Major corporations and emerging companies alike demonstrate innovation and results despite constrained environment

ATLANTA, Georgia—October 15, 2002—ITSMA, a global advisor to companies that market and sell technology services, today announced the winners of its fifth annual Services Marketing Excellence (SME) Awards. The Awards honor standout performance in five categories of marketing: new services development, solutions marketing, services sales effectiveness, brand and reputation management, and customer loyalty and retention.

Winners of the 2002 SME Awards include Accenture, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, EDS, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Infosys, NCR Teradata, Network Appliance, Unisys, Vertex, and Vignette. ITSMA presented the awards to each winner today at its MarketingServices/2002 conference in Atlanta, an annual forum dedicated to services marketing excellence.

"Marketers are continuing to demonstrate leadership and success in an extremely challenging environment," said Dave Munn, president and CEO of ITSMA. "As more firms look to services to lead the way out of the technology downturn, this year's SME Award winners have raised the bar of marketing excellence."

"Technology services marketers have had to shift focus substantially since the downturn began in 2000," said Julie Schwartz, ITSMA's vice president of research. "With shrinking demand and a maturing industry, these award-winning marketers have done what all firms need to do to succeed in today's economy: prioritize the most critical opportunities, articulate the value they can provide to individual customers, and relentlessly measure the impact of marketing initiatives."

The SME Awards honor excellence at two levels. Diamond Award winners are best in class, demonstrating excellence and leadership across three criteria of performance: innovation, execution, and business results. Gold Award winners also demonstrate standout achievement in their categories.

2002 Winners

Category 1: New Services Development

Diamond Award: Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. A Global New Service Offer Launch Process created a systematic process to bring new services to market quickly, globally, consistently, and successfully. As in many large, decentralized firms, the process for developing new services at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young had been fragmented, inconsistent, and slow. The Offer Launch Process organizes the coordinated involvement of research, training, marketing, sales, knowledge management, and delivery teams, as well as partners and anchor clients, to ensure rapid global development and deployment of sales- and delivery-ready offers.

Gold Award: Vertex. Vertex's StartServices consulting program provides a combined on-site and remote assistance program to help customers get the best return on their software investment. Utilizing extensive customer research, cross-functional teams, and a series of pilot engagements to refine and validate deliverables, Vertex provided a textbook case in how best to respond to a common customer problem with extreme sensitivity to individual customers, internal organizations, and consulting partners.

Category 2: Solutions Marketing

Diamond Award: Hewlett-Packard. Hewlett-Packard's On Demand solutions are a set of innovative alternatives to traditional IT ownership and support. The program provides services integrated with hardware, software, and flexible financing to allow customers to quickly deploy IT resources when and where they need them at a predictable price. On Demand represents a major step in HP's shift from a product-oriented to a solutions-oriented approach, and has helped move HP beyond the role of supplier toward one of trusted partner and advisor.

Gold Award: EDS. Faced with promoting 144 product and service offerings to multiple types of buyers, EDS developed a Business Issues Communications Framework to provide global consistency in marketing solutions. By emphasizing business issues first, then industry context, then level of audience, and finally the specific solution, the framework provides clear strategic direction while supporting local flexibility. An expansive toolkit provides templates and best practice models to further assist regional marketing teams.

Category 3: Increasing Sales Effectiveness

Diamond Award: Network Appliance. With hardware sales down, Network Appliance's Service Task Force developed a highly targeted initiative to increase services revenue and bring contract penetration rates for services up to industry averages. Bringing together representatives from services, sales, marketing, and customer satisfaction, the task force created a series of new tools and processes to support a carefully segmented approach delineated by geography, sales channel, and age of equipment.

Gold Award: Teradata, a Division of NCR. Teradata's Business Impact Modeling program provides sales and marketing associates with a process to create sophisticated, individualized projections for potential customers of the expected business results from Teradata solutions. The program has provided the foundation for a highly effective, metrics-based sales effort focused in defining the key elements of success for each customer and moving quickly to create a more compelling business case.

Category 4: Brand and Reputation Management

Diamond Award: IBM. Seeking to tap the emerging power of on demand computing, or e-sourcing, IBM developed "e-business on demand" to respond to key points of pain for business executives, such as accessing new capabilities more quickly, reducing upfront investment, leveraging best practices, and meeting unpredictable fluctuations in demand. IBM's campaign promoting their e-business on demand brand included extensive internal education and sales support, targeted global advertising with a creative strategy based on the metaphor of a new utility, and rigorous measurement.

Gold Award: Accenture. Following its July 2001 IPO, Accenture responded to dramatic marketplace changes and the evolution of its business strategy with a new brand positioning, Innovation Delivered. The new positioning focused on Accenture's unique ability to help clients bring strategic, high-level ideas to fruition. Accenture's campaign integrated a company-wide educational effort with global advertising, Web site redesign, client communications, direct marketing, event sponsorships, analyst relations, and media relations.

Category 5: Customer Loyalty and Retention

Diamond Award: Unisys. The Unisys Customer Advocacy Program leverages an integrated set of processes and tools to drive continuous worldwide improvement in customer satisfaction and loyalty. By integrating satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy data directly into account management, Unisys takes a proactive approach to strengthening individual relationships and maximizing customer impact. Executive commitment, significant investment in people and resources, and internal goal setting sustain company-wide commitment.

Gold Award: Vignette. Under the auspices of a new Customer Care Group, Vignette established a team of Enterprise Account Managers to increase satisfaction and loyalty among its customer base. Tapping a group of highly experienced senior managers, Vignette developed a rigorous program that aligned almost every function within the company around clear, customer-centric rules of engagement. The program guarantees that top accounts have an advocate and a single point of contact throughout the relationship lifecycle.

Special Recognition

Judges selection of an award submission from any category deserving special notice.

Diamond Award: Infosys. Following substantial growth as a technology services provider, India-based Infosys determined to reposition itself as a provider of end-to-end business technology solutions. Partnering with the Wharton School of Business, Infosys developed the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award program to honor companies and individuals using technology to transform their enterprises. Tying the brand to a prestigious partner and a high-level message, Infosys was able to build valuable awareness, credibility, and direct contact with top executives in its target market worldwide.

About the Services Marketing Excellence Awards
Launched in 1998, ITSMA's Services Marketing Excellence (SME) Awards focus exclusively on the largest segment of the technology business: technology services and solutions. The SME program is based on a comprehensive and strategic approach to marketing, recognizing that business success today requires marketers to move beyond the traditional realm of communications into such areas as new services development, sales effectiveness, and customer loyalty. The program looks beyond flash and glitz to emphasize excellence in the three most critical aspects of success: innovation, execution, and business results.

More information

About ITSMA
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. As a membership organization, we work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA members include business leaders such as Accenture, BT, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing ^SM, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.