Winners of Marketing Excellence Awards Revealed at ITSMA’s 2005 Conference

Accenture, BT, IBM, IKON, Lucent, and Sprint-Nextel among those honored by ITSMA

LEXINGTON, Massachusetts—November 9, 2005—ITSMA, a membership-based organization that specializes in helping companies market and sell technology services and solutions, announced the winners of the eighth annual Marketing Excellence Awards at a special awards dinner last night during its annual marketing conference. This year’s winners include: Accenture, AT&T, BEA, BearingPoint, BT, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, IKON Office Solutions, Lucent, SAP, and Sprint-Nextel.

“From launching new online communities to cutting the solutions development cycle in half, this year’s Marketing Excellence Award winners clearly demonstrate marketing’s growing strategic importance to the enterprise,” said Dave Munn, president and CEO of ITSMA. “We are pleased to honor these industry leaders as they help usher in a new era of marketing creativity, interactivity, and results.”

The awards focus on six critical areas of marketing: launching new solutions, generating new demand, increasing sales effectiveness, improving the customer experience, strengthening brand differentiation, and enhancing marketing leadership. An international jury of marketing executives and experts selects the winners based on excellence in innovation, program execution, and business results. The awards honor excellence at two levels: diamond and gold.

2005 Award Winners

Launching New Solutions

Diamond Award: Sprint—Industry First: Sprint Managed Mobility Services
Gold Award: BEA—The BEA Solution Frameworks Initiative

Generating New Demand

Diamond Award: IBM Australia—IP Communications: Targeting Growth in the Mid-Market
Gold Award: BearingPoint—Using a Central Platform to Generate Demand and Prove ROI

Increasing Sales Effectiveness

Diamond Award: Lucent Technologies—Revenue-Driven Client Reference Program
Gold Award: Hewlett-Packard—Customer Focused 1to1 Marketing

Improving the Customer Experience

Diamond Award: IKON Office Solutions—IKON Service Excellence
Gold Award: AT&T—AT&T’s Networking Exchange

Strengthening Brand Differentiation

Diamond Award: Accenture—High Performance Delivered Brand Positioning
Gold Award: IBM—Business Value Campaign

Enhancing Marketing Leadership

Diamond Award: BT—How Marketing has Helped to Redefine the Customer and Market Engagement Model Globally
Gold Award: SAP—Optimizing Global-Regional-Local Marketing Efficiencies and Effectiveness

For more information about the specifics of the winning programs, please visit: http://www.itsma.com/news/mea.

About the Marketing Excellence Awards
Launched in 1998, ITSMA’s Marketing Excellence Awards focus exclusively on the largest segment of the technology business: technology services and solutions. The awards 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 developing new solutions, increasing sales effectiveness, and managing the customer experience. The program looks beyond flash and glitz to emphasize excellence in the three most critical aspects of success: innovation, execution, and business results.

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ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. 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 annual program clients include business leaders such as AT&T, Cisco, Deloitte, EMC, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing℠, 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.