Digital Planning founders presented the Digital Transformation and Innovation of the Year awards at the East Midlands Chamber Leicestershire Business Awards 2025/26.
The ceremony at Leicester City Football Club’s King Power Stadium on 26 February marked the first event in the Chamber’s 2025/26 awards cycle and highlighted how organisations across the county are using technology and innovation to change how they operate.
Focus on digital transformation and innovation
By sponsoring these two categories, Digital Planning places emphasis on organisations turning ideas and technology into measurable improvements in productivity, resilience and service quality.
Co‑Founder Mark Underwood said innovation has to be embedded into the culture of a business.
“Leicestershire as a county has a huge number of small and mid-sized firms where that mindset is already visible,” he said.
“There is a strong culture of practical innovation here – teams finding new ways to solve problems, often without large budgets, by making things work better, repairing what they can and working through challenges in an inventive way.”
Digital Planning’s capabilities and recognition
Digital Planning researches, develops and delivers next generation digital solutions for complex and regulated industries.
It designs secure automation, software and AI‑enabled platforms that free teams from repetitive work and improve decision‑making, and has received national recognition in Insider’s Made in the UK Awards and Barclays Entrepreneur Awards.
Co-founder James Ferraby said at Digital Planning the team is passionate about digital transformation.
“We see the massive change that it can bring to a business when done well so to support businesses that have a passion for doing it in an excellent way is meaningful for us,” he said.
“It backs up everything we think, our whole ethos about high quality change.
That’s why we sponsored, to see other businesses doing it well and help celebrate their success.”
Leicestershire Business Awards sponsors
As sponsors, Digital Planning founders took part in judging the categories, assessing entries against outcome data, user benefits and credible plans to scale impact rather than one‑off projects.
This mirrors Digital Planning’s own delivery approach – where automation and AI are embedded into day‑to‑day operations and governed carefully, rather than treated as short‑term experiments.
The Digital Transformation Award went to Datalink Electronics, which has moved from paper‑based systems to a digital‑first operation and also won Small Business of the Year.
While Innovation of the Year was awarded to Berkfield for its ability to turn innovation into a deployed solution with clear benefits.
The Leicestershire Business Awards recognise 12 categories spanning customer service, skills, sustainability and growth, and form part of a three‑county programme delivered by East Midlands Chamber.
The event underlines the strength of regional businesses and the role that technology, skills and collaboration play in its performance.
This sponsorship sits within Digital Planning’s broader role as a strategic partner of East Midlands Chamber, where the company contributes commercial R&D expertise and supports adopting AI, automation and data-led decision-making with clear governance.
