Products of the Year 2006:

The editors of SearchCRM.com sat down recently to assess the 2006 crop of products, with an eye toward helping you choose the products you should include on your "A" list for evaluation.

Given tight budgets, small staffs and ever-increasing user needs, we decided to evaluate the products based on the following criteria:

• Innovation
• Performance
• Ease of integration into environment
• Ease of use and manageability
• Functionality
• Value

And so we solicited nominations from vendors, scoured the market for products to nominate ourselves, and recruited a panel of judges. That panel was comprised of twelve independent industry experts and analysts, CRM professionals, and SearchCRM.com editors. They reviewed more than 50 products in eight categories. The results are presented here.

You'll see products that are completely innovative. You'll see products that strike a chord with small and midsized businesses, or products geared toward the largest of enterprises. The CRM market is filled with impressive technology from some very forward thinking vendors. That's what makes this year's winners so worthy of recognition. And we congratulate the winners -- but we also take our hats off to all of the nominees because they gave our panel of judges quite a challenge. As a CRM decision-maker, you're in a great position. There are so many excellent products to choose from. So be sure to do your research and if we can help in any way, let us know.