This Thursday 8 October, key representatives from the business software industry will gather at the Royal Courts of Justice in London to pop some champagne while discovering how their users rate the products they provide.
Last year’s surprise winner in the SME HR software category is back, and faces Select HR in the same category this year, and will contest the web-based HR category with enterprise HR nominee Cascade.
Snowdrop and KCS are both developers that have been taken over by Sage in recent years and the nomination of the SnowdropKCS suite in the Enterprise category is a sign that users do not always have to suffer when software acquisitions take place.
With recession in the air, many commentators predicted that interest in talent management would take off. However, the Software Satisfaction Award voters appeared to endorse Josh Bersin’s "talent management slump" analysis with only a small number of users coming forward to cast votes in this category. Carbon360 from Element78 and the iCMS Talent Platform will contest the talent management category – but perhaps this is a sector that will show more life in 2010.
You can follow the action live via Twitter on @SiftMedia and @SiftMediaTech, and by using the #SSA09 hash tag. A live streamed blog will also appear on the HRZone.co.uk homepage at 6:00pm on Thursday so our trusty writers can keep you updated on the evening’s festivities.
The evening’s keynote speech will be delivered by Robert Llewellyn, best known for playing Kryten in the BBC’s classic TV series Red Dwarf.
The Software Satisfaction Award winners are chosen directly by end users, with more than 8,100 voting this in this year’s online survey. There will also be a Newcomer of the Year Award, plus a Software Supplier of the Year Award that salutes the most impressive contribution across all business categories. The business software trade body BASDA and the ICAEW IT Faculty are both partners in the evening’s festivities and will hand out prizes of their own.
As well as providing an occasion to celebrate the software industry’s efforts at meeting customer needs, the Software Satisfaction Awards 2009 give prospective software buyers independent feedback on well the products are rated by users on the front line.
Please click here for a full list of awards and shortlisted nominees.
