Prizes from Gartner’s garden

Vertical Solutions, Inc., a developer of customer relationship management software, announces that its customer, General Binding Corp., a developer of document finishing equipment based in Northbrook, Ill., has won the 2006 CRM Innovator Award from Gartner, Inc. The award was presented at the Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit late last week.

GBC’s winning CRM strategy included the implementation of VSI’s PowerHelp CRM, a web-based suite of solutions for customer-support and field-service processes. GBC’s 175 field technicians handle more than 100,000 requests for service a year, and manage more than 30,000 service contracts. The company deployed VSI’s PowerHelp CRM Field Service solution in the fall of 2005.

Gartner analysts chose the CRM Innovator Award winner from submitted applications. Projects were evaluated on how well the candidate demonstrated a particularly impressive level of creativity and innovation in their CRM initiatives, including leveraging innovating technologies and strategies to solve “old problems.”

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.

Meanwhile, taking Gartner’s CRM Excellence Award for achievement in sales, marketing or customer service was eLoyalty Corporation client UnitedHealth Group. The award was based on UnitedHealth Group and eLoyalty’s partnership in developing a new call center technology application based on eLoyalty’s Behavioral Analytics.

John Reinke, a senior vice president of Uniprise, a United Health Group company, accepted the award on behalf of UnitedHealth Group.

VSI develops, implements, and supports its award-winning PowerHelp CRM suite of customer-experience management software solutions. PowerHelp CRM software offers functionality for customer support, field service, sales / marketing automation, and mobile environments, and is used by customers including ABB, Mitsubishi, AGFA, and Rubbermaid. VSI is also a Mercury Alliance Partner and provides Mercury software products along with professional implementation services. VSI is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.

eLoyalty is a management consulting, systems integration, and managed services company focused on optimizing customer interaction. In offices in North America and Europe, eLoyalty offers a range of enterprise CRM services and solutions that include creating customer strategies; defining technical architectures; improving sales, service and marketing processes; and selecting, implementing, integrating, supporting and hosting CRM and analytics software applications.

Uniprise is a leading provider of health benefit delivery and service solutions for large employers and intermediaries, providing access to health and well-being services, large-scale transaction processing services, technology-based service support and health-related financial services.

UnitedHealth Group is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minn., and offers a broad spectrum of products and services through six operating businesses: UnitedHealthcare, Ovations, AmeriChoice, Uniprise, Specialized Care Services and Ingenix. Through its family of businesses, UnitedHealth Group serves approximately 70 million individuals nationwide.