience Person of the Year

Chris is our lead client manager, and he leads the renewal and retention work. His category recognises the person a client actually deals with, which is the right place to put it. Most of what a client experiences is not the strategy. It is whether somebody picked up, whether the bill was checked, and whether the renewal was started early enough to matter.

Being shortlisted in a first-year field this strong is a result in itself, and we are proud of all three. Our thanks to Utility Magazine and Prime Creative Media for putting the programme together, and congratulations to the rest of the field.

A well deserved result for the team.