Announcing the 2004 Information Management Awards

The Information Management (IM) Awardsnow in their ninth yearare the most widely recognized and coveted symbols of excellence and innovation in the management of business information in the UK.

The IM Awards are a showcase for organisations that have demonstrated the vision and the business skills to implement new technology to reap real business benefits. Innovation is one of the key judging criteria.

The IM Awards attract entries from private sector companies ranging from Top 100 to start-up companies to public sector bodies charged with implementing e-government directives.

There are 16 Awards, 10 for Project categories (end user implementations), four for Product categories, and there is one each for the Best Overall Project and Best Overall Product. Project Awards are for Europe-based end-user projects completed during the year to September 2004. Product Awards are either for first time launches or for significant new releases of existing products.

Categories include CRM, Business Intelligence, B2B Commerce, Content Management, Information Security, Intranet, and Document Management. The overall media partner is Computer Business Review magazine and there are specialist media partners for each category. The Financial Times published a series of articles on winning IM2003 entries and are expected to do so for IM2004. Manufacturing and Logistics IT magazine is the media partner for the Supply Chain Management category.

The closing date for entries is 10 September 2004. On 15 October the finalists are announced and the winners are announced at the IM2004 Awards dinner at the Grosvenor House on 2 December, when the attendance is expected to exceed 1000 finalists, sponsors, guests and press. The IM2003 winners and finalists can be viewed on www.elanconf.co.uk/im2003/im2003winners.php

There are in total over 40 independent expert judges drawn from fields including journalism, consultancy, academia, user associations and others well placed to provide a professional and independent appraisal of the entries. Judging for each category is undertaken by a panel of three judges, according to specified criteria and a common framework to ensure consistency. The process is overseen by Professor Clive Holtham of City University, London, UK, who acts as adjudicator.

Winners of the Premier Projectthe blue riband Project Award for the best overall Projecthave included: in 2003, Deutsche Bank for Raptor (Real-Time Analytics Platform for Trading and Order Flow Representation) with Inxight Software; in 2002, GlaxoSmithKline for GSK NetTrade with Gimlet e-solutions; in 2001, Barclays Bank for the Credit Risk Management PAML-IVR Project with SAS, and, in 2000, Yellow Pages for Yell Insight.

Winners of the Supply Chain Management category have included: in 2003, Universal Pictures International for their Supply Chain Optimisation for DVDs Project with Deloitte; in 2002, GlaxoSmithKline who also won the Premier Project; and, in 2001, (the first year the Supply Chain Award was presented) to Lynx Express for their implementation of the Sand Technology Nucleus.

The number of entries has increased every year and can be expected to continue to do so for 2004. For more information see http://www.elanconf.co.uk