INSIGHTS / News

Sonocent celebrates winning the highly coveted  BETT award for ICT Company of the Year – Less than £1m turnover.

Josh Widdicombe, star of Channel 4’s ‘The Last Leg’, ‘Stand Up for the Week’ and BBC1’s ‘QI’, ‘Mock the Week’ and ‘Live at the Apollo’ presented the company with their award for ICT Company of the Year – Less than £1m turnover on Wednesday 21st January at The Brewery, in London.

The judges singled out Sonocent from a shortlist of six companies for their steady growth and customer support. The Bett awards coincide with Bett, the world’s largest technology in education show and the awards are considered the highest accolade in the industry.  

Sonocent Ltd was founded in 2007 and sells into primary and secondary schools as well as the University education sector. Their flagship product Audio Notetaker started out as an innovative solution for students with dyslexia who were struggling to take notes and retain information from lectures. It quickly became clear that it had much wider application and could be used by business, researchers and the media.

The company now has over 60,000 users and is growing rapidly by 2,000 installations per month.  70% of purchasers recently surveyed use Audio Notetaker at least once a week and 96.6% would recommend it to a friend or colleague.

In July 2014, Sonocent launched the companion iOS app, Sonocent Recorder, to help students and educators capture and annotate sound when they are out and about using a mobile device.

Roger Tucker, Managing Director of Sonocent, said: ‘Every year Wyedean School’s headmaster John Claydon used to arrange a talk from the County Council for parents of UCAS applicants. We went along when my eldest son Dave (now Director of Sales and Marketing) was applying, and it was just a brief comment from the speaker which revealed the need for Audio Notetaker. With the help and support of the SETsquared business incubator in Bristol we have built up a strong business with an excellent team delivering a unique product which really makes a difference to our users. We are all so pleased to receive this recognition from the industry.’

This win follows Sonocent Audio Notetaker winning the 2014 Education Resources Award for Special Education Resource or Equipment – including ICT. The judges said of Sonocent Audio Notetaker, ‘We’ve seen nothing else like it on the market. This hugely flexible tool for cross-curricular teaching and learning is versatile and suitable for any ages, from early years to adult.’