Video: Commend UK, UK IT Industry Awards finalist
'The enhancements with AI and cloud platforms have made people more agile'
We talk to Commend UK’s James Dickens about the work that cemented the company’s place in the finals of the UK IT Industry Awards.
The UK IT Industry Awards are the largest and most well-known event in the technology industry calendar. Owned and operated by Computing and BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, the awards enjoy an unrivalled level of professionalism and industry knowledge.
This year's winners were announced at a live awards ceremony on Wednesday 12th November in London.
Before the awards we talked to James Dickens, Head of Sales at Commend UK, to find out more about the company's biggest challenges and achievements over the past year.
James leads with a passion for turning bold ideas into commercial success. With a career built on driving innovation and building high-performance teams, he has played a pivotal role in scaling digital solutions that reshape how businesses connect, compete, and grow. Known for being forward-thinking and having relentless energy, he champions a culture that blends ambition, creativity, and measurable results.
Why do you think awards like the UK IT Industry Awards matter?
I think it's really important to highlight successes within the industry for vendors such as ourselves and the users of them to come forward and put solutions and innovations forward that the wider audience and other people in the industry can take on board and try and replicate. I think that strengthens the appeal of the UK IT industry, but also ensures that there's constant innovation in the field as well.
What would winning this award mean to your company?
A lot; we're very proud of our innovations and how we look at relationships with our end users, the users of our technology, and our partners, who have been implemented within this solution as well and are part of that. And I think to push the innovations and risk, getting new technologies that are usable into the market - to win something like this would be a really proud moment for us.
What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?
For me, I think actually this is a cultural one, not technology. We obviously push the boundaries of what's possible in communication and security. However, we've had some really good success and rapid growth. But within that, we've stayed really true to our company values, our core values, which are all around support, collaboration, building solid relationships, as well as the innovation lifecycle of our products and bringing out new things.
Through that growth, this can sometimes wobble. Certainly the culture, it's not always rosy and [can be] stressful when you're sort of here, there and everywhere. So, I think for the company to remain true to its values and what it believes in through this growth period has been really, really successful.
What have been the biggest challenges of 2025 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?
The people are what make us, to be honest. And I think them being so accountable and forward-thinking and believing in what we want to achieve with, not only our growth plans but our innovations within the market - we're a 54-year-old company within this industry, and we still strive to treat ourselves as a startup with that mentality of always wanting to enhance, always wanting to grow and always building closer and tighter bonds with partners, other vendors and integrators and end users alike.
Through this growth and through bringing new products to market, having the belief that this is the right thing - not just provide and sell what we always used to do - I think is a really good thing. There are challenges within this, and constantly reinventing our mindsets and moving forward and being brave.
And I think that's the key thing: accountability and bravery of our people that sit within the company, across all teams.
How do you think the industry has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?
I think the IT industry has really solidified itself as a business driver. I think the enhancements with AI and cloud platforms have made people more agile and companies more agile, to churn out innovations quicker, support end users quicker and more effectively, and build new teams to develop these things.
So, I think probably the biggest part of change this year is the adoption of AI. And I think [there are] changes we need to still make, we need to get our heads around this. It's a little bit of a buzzword, so to speak. It allows you to think big and think very creatively. But I think then defining that to succinct, logical, simple technologies and delivering them is probably where we need to hone in on and get that faster and change this buzzword to really useful implementations of technology.
What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?
Kind of where I left off in question five, really: artificial intelligence. We cannot ignore this. There's huge, huge opportunities and potential for vendors and for end users alike to make use of these technologies.
The key thing is to make it simple. Where I've been most impressed with AI is, yes, the big, high-level, holistic TED Talks that you see and what is achievable, but there's so much in this which is just too much to bring in.
So, allowing small, bite-sized, logical pieces of AI that focus on efficiency or usable data or automation of mundane tasks. This is probably where we capitalise and where others, I believe, will capitalise as well. We're all within the same mindset.
So, taking AI, making it fundamentally usable in a very, very easy way. And I think everyone can grow across the frontiers.