Many marketing software products offer a wealth of capabilities and functionality, but marketing teams can't always figure out the best way to take advantage of all the tools at their disposal. In SearchCRM.com's 2008 Product of the Year awards, ease of use gave the winner a leg-up on the competition.

Aprimo Software's flagship product, Aprimo Enterprise v8, was this year's winner in the marketing automation category. The product's advanced functionality and usability helped it secure the gold award.

Aprimo Enterprise uses a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to bring marketing automation functionality to campaign planning and execution, helping marketers increase productivity by synchronizing marketing plans with the customer data necessary to put them into action.

"[Aprimo's] fully functional suite of products and capabilities is reaching the roles and responsibilities of individuals," one judge said.

According to Aprimo, the system was designed with usability in mind and is tailored to individual roles, allowing marketers of all levels and responsibilities access to information that is specific to their needs. A graphical design palette delivered through a Web-based interface gives users easy access to information with just a few clicks.

Aprimo Enterprise provides advanced reporting and performance management capabilities through its KnowledgeBase and customer marketing database, which create a 360-degree analysis of customer interactions and profiles. The system allows users to create and update dashboards to monitor the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

The product is also built to scale. According to Aprimo's submission, a single installation can manage a small marketing department or a large, multi-national marketing organization.

Aprimo Enterprise is made up of sets of modules that can be deployed in any combination, allowing organizations to customize their applications and add functionality as necessary. Pricing for a single area, like operational workflow management, can start at $50,000 per year and scale up to nearly $1 million per year for an enterprise with thousands of users.