7 July 2004 A tiny marketing company and one of the world’s largest banks have won the top awards for the most innovative and effective use of IT in the UK at the prestigious Effective IT Awards in London this week.

Organised by Information Age magazine and sponsored by printer maker Oki, the awards recognise the most effective use of technology across a broad range of industries.

More than 700 people attended the awards ceremony in London, which raised over £30,000 for charity. Other sponsors included Citrix Systems, MicroStrategy, Xerox and Netegrity.

The judges, who included many of the top CIOs in the UK, assessed more than 350 entries across 10 industry sectors. The emphasis was on rewarding IT projects that have not only helped save money, but that have delivered tangible benefits.

Deutsche Bank received the main honour for the ‘Most Effective IT Project 2004’ award. The company also scooped the ‘Most Effective Use of IT in Financial Services’ award.

In 2003, Deutsche Bank launched a project called eSPEAR, based on a complex event processing program. The project helped traders to step up transaction volumes and refine their trading processes. The detailed manner in which Deutsche Bank quantified benefits was cited by the judges.

BrainJuicer, a small market research company, won the other main award, ‘The Most Innovative Use of IT’. BrainJuicer developed an application that builds online consumer surveys and displays results in real-time. Its clients include Nestlé, Orange, Unilever and Vodafone.

For a list of the 12 awards, go to www.effectiveitawards.com