Recognising business excellence: six SMEs receive Best Managed Companies award from Deloitte

Deloitte, the SIX Swiss Exchange and Julius Baer have recognised privately held Swiss companies that are managed in an exemplary manner in four key areas of business management. According to the independent judging panel, six companies met all of the assessment criteria in this year’s competition. In addition to being highly agile, they have successfully transformed traditional strengths into modern business strategies.

The Best Managed Companies awards programme is a competition conducted by Deloitte Private in 48 countries. In a detailed assessment, it compares companies against the globally recognised Deloitte benchmark, which has been continuously enhanced in the 25 years since the programme was launched. The companies that undergo this in-depth analysis receive an independent, comprehensive appraisal of how their business compares to a global community of more than a thousand outstandingly managed companies in four key areas of business management.

Intensive assessment process

Each of the participating companies undergoes an intensive, multi-stage coaching and assessment process, during which their performance in the areas of Strategy, Capabilities and Innovation, Culture and Commitment, and Governance and Financials is analysed in detail. Only those companies that impress in all four categories have a chance of receiving the award.

“The companies recognised in this year’s competition combine several elements that are particularly crucial to success in today’s business environment. They all have a highly agile and flexible structure and a clear growth strategy. In addition, they manage to stay true to their core values without sticking to outdated traditions. The Best Managed Companies award encourages all decision-makers in the Swiss economy to shape the future of their companies with foresight, innovation and a modern management culture,” said Andreas Bodenmann, Programme Manager and Head of Deloitte Private, at the gala event held at the SIX ConventionPoint in Zurich on Thursday evening.

Role models for the Swiss economy

Four recipients of the Best Managed Companies award are family-run businesses with long traditions:

• The Swiss company Wipf Group has a history dating back more than a hundred years. With its unique blend of traditional business practices and forward-looking, innovative solutions, it has established itself as one of the leading suppliers of packaging solutions in Europe.
• Groupe Acrotec SA unites independent companies in the field of micromechanics under a shared “passion for precision” philosophy and creates efficient synergies between them. This intelligent combination of group structure and partnership offers specific governance advantages.
• The SUHNER Group impressed with its management renewal initiated by Jürg Suhner and its successful reorientation. Furthermore, the company has a clear strategic focus on its comprehensive expertise in metal tools, processes and materials and shows uncompromising dedication to developing customer solutions for producing success-critical metal components.
• Precipart, founded in 1950, impressed with its clear and successful focus. With innovative methods and its “engineer possible” approach, the family-run company provides high-tech solutions to customers worldwide in the medtech, aerospace and industrial sectors.

Two other companies also received the Best Managed Companies award:

• MindMaze, which operates in the field of digital therapy, became the first mature start-up (or “scale-up”) to be presented with the award. The company ensures strong growth and long-term agility through intelligently structured governance, supported to a large degree by a well-defined corporate culture.
• The Best Managed Companies competition does not end after a year – all of the participating businesses can undergo the assessment regularly and attend the corresponding workshops. The drinks manufacturer Capri-Sun, which is highly successful in more than 100 countries, was the first company in Switzerland to do so. It convinced the judges with its sustainability-focused growth strategy to earn the Best Managed Company award.

Deloitte committed to business location Switzerland

“Privately held companies are and will remain an important driver of innovation in the strong and diverse Swiss economy. Deloitte has been actively tackling issues relating to Switzerland’s attractiveness as a business location for many years. The country must do everything it can to shape regulation in key policy areas and specialist fields in a way that gives companies the commercial freedom they need to develop sustainably,” explains Reto Savoia, CEO of Deloitte Switzerland. “Unfortunately, we are seeing this freedom being regularly restricted, almost on a quarterly basis with new, sometimes radical popular initiatives, or with referendums against perfectly sensible laws.”

Judging panel made up of business leaders and academics

On this year’s judging panel, Nadia Lang, CEO of the ZFV-Unternehmungen cooperative, Jens Breu, CEO of the SFS Group, Gilles Stuck, Market Head Switzerland at Julius Baer, and Prof. Thomas Straub, Associate Professor at the University of Geneva, advised and assessed the participating companies on strategic management and corporate strategy.

Via Deloitte Private, the auditing and consulting organisation Deloitte offers privately held companies support with overcoming challenges related to growth, compliance, reporting and auditing and tailors the wide range of services from the Deloitte universe to their exact requirements.

Further information about the companies recognised and the Best Managed Companies award is provided on our dedicated website. Some pictures from the awards ceremony can be found on our website with the press releases. If using these, please specify Deloitte as the source.