New Product Awards Blog

There are 16 new product awards categories in the 2013 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's top  honors for contact center, customer service, business development, and sales professionals. (All organizations and individuals worldwide are eligible to submit entries for sales awards and customer service awards. January 15, 2013 is the last day that late entries will be accepted; you can download your entry kit here.)

Our new product and service awards categories recognize new and new-version solutions for sales, contact center, and customer service operations.  Any type of product or service offering may be nominated in these categories. Our business awards categories include:

1. Business Intelligence Solution – New
2. Business Intelligence Solution – New Version
3. Collaboration Solution – New
4. Collaboration Solution– New Version
5. Contact Center Solution – New
6. Contact Center Solution – New Version
7. Incentive Management Solution – New
8. Incentive Management Solution – New Version
9. IVR or Web Service Solution – New
10. IVR or Web Service Solution – New Version
11. Marketing Solution – New
12. Marketing Solution – New Version
13. Relationship Management Solution – New
14. Relationship Management Solution – New Version
15. Sales Automation Solution – New
16. Sales Automation Solution – New Version       

Information required for entries in these categories include:

1. An essay of up to 500 words describing the nominee’s accomplishments since July 1, 2011. 
2. A brief biography (up to 100 words) of the leader of the nominated product or service development team.
3. Optional (but highly recommended), a collection of supporting files and web addresses that you may upload to our server to support your entry and provide more background information to the judges.

Our 2012 new product and service Gold Stevie® Award winners include: Donlen (Business Intelligence Solution – New), LeanLogistics (Business Intelligence Solution – New Version), Enterasys (Collaboration Solution – New), ISOdx Solutions (Contact Center Solution – New Version), FedEx (IVR or Web Service Solution – New), Schedulicity (IVR or Web Service Solution – New Version), Salesforce (Marketing Solution – New), Aprimo (Marketing Solution – New Version), Broadview Networks (Relationship Management Solution – New), Groupcars (Sales Automation Solution – New), and Eloqua (Sales Automation Solution – New Version).

Finalists will be notified on January 23 and 2013 honorees will be celebrated at the 7th annual awards banquet at Paris Las Vegas, Nevada, USA on February 25.

Need help deciding which category your should enter?  Email us at help@stevieawards.com  or call us at + 1 703-547-8389.

There are 49 Best New Product or Service of the Year categories in The 2013 (11th Annual) American Business Awards, the premier business awards program in the U.S.A. (Friday, November 16, is the first early-bird entry deadline for the 2013 ABAs, request your entry kit here  and you'll receive it right away.)

Products and services introduced to the marketplace since January 1, 2012 are eligible for our new product awards and nominees may be brand new or new versions. Our product of the year awards categories include:

• Business-to-Business Products
• Business-to-Business Services    
• Consumer Electronics
• Consumer Products
• Consumer Services
• Financial Services
• Hardware
     a. Computer
     b. Networking
     c. Peripheral
     d. Semiconductor or Other Electronic Component
     e. Storage
     f. Other
• Health & Pharmaceuticals
     a. Product
     b. Service
• Industrial Products & Services
• Media & Entertainment
     a. Product
     b. Service
• Software
     a. Asset Management Solution
     b. Business or Competitive Intelligence Solution
     c. Cloud Application/Service
     d. Cloud Infrastructure
     e. Cloud Platform
     f. Collaboration/Social Networking Solution
     g. Content Management Solution
     h. Corporate Learning/Workforce Development Solution
     i. Database Innovation
     j. Document Management Solution
     k. Electronic Commerce Solution
     l. Financial Management Solution
     m. Human Capital Management Solution
     n. Integration Solution
     o. International Data Protection Solution
     p. Marketing/Public Relations Solution
     q. Mobile On-Demand Application
     r. Mobile Operations Management Solution
     s. Project Management Solution
     t. Relationship Management Solution
     u. Security Solution
     v. Software Development Solution
     w. Supply Chain Management Solution
     x. Systems Management Solution
     y. Web Services Solution
     z. Other
• Telecommunications
     a. Hardware
     b. Service
• Transportation

Every new product that's nominated in the new product or service of the year categories will automatically be included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products.  Public voting will open in July, and the winners will be honored at The American Business Awards' tech awards ceremony in San Francisco in September 2013.

Our product management awards include:

• Product Development/Management Department or Team of the Year
• Product Development/Management Executive of the Year
• Product Developer of the Year (for all non-executive product development or management professionals)

The following information is generally required for product awards and product management submissions:

• An essay of up to 525 words describing the nominee's achievements since January 1, 2012.  For the best new product or service of the year categories, this should be an essay about your product or service: Its features, functions, benefits, and performance to date,
• A biography of the nominee or the leader of the nominated company, department, or team of up to 125 words, and
• Optional (but highly recommended), a collection of supporting files, product demonstration videos, and/or web addresses that you may upload to our server to support your entry and provide more background information to the judges

Need help deciding which new product or service award you should apply for? Call us at + 1 703-547-8389 or email us at help@stevieawards.com.

The final entry deadline for The 2012 International Business Awards, the world's premier business awards competition, is quickly approaching on 27 June. All individuals and organizations worldwide – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small – may submit nominations to the IBAs. If you haven't yet done so, you can request your entry kit today.

Here we share three new product awards tips to help you showcase your organization's achievements.

1. Review the business awards categories.
There are several awards categories honoring new products and product management at the 2012 IBAs including:

• Best New Product or Service of the Year  
• Product Development/Management Department or Team of the Year
• Product Development/Management Executive of the Year

2. Review the entry submission criteria.
The information requirements for entries in these new product and product management awards categories are generally:

• An essay of up to 500 words describing the nominee's achievements since 1 January 2011.  For the Best New Product or Service of the Year categories, this should be an essay about your product or service: Its features, functions, benefits, and performance to date.
• A biography of the nominee or the leader of the nominated company, department, or team of up to 100 words.
• Optional (but highly recommended), a collection of supporting files, product demonstration videos, and/or web addresses that you may upload to our server to support your entry and provide more background information to the judges.

3. Review past winners' entries.
The 8th Annual International Business Awards were presented in October 2011 in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. 2011 new product and product management honorees included:

• iolo technologies
• SDL International
• Manthan Systems
• American Express
• Cascades Tissue Group
• BioExx Specialty Proteins Ltd.
• Dudu Communications Fz. LLC.
• Abu Dhabi Systems & Information Centre
• Telegent Systems
• Pegasus Solutions, Inc.
• Eagle's Flight Creative Training Excellence Inc.

Winners of the competition will be celebrated at the ninth annual awards banquet on Monday, 15 October at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Seoul, South Korea.

Not sure which category is right for your organization? Email us at help@stevieawards.com and we'll direct you to the appropriate categories.

Mike Oeth, CEO, OnSIP Business VoIP in New York, will chair the committee for final judging of the new product awards and product management awards categories in The 2012 American Business Awards, the premier business awards program in the U.S.A. Here Mike shares three tips for companies launching or rebranding a new product or service.

What are your top 3 tips for companies wanting to launch or rebrand a new product or service?

1. Operation
   Before you launch a product, you need to make sure you can perform the four pillars of operations: Sell it, provision it, bill it, support it.  Can Sales sell it?  Can Provisioning provision it?  Can Billing bill it?  And can Support support it?  If you can do all those things, you have a viable product to take to the market. 
2. Coordination
   Coordinate the launch with your marketing, support, sales, billing, and operations departments. Make sure everyone is on the same page for message, service specs, and time frame for rollout.
3. Communication
   Communicate internally to everyone, not just the involved parties; and communicate externally via appropriate marketing channels such as websites and social media.

What item of news recently caught your eye and why?
My twitter feed @VoIPCEO is full of news items that catch my eye.  I’m a nerd at heart and follow the BoingBoing, Wired, Slashdot, and ArsTechnica feeds.  I use the wisdom of the crowds at Reddit to vet stories from other, less well-known sources. 

Within the VoIP space, I thought the M5 acquisition deal was one of the more interesting stories this year.  Outside of VoIP, I’m very interested in copyright, digital rights management (DRM), software patents, and intellectual property in general.  I loved that the comedian Louis C.K. was able to produce a performance of his stand-up routine and offer it directly to the public without DRM.  As a result, he made way more revenue than he ever could have if he’d gone through the “normal” channels.  I think it’s the beginning of the wave and the end of old-school music/movie distribution.

What is your favorite app?
My favorite VoIP app, and one of my top five apps, would have to be Bria by Counterpath. It’s a beautifully designed phone application that allows me to answer my work calls over 3G or WiFi with my iPad.  Outside of the VoIP space, I like the Twitter and Mint.com mobile apps.  They are both just proxies for the actual websites, but they are well done and give quick and easy access to the website content.  The coolest app is the new Marvel Comics augmented-reality app (available for iOS or Android).  You point the camera of your phone or tablet at a page in a Marvel Comic book, and the page comes to life.  I like it because it’s a novel application that gives me a good excuse to purchase the physical magazine. 

If you could choose another profession, what would it be?
My standby profession would either be basketball coach or blues musician.  But since my coaching experience—which I love—is limited to local girls basketball teams, and my guitar playing consists of about five chords, I think I’ll stay where I am.

What quality or qualities do you most value in your business associates?
When I think of the other two cofounders of OnSIP, two qualities I value jump to mind: a capacity for deep analytical thinking and an ability to play devil’s advocate.   John Riordan, our CTO, is very analytical.  He is constantly thinking five moves ahead of where we are today and looking to the future.  Rob Wolpov, our President, is a brilliant business strategist who plays the devil’s advocate to my over-optimistic approach.  These qualities help us challenge the status quo and propel our business and our technology forward.

As someone at the top of your profession, what keeps you inspired or makes you hit the ground running in the morning?
I enjoy problem solving.  There are always new and interesting problems to solve.  I even, every once in a while, jump on the support line and take a support call just for the rush of solving someone’s problem.  I take sales calls every now and then to keep sharp and to see what customers are requesting—like a secret shopper, but in reverse.  I like what we do.  I like that we actually help small and medium-sized businesses to compete and be as efficient as possible.  I like the people I work with.  I think we’ve done a really great job of hiring smart people and giving them the resources they need to be successful.  Yeah, I like my job.

About Mike Oeth:
Mike Oeth is the CEO of OnSIP Business VoIP, winner of a Stevie® Award for Best Management Team of the Year—Product Development in The 2011 American Business Awards.  Mike cofounded OnSIP in 2005 on the premise that the future of business communications would rely heavily on IP technologies.

About OnSIP:
Having helped over 15,000 customers, OnSIP is a leading provider of business VoIP service to small and medium-sized businesses. OnSIP, by Junction Networks, is an intuitive and reliable business phone service on the Internet for companies with 5 to 100 employees. OnSIP customers enjoy the benefits of a business-class phone system, without the traditional high cost, burden, and inflexibility. For more information, visit www.onsip.com.

There are 24 best new product or service awards categories in The 2012 International Business Awards, the world's premier business awards program to help you highlight your organization's product of the year. (The 2012 IBAs are now accepting entries. Download your entry kit here and begin submitting your entries by the 16 May entry deadline.) All products and services introduced to the marketplace since 1 January 2011 are eligible for consideration. Nominees may be brand new or new versions.

Our new product awards categories include:

• Business-to-Business Products
• Business-to-Business Services    
• Consumer Electronics
• Consumer Products
• Consumer Services
• Financial Services
• Hardware (Computer, Networking, Peripheral, Semiconductor or Other Electronic Component, Storage, Other)
• Health & Pharmaceuticals
     a. Product
     b. Service
• Industrial Products & Services
• Media & Entertainment
     a. Product
     b. Service
• Software
     a. New
     b. New Version
• Telecommunications
     a. Hardware
     b. Service
• Transportation
• Other
• Product Development/Management Department or Team of the Year
• Product Development/Management Executive of the Year

Generally, the information required for product awards and product management submissions include:

• An essay of up to 500 words describing the nominee's achievements since 1 January 2011.  For the Best New Product or Service of the Year categories, this should be an essay about your product or service: Its features, functions, benefits, and performance to date
• A biography of the nominee or the leader of the nominated company, department, or team of up to 100 words
• Optional (but highly recommended), a collection of supporting files, product demonstration videos, and/or web addresses that you may upload to our server to support your entry and provide more background information to the judges

Leave us a comment and let us know which of your organization's products and services you'll be submitting entries for by 16 May.

There are 51 Best New Product or Service of the Year categories in The 2012 (10th Annual) American Business Awards, the premier business awards program in the U.S.A. The entry deadline is quickly approaching on March 28, request your entry kit here.

Our new product awards categories include:

• Business-to-Business Products
• Business-to-Business Services    
• Consumer Electronics
• Consumer Products
• Consumer Services
• Financial Services
• Hardware
     a. Computer
     b. Networking
     c. Peripheral
     d. Semiconductor or Other Electronic Component
     e. Storage
     f. Other
• Health & Pharmaceuticals
     a. Product
     b. Service
• Industrial Products & Services
• Media & Entertainment
     a. Product
     b. Service
• Software
     a. Asset Management Solution
     b. Business or Competitive Intelligence Solution
     c. Cloud Application/Service
     d. Cloud Infrastructure
     e. Cloud Platform
     f. Collaboration/Social Networking Solution
     g. Content Management Solution
     h. Corporate Learning/Workforce Development Solution
     i. Database Innovation
     j. Document Management Solution
     k. Electronic Commerce Solution
     l. Financial Management Solution
     m. Human Capital Management Solution
     n. Integration Solution
     o. International Data Protection Solution
     p. Marketing/Public Relations Solution
     q. Mobile On-Demand Application
     r. Mobile Operations Management Solution
     s. Project Management Solution
     t. Relationship Management Solution
     u. Security Solution
     v. Software Development Solution
     w. Supply Chain Management Solution
     x. Systems Management Solution
     y. Web Services Solution
     z. Other
• Telecommunications
     a. Hardware
     b. Service
• Transportation

Products and services introduced to the marketplace since January 1, 2011 are eligible for our product of the year awards and nominees may be brand new or new versions.

The following information is generally required for product awards and product management submissions:

• An essay of up to 500 words describing the nominee's achievements since January 1, 2011.  For the best new product or service of the year categories, this should be an essay about your product or service: Its features, functions, benefits, and performance to date,
• A biography of the nominee or the leader of the nominated company, department, or team of up to 100 words, and
• Optional (but highly recommended), a collection of supporting files, product demonstration videos, and/or web addresses that you may upload to our server to support your entry and provide more background information to the judges

Every new product that's nominated in the new product or service of the year categories will automatically be included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products.  Public voting will open in July, and the winners will be honored at The American Business Awards' new tech awards ceremony in San Francisco in September 2012.

Need help deciding which new product or service award you should apply for? Call us at + 1 703-547-8389 or email us at help@stevieawards.com.

Payments management company Litle & Co of Lowell, Massachusetts, USA won a Stevie® Award for Best New IVR or Web Service Solution in the new product awards categories of the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Ben Saren, their VP of Marketing, will Chair the committee for final judging of the New Product & Service categories in the 2012 edition of the awards, which is accepting entries through January 18 (get your entry kit here).

As online credit card transactions increase, so do the risks. We look at how Litle & Co. is reducing these risks.

Industry statistics in the United States suggest that there were more than 900 data breaches involving more than 900 million credit card records in 2009 alone, yet the majority of merchants still keep customers’ credit card numbers on file.

Meanwhile, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards for data security are still evolving as they relate to Data Loss Protection (DLP) technologies.

Ahead of the Competition

Litle & Co. has developed a forward-looking solution that protects consumer data. The company believes that tokenization is the next step in enabling safe removal of sensitive cardholder data from merchant systems. The company is ahead of other solution vendors in proactively addressing vulnerabilities in the payment chain of card transactions in order to protect merchants and, ultimately, consumers.

“We believe that best practice approaches in business-to-business customer service should include those in which the design, goal, and benefit is focused not just on the customer, but also on the customer’s customer,” said Jason Pavona, Executive Vice President, Product Management at Litle & Co.  “Our product vision is simple: Build, develop, and implement solutions that help our customers create more secure, more enduring, and more profitable relationships with their customers.”

The Litle Vault, introduced in September 2010, is a web-driven, platform-integrated, tokenization solution that enables card-not-present (CNP) merchants to safely remove sensitive cardholder data from their systems without disrupting any existing card transaction-based process.  The service is delivered directly to Litle’s customers, and therefore to their customers, through the Litle payment-processing platform.

Tokens replace credit card numbers for all payment transactions including
authorizations, deposits, and chargebacks. 

Handling the Customers’ Data

Litle Vault removes merchants’ data security encumbrances so they can focus on selling. Instead, the onus of handling most of the data management is moved to Litle & Co, so the merchants’ customers’ card data exists only on an offsite server that specializes in handling payment data.

The Vault makes electronic commerce more efficient, safe, and profitable by:

• Reducing the scope of PCI Compliance

Whenever sensitive cardholder data is replaced with a token and used in association with operational areas such as acceptance of online payments, cardholder data storage, and chargeback processing, it can reduce the scope of PCI audits and associated costs by as much as 60%.

• Minimizing the risk from potential data breaches

Data breaches do and will happen. However, with the Vault, hackers cannot steal what merchants don’t have: the customer’s credit card information. In the event tokens are compromised, cyber-thieves will quickly find that the tokens are completely worthless to them.

• Centralizing credit card security and reducing data exposure

Once registered, a single token can be used by anyone in an organization, mitigating the time-consuming and often costly process of having to encrypt, decrypt, and re-encrypt information each time someone touches a customer’s credit card.

• Eliminating insurance costs

Tokenization is a preventive measure that minimizes the cost of a data breach risk. It also potentially enables a merchant to eliminate certain onerous insurance premiums that can often run to hundreds of thousands of dollars. With tokenization, a component of the Errors and Omissions (E&O) Liability Insurance premium cost—typically $0.60 per card annually—can be eliminated.

Industry Endorsement

“Tokenization of payment card data has quickly become a must-have for e-commerce and direct-response merchants whose web presence exposes them to a great deal of breach risk and who are seeking to reduce their PCI scope,” said David Fish, Senior Analyst at Mercator Advisory Group, the leading research and consulting firm focused on the payments industry.  “Litle & Co. has earned the reputation of a trusted partner in the card-not-present space, where their expertise in dealing with transaction data security in card processing environments has coalesced in … Litle Vault."

About Jason Pavone
Jason brings more than 15 years of product development, direct marketing, sales, and entrepreneurial experience to Litle & Co.  Jason leads Litle’s Sales & Marketing strategy, which includes business development and sales; product strategy and development; brand awareness marketing and communications; and partner communities and initiatives.  Before joining Litle, Jason served as a Partner of Enflect, LLC, which developed several product companies in the payment, loyalty, financial services, and software industries.  Prior to Enflect, Jason developed Wallaware, Inc., a wireless router company, where he drove the company’s first U.S and International sales, raised several rounds of private equity capital, and opened operations in the US and internationally.  Before Wallaware, Jason was Director of Wireless and Personalization at Terra Lycos, a top-three most-visited Internet destination.  At Terra Lycos he created some of the first wireless portal solutions, available in 30 countries under the brand Lycos Anywhere®.   He also managed Terra Lycos’s Network Personalization products, including MyLycos®, the award-winning personalization destination with 20 million registered users. Before Terra Lycos, Jason was instrumental in building INPHO, Inc. (including domania.com, which today is part of IAC’s LendingTree), a pioneer in the Internet real estate space.  Jason received a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College.

About Litle
Litle & Co. is the payment-processing engine behind leading ecommerce and consumer-direct digital brands including Overstock.com, Ancestry.com, Gilt Groupe, CSN Stores, and Guthy-Renker.  Founded in 2001, the company’s customer-obsessed culture is committed to Voice of the Customer initiatives, including Net Promoter Score (NPS). Litle & Co won the 2010 Stevie® Award for eCommerce Customer Service and the 2011 Stevie® Award for product and service innovation for its tokenization solution Litle Vault.  To learn more about Litle & Co. visit http://www.litle.com, or call 1-800-548-5326 (1-800-LITLECO) or 978-275-6500.

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At the 2010 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, FuzziBunz, out of Lafayette, Louisiana, was one of a few organizations to win two Stevie Awards - one for Best New Product of the Year, and the other for Most Innovative Company of the Year.

See FuzziBunz founder Tereson Dupuy's acceptance speech for the Best New Product Stevie here.

Since this is the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the 2010 new product award was for a product introduced by or for women since July 1 2009.  And FuzziBunz won for its FuzziBunz One-Size Cloth Diaper.  According to FuzziBunz's Stevie Award-winning nomination:

"FuzziBunz cloth diapers are truly an innovative cloth diaper! In 1999, Tereson Dupuy founded FuzziBunz cloth diapers after watching her son suffer with severe eczema; trying various treatments with no relief. Her doctor recommended she try cloth diapers, which at the time were flat white diapers that you hooked with a pin and put crunchy plastic pants over. Tereson was a busy mom with little time to futz with pins and plastic pants, and most importantly her baby wasn’t staying dry with these diapers.

"She needed a solution and invented the modern cloth diaper – a design copied by many but is patented and owned by the inventor herself, Tereson Dupuy. During Tereson’s search for absorbency, she quickly recognized that fleece was key – a unique fabric that would allow moisture to wick away from baby’s bottom then quickly dry. She then combined a superior fleece fabric with a pocket opening at the top of the diaper where you can “stuff” absorbent materials. Finally she had a dry baby, a cure for his eczema, and a fantastic new Modern Cloth Diaper design and product.

"Post inventing the first FuzziBunz concept, Tereson has worked hard to perfect her invention solving every problem she found in both disposable and reusable diapers. This last year Tereson revolutionized the cloth diaper and created a diaper that could be sized up and down to fit babies from birth to potty training. Her concept is different than any other diaper manufacturer, as she used an elastic band that is inserted inside the diaper’s leg and waist casings and which can be adjusted to make the diaper smaller or larger (similar to how adjustable waist pants work). Now moms don’t have to buy diapers in small, medium and large, they can simply buy the FuzziBunz One-Size cloth diaper invention and voila, the diaper would grow as baby grew! Truly genius! Even better, the elastic band is fully replaceable, this patent pending fully detachable system guarantees the diaper will last through multiple children and washes with replacement parts. Moms can save even more money and create less environmental waste with these innovative one-size cloth diapers!"

Next opportunities to win a Stevie Award for a new product or service?  Check out The American Business Awards and The International Business Awards.