On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. held a virtual red-carpet celebration showcasing supplier achievements and live-revealing winners of the 2022 Microsoft Supplier Prestige Awards, hosted by Microsoft Procurement with Tiernan Madorno, Joy Officer at Microsoft, as the emcee.
The second annual Microsoft Supplier Prestige Awards recognized suppliers that exemplify the pillars of strategy, priority, agility and modernization in the arenas of sustainability, accessibility, inclusion, representation and community. Aligning with Microsoft values, the awards seek to instill a sense of partnership across the supplier ecosystem.
Microsoft Procurement, specifically the Enterprise Supplier Programs & Outreach team, set out to highlight captivating companies among Microsoft’s robust supplier community that are driving change and providing inspiration. The ceremony kicked off with opening remarks by Microsoft Executive Vice President of Business Development, Strategy, and Ventures Chris Young. The stellar lineup of presenters included executives from Microsoft and partner companies who announced winners across 11 categories. A highlight of the day was the keynote delivery from DeEtta Jones, founder and CEO of DeEtta Jones and Associates.
“Our supplier community is special because the role they all play is critical to our success,” said Chris Capossela, chief marketing officer at Microsoft. “The past couple of years brought increased complexity and challenges to our business, and these suppliers were by our side, helping us drive our mission, meet our business goals and amplify our values.”
Meet the 2022 winners, finalists and learn about their achievements.
Showstopper of the Year: Commitment to Community: Accenture
Acting with intention within their communities to affect significant or compelling humanitarian contributions. Investment in programs, tech centers and vocational centers. Creating development opportunities. Volunteer work and advocacy. Response to major adverse community events. Nominees give their time and focus their efforts to strengthen their communities.
Finalists: Cognizant, PM Group, Robert Half/Protiviti, Sonata Software
Accenture has supported all manner of COVID-19 relief and maintained development partnerships that address complex social, economic and environmental issues in over 100 countries with over 1,900 engagements. In 2022, Accenture’s Day of Service campaign in the Metro D.C. area gathered nearly 2,000 volunteers and participated in 120 service projects.
Supplier-to-Supplier Collaboration: Intergen, EventPoint, Eventcore, Pubble, Wunderman Thompson and Sound Planning (joint recipient)
Suppliers forming direct partnerships to strengthen, evolve and grow. These companies have embraced a growth mindset, kept collaboration at the core of all their efforts, and leveraged each other’s knowledge and experience to deliver an exceptional outcome.
Finalists: AppMeetup/Lions + Tigers, HCL Technologies/Wunderman Thompson, Premier Events Corp/Perfect PlanIt
Coming together to transform a large-scale, in-person event into a successful end-to-end digital venue experience during the early COVID-19 pandemic, this team embraced a growth mindset, kept collaboration at the core of their efforts, and leveraged each other’s knowledge and experience to deliver an exceptional outcome. The commitment and collaboration shown by these dedicated creative, logistics and execution professionals were truly impressive.
Showstopper of the Year: Amplifying Accessibility: HCL Technologies
Actively eliminating barriers to accessibility through the power of data, technology and partnerships. In the areas of accessibility and disability inclusion, nominees demonstrate outstanding accessibility performance and innovation, leadership and a disability inclusive culture.
Finalists: Cognizant, Compass Group. Ernst & Young, Evia
Along with rolling out new policies to enable people with disabilities in APAC countries, HCL is running a “Be Accessible” campaign, fostering a culture of inclusiveness through road shows, digital campaigns and sessions with industry experts. They’ve also partnered with Empauwer – AI for Autism to enhance machine learning and natural language processing capabilities in artificial intelligence, to better adapt for users with autism.
Showstopper of the Year: Response & Representation: KPMG
Working to build greater diversity and inclusion over time, through advocacy, learning and development programs, and community activation. Nominees infuse diversity goals across their companies, outpace industry averages in representation and affect meaningful industry change.
Finalists: Haddad & Partners, Mindtree, Slalom, Tek Experts
KPMG is pursuing a future that’s rich with representation. In launching The Embark Scholars program, it created a multiyear internship to develop high-performing students of color into KPMG leaders of tomorrow. Through its Accelerate 2025 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program, KPMG is ensuring that more individuals from underrepresented groups choose KPMG as their employer of choice, build careers at KPMG, and advance to leadership positions within the firm and profession.
Trailblazer: Innovation & Creation: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and Delightful Communications
Driving next-generation concepts through discovery and designing innovative solutions. Lead others to think deeper, see wider, and embrace change and evolution. Create “Big Ideas” that capture interest, influence emotional response and spark action. Make innovation accessible and shine a light on new possibilities.
Finalists: Click2Cloud, Ernst & Young, Tata Consultancy Services
PWC’s commitment to innovation is bringing ocV!BE to life as a digitally enhanced entertainment experience. This one-of-a-kind, mixed-use, planned community and entertainment destination is using a plethora of IoT technology and AI to create a modern, innovative experience.
Delightful Communications supported Microsoft CMO Chris Capossela’s team with big ideas that showcase their divergent thinking, which is the cornerstone of innovation. Flipping the script from influencers to industry experts is a perfect example of using conventional ideas unconventionally.
Showstopper of the Year: Strides in Sustainability: euNetworks
Commitment to pioneering climate change initiatives and alignment with Microsoft’s Sustainability vision. Nominees’ innovative projects are scalable and repeatable, and their activities generate significant GHG reductions that are likely to be long-lived.
Finalists: Sustainability: Brillio, Infosys, Schneider Electric, United Airlines
Last year, euNetworks updated its company values to include the commitment that “We are here to make a positive impact on society and our world,” and it’s living those values. It developed and launched its Construction Carbon Tool to identify carbon hotspots, assess the incremental carbon impact of new projects, and reduce emissions across its whole supply chain. The impact of this tool is significant, as euNetworks operates across 53 cities in 17 countries.
Rookies of the Year: Leapley Construction and Humbition Consulting (individual winners)
A Microsoft supplier for three years or less, exemplify the MSP pillars of Strategy, Priority, Agility and Modernization, while amplifying Microsoft values and collaboration. Nominees have shown intention to simplify, enable ease of collaboration, and drive innovation and relevancy.
Finalists: ARG Coaching & Consulting Group, Intrinz, Ludia Consulting
Leapley Construction, a woman-owned general contracting firm, delivered a showcase campus at Microsoft’s new site, Atlantic Yards, which covers over 500,000 square feet, two towers and 16 floors.
Humbition Consulting is 100% minority-, women- and disabled-led, with the bold vision of transforming every corporation to be socially responsible and equitable. Every project it delivers is centered around emotional quotient, while bridging the gap for minorities and women in business through digital solutions.
Diverse-Owned Supplier of the Year: Troy Consulting
Third‑party certified diverse-owned suppliers that strengthen our portfolio, amplify Microsoft’s values and commitments, and exemplify the MSP Pillars of Strategy, Priority, Agility and Modernization. Have shown a tremendous ability to be agile and quickly react and respond to the unprecedented changes we all experienced, globally, this past year.
Finalists: April5 Agency, EyeMail, Lucid Consulting, OnPoint Property Management
Troy Consulting champions the cultural awareness and sensitivity critical to supporting key initiatives. Not only does it consistently help onboard other Black suppliers coming into Microsoft, but it also provides coaching for University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, and they’re active with the STARS Program that enables educational support for low income and diverse students earning degrees in engineering.
Supplier of the Year (three levels, by spend)
Focusing initiatives on diversity and inclusion, accessibility and sustainability, as well as technology and digital transformation. These companies pay close attention to efficiency gains, strategic relationships and impact to the Microsoft brand. Nominees exemplify the MSP pillars of Strategy, Priority, Agility and Modernization, and embody excellence in standards and quality.
Supplier of the Year: Small: Premier Events Corp
Finalists: 10Up, AppMeetup, Humbition Consulting, Strong Tower Consulting
By enhancing and creating inclusive digital experiences with ASL interpreters, audio descriptions and closed captioning in 28 languages – and reaching more than 82K customers and partners – the impact of Premier Event Corp’s work has been felt throughout Microsoft. Its ability to curate digital experiences that highlight thought leadership and customer stories helped introduce Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.
Supplier of the Year: Medium: Lions + Tigers
Finalists: AnRuiDigital, BDS Connected Solutions, International Financial Group (IFG), Nextant
Lions + Tigers embraces and encourages learning and staff development – from certifications to workshops to best practice framework to personal 1-on-1 coaching. It also ensures the right people are working on the right jobs with its innovative “Projects on Demand” concept that assembles a “pod” of consultants each specializing in part of a project, deploying the right people at the right time, at a moment’s notice.
Supplier of the Year: Large: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
Finalists: Allegis, Capgemini, Infosys, Wipro
TCS consistently delivers automation solutions that drive time savings and improve accuracy for Microsoft. Its global footprint across industries enables Microsoft to better serve customers, showcasing what it means to focus on strategy, impact, agility and modernization.
The day signified striving to reach new heights, celebrating successes, and drawing inspiration from those who came together to strengthen and give accolades to Microsoft’s global supplier community.
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
