If you want a shot at an IMPACT Award, pay attention to our rules and recommendations.
Rules
- To be eligible for the 2025 Impact Awards, the nominated project or achievement must have taken place in the 2024 calendar year.
- Projects nominated for the Partner Award categories must be led by or feature meaningful involvement by technology partner/s, such as MSPs, system integrators or consultants.
- Technology distributors and vendors are NOT eligible for the Partner Award categories.
- For multi-year projects, a significant phase of the project - a major milestone or completion - should have taken place in the 2024 calendar year. Focus the nomination on the work that took place in the 2024 calendar year.
- For ongoing services contracts, the contract should have been live for the majority of the 2024 year.
- Only live, commercial projects are eligible for the Impact Awards. Proof-of-concept projects are welcome, but please reveal this in your submission.
- Before entering the awards, you must have approval for us to publish the name of the end-user customer you delivered the project for or worked with on the project
- If you are nominating a person for an individual award you must have their approval to nominate them.
- The entry form includes a dedicated section for confidential information (such as commercial details and testimonials). Entrants can opt-in to share confidential information with judges and/or in articles we publish about the awards.
- The Impact Awards are only open to Australian IT projects and people working on them.
- We reserve the right to decide eligibility.
Additional rules: Distribution and Vendor Award Categories
- Nominating Distributors: Any distributor/marketplace active in Australia will be eligible, and any nominated project or achievement must focus on the Australian market
- Nominating Vendors: Any vendor active in Australia will be eligible, and any nominated project or achievement must focus on the Australian market
Timelines
Partner entries are now closed
Vendor and Distributor award entries are now open
Entries will be judged by the techpartner.news editorial team.
Benefits
All finalists and winners will be announced via the techpartner.news website, email newsletter and social channels seen by many thousands of readers.
Winning partner projects and people will be featured in stories shared with thousands of readers of our website, email newsletter and social channels (you can use these articles as testimonials/media clippings).
Winners will be revealed on 14th August 2025 at the gala awards dinner at the Pipeline conference at the Sheraton Grand Mirage, Gold Coast
All winners and finalists will receive a brand pack containing the awards logo to use on their website and marketing.
We may also recognise a Highly Commended or Commended in each category.
Option to purchase tickets to the awards and the Pipeline conference
Judging
The Impact Awards will be judged by a techpartner.news editorial panel who will consider how well the nominated project or person met the criteria.
Tips for your entry
What to do
Do: Start asking for testimonials now. Getting approved testimonials from customers, partners, distributors and vendors can be the most time-consuming part of your entry and this information is the most valuable to judges. Entries without testimonials will be scored down. There is an email template for testimonials available via the online entry form.
Do: Get approvals from customers, partners, distributors and vendors, and nominated individuals. Some of the content in your entry can be kept confidential but much of it should be approved for publication. Ask which stakeholders in the customer, partner, distributor and vendor organisations need to be across this (such as the communications/PR team).
Do: Write your entry in a separate word doc and ask colleagues or clients to proofread before you upload into the online form.
Do: Bring in other partners as part of your entry (channel, distributors vendors, sub-contractors). Effective partnerships hold weight with judges.
Do: Use business language and focus on outcomes. The ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ and ‘how’. Write clearly and make it easy for a non-technical audience.
Do: Ask yourself, would this pass the ‘BBQ Test’?
Do: Focus on impressive technology with the ‘wow’ factor. While the awards are not about feeds and speeds, people are impressed by use of innovative and exciting technology.
Do: Use data and metrics to back up your claims. Tell us why the project or person achieved an outcome for the customer, partner, distributor or vendor and then use data to support this. Look for numbers that indicate savings in time or money, improving customer satisfaction, growing business or hitting client KPIs.
Do: Use images or videos to back up your entry.
What not to do
Do not: Enter without customer/partner/distributor/vendor testimonials. These are highly important in the judging process and can easily mean the difference between being a finalist, a winner or missing out entirely.
Do not: Enter without customer/partner/distributor/vendor approvals, and any nominated individual's approvals. Once the submission has been made, we reserve the right to publish any content supplied unless indicated otherwise in the entry form.
Do not: Overthink this. The entry process should take hours not days.
Do not: Focus too much on the products and technology. The judges will not be not impressed by a litany of acronyms and cannot be expected to effectively judge one vendor’s product versus another.
Do not: Get bogged down in too much detail. You should use your entry to focus on outcomes and share easy-to-read data to back up your claims.
Do not: Be vague. Get someone to sanity check your entry and point out anything they don’t understand or that lacks evidence. For example, do not simply tell us a project improved customer experience - provide evidence and examples.
Do not: Use too many acronyms or industry jargon. Assume even simple acronyms may be misunderstood. Spell it out, explain why it is significant, or leave it out.
Do not: Forget to secure customer/partner/distributor/vendor buy-in, or the buy-in of a nominated individual. Your entry will be judged by a panel then, if you are lucky, published for all to see. This should be a positive outcome for all; the last thing anyone wants is a customer/partner/distributor/vendor/individual to be surprised and to push back because they were not kept in the loop.
