CRM magazine Announces Winners of 2008 CRM Market Awards

NEW YORK--CRM magazine, the industry’s leading publication, announced the winners of its 2008 CRM Market Awards here today, in conjunction with the magazine’s destinationCRM 2008 conference.

As the CRM software market extended its growth streak yet again, CRM magazine and the seventh annual CRM Market Awards honored the vendors, consultants, and end-user companies focused on creating and cultivating rewarding customer experiences and relationships through the sophisticated integration of people, processes, and technologies.

With this year’s awards, the magazine expanded its scope to a record 10 categories. In each, the magazine named one Market Winner, denoting the highest score compared to its peers. Each category also produced four Market Leader awards and a “One to Watch.”

“CRM magazine is pleased to present the 2008 CRM Market Awards to those companies and individuals who are raising the bar in their customer relationship initiatives. These efforts are helping companies streamline business processes, maximize profitability, and provide more value to customers,” said David Myron, editorial director of CRM magazine. “Congratulations to this year’s award recipients. May they continue to raise the standard of CRM excellence.”

Recipients were determined through an extensive three-month process and proprietary rating formula that involves industry analysts, financial and corporate information, product and functionality assessments, and scores reflecting customer satisfaction.

Eight members of the CRM community were named by the magazine as 2008 Influential Leaders: Kevin Bandy, a partner at consultancy Accenture; Josh Bernoff & Charlene Li, longtime industry analysts and authors of Groundswell; Des Cahill, the CEO of Habeas; marketing guru Seth Godin; industry thought leader Paul Greenberg; Bill McDermott, president and CEO of SAP Americas & Asia Pacific Japan; Sridhar Vembu, CEO of AdventNet; and Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The magazine also named eight Rising Stars for the year: Apple, a burgeoning player in the industry; Marketo, a software firm bridging sales and marketing; platform developer nGenera; Ribbit, a provider of voice services; social-networking developer Trampoline Systems; the microblogging site Twitter; and billing-as-a-service providers Aria Systems and Zuora.

Lastly, the magazine named four customer implementations as winners of its CRM Elite Award: Qualcomm, for a mixed deployment of EchoSign and Salesforce.com; VisionShare, for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment with Axonom; the Toledo Mud Hens, for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment with First Tech Direct; and Ice Energy, for an initiative with JangoMail.

The 2008 CRM Market Awards are being presented at the destinationCRM 2008 Conference at the Marriott Marquis in New York. An expanded version of the results have been published in the September 2008 issue of CRM magazine—available in print and in digital NXTBook format (http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0908/index.php). The awards package will appear online beginning September 1, 2008, at http://www.destinationCRM.com.