Connect Childcare announced as awards finalist

Connect Childcare has been shortlisted for the Market Gravity Innovation Award at the 2015 Lloyds Bank National Business Awards.

Burnley based Connect Childcare specialises in creating nursery management software to ease the administrative burden on nursery staff whilst helping them to improve their partnership with parents.

Its latest innovative development, ParentZone, is an app which uses smartphone and tablet technologies to enable parents to interact with nursery staff and view their children’s achievements and activities in a Facebook style timeline at any time of day or night and wherever they are. Over 15,000 parents have downloaded the ParentZone app since it was launched in March.

Going up against other finalists, Connect Childcare will compete for the prestigious award, with the winner being revealed at the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards gala dinner held on 10 November at Park Lane’s Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

“This is a fantastic accolade for everyone involved with Connect Childcare,” said CEO Chris Reid. “Being up against some household names in the competition shows how tough it was to get to this stage but we are really looking forward to meeting the judges and showcasing our innovative product to them. We are delighted that our hard work and innovation has been recognised at a national level and are excited about meeting the other finalists at the awards ceremony.”

An all encompassing range of industries are represented in the shortlists for this year’s awards, with companies from recruitment and children’s clothing, to pet food and online marketing being selected for the chance to win a coveted Lloyds Bank National Business Award. The scale of the finalists is just as varied, with companies turning over less than a million pounds to over £25 million, employing 20 people or over 70,000 people.

Tom Broughton, programme director of the National Business Awards said: “The quality and range of this year’s entries exceed even those of last year, which is no mean feat. The draw of being involved with the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards has seen companies from all kinds of industries submit applications, which have been narrowed down using our thorough and comprehensive scoring system. We are now looking forward to the next step in the judging process and meeting some of the finalists face-to-face.” Finalists were chosen from the hundreds of businesses that entered or were nominated across 18 award categories. They will now prepare for live presentations to expert judges who will decide the overall winners that will be revealed at the awards ceremony on 10 November.