SSPA Announces “Recognized Innovators” Awards for Technology That Revolutionizes the Way Organizations Serve Their Customers

eVergance, InQuira, Lithium, KNOVA and Talisma Honored

SAN DIEGO, May 7, 2007 –The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the largest and most influential association for technology services and support professionals, today named the winners of its Spring 2007 SSPA Recognized Innovator program.  Technology and services vendors in each of three categories – Analytics, Offer Management, and Web 2.0 – have been honored for improving the way companies provide service and support to their customers.

The Spring 2007 SSPA Recognized Innovators in the Analytics Innovation category are InQuira and KNOVA. In the Web 2.0 Innovation category, the SSPA recognized Lithium and eVergance.  KNOVA and Talisma have been honored for Offer Management Innovation. Winners were selected by a panel of seven judges, including industry experts, SSPA members, and SSPA Vice President of Research John Ragsdale.

"We received an impressive collection of applications from service and support technology and service providers, all of whom are innovators in their respective areas," said Ragsdale. “Our panel of judges rated each application according to specific criteria for each category, and to earn a place in the ‘winner’s circle’ is a solid achievement,” he added.

According to Ragsdale, with technical complexity creating an explosion of customer interactions, innovative service and support applications are required to help companies continue to meet and exceed customer expectations.  For the Spring 2007Recognized Innovator Awards, partners were recognized in the following categories:

• Analytics/Business Intelligence.  Companies began embracing CRM’s “360 degree view” a decade ago, and now have massive stores of customer history and interaction data, but what is missing is strong, business user targeted analysis tools to identify strategic business intelligence from the data.  Recognized Innovators offer complex analytics to derive “order from chaos,” and help companies identify key business learnings based on customer information, problem resolution statistics, or other ancillary data.
  
  
• Web 2.0.  Today’s always on, always connected Internet offers a number of opportunities and challenges to customer service organizations.  Recognized Innovators in this category leverage the best of Web 2.0 features (communities, forums, Wikis) and/or Web 2.0 infrastructure (VOIP, proactive monitoring, extreme personalization) to meet the ever increasing demands of customers.
  
  
• Offer Management.  A core SSPA message in 2007 is “Value Added Support,” and leveraging service interactions to increase revenue is a key part of this message.  Recognized Innovators in this category enable upselling and cross-selling in a variety of customer situations (B2B and B2C) and channels (assisted and unassisted), helping support organizations increase customer wallet share and contribute to the company’s revenue goals.

The winners are being showcased today at the SSPA Best Practices Conference in San Diego, with an awards ceremony as well as tours of the winner’s booths in the SSPA’s Technology Services Expo, led by Ragsdale.  More information on the conference and previous Recognized Innovator Awards can be found at www.thesspa.com.

About the SSPA
As the industry’s foremost professional association, the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) is a key resource for the information and best practices needed to make better business decisions. It brings together the best minds from across the industry spectrum – from established companies with successful track records to the pioneering newcomers with out-of-the-box ideas. The SSPA also partners with thought leaders such as J.D. Power and Associates and the Wharton School of Business to create programs that benefit the industry. The SSPA is a member of a global network of associations that includes the Technology Professional Services Association (TPSA), the Association for Services Management International and the Electronic Supply Chain Association. For more information, visit www.thesspa.com.