And the nominees are…

Gotta love an awards show. And in this industry, nothing grabs attention like Gartner. Gartner, Inc. officials today announced the six finalists for their CRM Excellence Awards, to be presented at the Gartner CRM Summit in Chicago running September 11 to 13.

The awards will be given in two categories. In the category of “Excellence in Enterprise CRM,” finalists were selected based on performance of a given CRM initiative spanning multiple functions of the organization. The three nominees in this category are AIS, BNSF and HP. In the category of “Excellence in Sales, Marketing or Customer Service,” finalists were selected based on the qualities and results of an initiative or project that targeted a specific business function.

The nominees in the category are Harry Rosen, Netbank and UnitedHealth Group. Gartner, Inc. officials also announced that a CRM Innovator award would be presented to GBC. According to the awarding procedure, the six CRM Excellence Award finalists will present their CRM stories to conference attendees at the CRM Summit.

Attendees can then weigh in on which firm presented the best example of CRM excellence. The CRM Excellence Award winners will be announced in the closing session of the conference. The awards program is produced in cooperation with CRMAdvocate.com and CRMguru.com.

The Gartner CRM Summit itself will be held at the Chicago Hilton and Towers. The theme for this year’s summit is “CRM 2.0: Managing the New Customer Experience.” Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner, Inc. is a combination of four branches devoted to the gathering and analyzing of “technology-related insight”: Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events. Founded in 1979, Gartner now has 3,900 associates (including 1,200 research analysts and consultants) in 75 countries worldwide and serves 10,000 organizations.