Big River Telephone Wins Gartner CRM Excellence Awards
STAMFORD, Conn. November 3, 2005 — Gartner, Inc. announced the winners of its seventh annual CRM Excellence Awards. The awards, which were organized in cooperation with 1to1 Magazine, were given to HSBC Mexico in the large enterprise category and Big River Telephone in the small-to-midsize category. The awards, which are given to an enterprise in each of the two categories that most clearly demonstrates excellence in its customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives, were presented during Gartner's CRM Summit, held October 31-November 2 in San Diego.
Six award finalists — Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Honeywell Aerospace, and HSBC in the large enterprise category, and Accept Salijutveckling, Big River Telephone, and University of San Diego in the small-to-midsize category — were selected by Gartner to present their case studies at the Summit to more than 500 attendees who provided their feedback as to which company they believed did the best job overall.
"Each winner demonstrated a well-planned, well-executed, goal-oriented approach to their project that improved the overall relationship with their customers while providing substantial bottom-line business results," said Adam Sarner, principal analyst at Gartner and CRM Summit conference chair.
"Big River Telephone is honored to receive the CRM Excellence Award," said Kevin Cantwell, president of Big River Telephone. "This recognition continues to validate the efforts by Big River Telephone employees who understand that the customer is the reason why we are in business."
"We were very impressed with the quality of the projects presented through the Gartner CRM Excellence and Innovator Awards," said Ginger Conlon, editor in chief of 1to1 Magazine. "Each of the finalists achieved outstanding business impact through well thought out and executed strategies. The three winners were truly the best of the best in leveraging CRM's potential."
The criteria used in evaluating CRM Excellence Award candidates included components defined in Gartner's Eight Building Blocks of CRM: CRM vision, CRM strategy, valued customer experience, organizational collaboration, CRM processes, CRM information, CRM technology and CRM metrics.
The Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit 2005 is the most comprehensive conference of customer strategies and technologies ever held. It offers the latest actionable insights and best practices in all areas of CRM — from business strategy to software implementation, from change management to metrics. The Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit hits the critical spot between strategic planning and tactical advice for IT organizations as they look to grow their customer base, cross-sell to established customers, segment and retain their most valuable customers and service them more efficiently. Additional information is available at www.gartner.com/us/crmsummit.
About Gartner
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, and has over 3,900 associates, including more than 1,200 research analysts and consultants in more than 75 countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.