HUNTER VALLEY, NSW, 17 September 2026: BayCom ICT celebrated three wins on stage Tuesday night as the industry’s leading MSPs gathered on the final evening of the Access4 Partner Conference.
Access4 named the Auckland-based provider its Partner of the Year for 2026, the top honour of 13 awards handed out at Ben Ean in the Hunter Valley, in front of 200 of the country’s highest-performing technology providers.
BayCom also took Best Diamond Partner, and its sales lead Rudi Steffens was named Partner Sales Rep of the Year.
Elsewhere on the night, Virtual IT Group won Best Performing UC Partner, Black Box won Best Performing UX Partner and Winthrop Australia won Best Performing CX Partner. Smile IT was named Technical Partner of the Year and Broadconnect took Customer Excellence of the Year. Interphone, in its first year in the program, won Best Newcomer.
“Every one of these awards comes back to the same thing,” Access4 CEO Tim Jackson said. “Our partners back us, then they go and do the hard work with their customers. BayCom didn’t just grow with us this year. They leaned into the partnership at every level, from the boardroom to delivery, and turned that trust into results for the customers they serve.”
Conversations that can’t be automated
The awards closed a four-day conference backed by platinum sponsor Enreach. Running under the theme “Unwind in the Valley: Conversations that Can’t be Automated”. The argument across the week was that as AI absorbs more of the customer journey, the conversations that survive it are the ones that carry the most value, and the providers who own those conversations own the relationship.
The second meaning landed on Tuesday, when mental health advocate Diego Nievas spoke to the room ahead of the gala dinner. It is an industry that runs hot, on call, and often at the expense of the people in it, and the session asked partners to take the question back to their own teams rather than leave it in the Hunter Valley.
The conference raised funds for R U OK? through a blind auction of six seats on a scenic helicopter flight over the Hunter Valley, landing for a hosted lunch at Bimbadgen.
2026 Access4 Partner Award winners
Partner of the Year 2026 Winner: BayCom. Runner-up: Pconnect
Best Diamond Partner 2026 Winner: BayCom. Runner-up: Virtual IT Group
Best Platinum Partner 2026 Winner: Generation-e. Runner-up: Comunet
Best Gold Partner 2026 Winner: Enablis. Runner-up: Black Box
Best Newcomer 2026 Winner: Interphone. Runner-up: Crowd IT
Best Performing UC Partner 2026 Winner: Virtual IT Group. Runner-up: Cloudland
Best Performing UX Partner 2026 Winner: Black Box. Runner-up: Generation-e
Best Performing CX Partner 2026 Winner: Winthrop Australia. Runner-up: MindArc Telecommunications
Best Customer Deal 2026 Winner: Winthrop Australia for Amana Living. Runners-up: Voice Technologies for Pallion Equipment, and imei for Wollondilly Shire Council
Best Innovation Deal 2026 Winner: Prosum for Estia. Runner-up: BayCom for IKEA
Partner Sales Rep of the Year 2026 Winner: Rudi Steffens, BayCom. Runner-up: Tas Kritharis, imei
Technical Partner of the Year 2026 Winner: Smile IT. Runner-up: Pconnect
Customer Excellence of the Year 2026 Winner: Broadconnect. Runner-up: Prosum
