December 2, 2002 -- Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) has received this year’s CRM Best Practice Award from the acquisa trade magazine and CRM Expo. Heidelberg’s project, entitled ‘Global Customer Relationship Management as an Integration Strategy for Implementing Customer Focus at Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG”, was pitted against 40 other companies. The objective of the key project is to focus all new and existing customer-related processes firmly on customers’ needs. The Heidelberg project was supported by the management consultancy Nexolab, which belong to the BMW Group. The CRM Best Practice Award is given for particularly well-planned and successfully projects in the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The panel of judges chose Heidelberg’s CRM project on the basis of its careful analysis, its target-oriented approach and its speedy implementation, which even on the test market has led to a positive return on investment. The integration of the CRM concept into the corporate strategy and the analysis concept for determining the Return on Investment (ROI) were highly praised. The CRM Best Practice Award highlights CRM achievements that can serve as a benchmark for other companies. Instead of focusing on technology, these CRM practices put the company, its organization and its processes firmly in the spotlight. “Heidelberg doesn’t define CRM as a pure software tool, but rather as a general strategy aimed at ensuring customer loyalty. For our company, CRM means focusing the entire organization and its processes on the customer", says Ulrike Hausmann, Senior Vice President Global Marketing at Heidelberg. “With our CRM policy, we want to simplify our customer relationships and make them more profitable for both parties. This is because understanding our customers provides the company with tremendous potential, continued Ulrike Hausmann at November’s CRM Expo prize ceremony held in Cologne.