REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 3, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the winners of the 2006 Microsoft® Vendor Program (MSVP) Excellence Awards. This year’s five winners — Trammell Crow Co., GE Plastics, Taylor Nelson Sofres plc (TNS), MRM Partners Worldwide and Milligan Events — were selected from among more than 20,000 Microsoft vendors in the U.S.
The MSVP Excellence Awards are given to vendors that consistently provide outstanding service and results to Microsoft. A panel of Microsoft executives selected the winners, which were nominated by Microsoft employees based on value, quality, flexibility, innovation, security and privacy. Winners were announced in five categories: Vendor of the Year, Quality, Service, Technology and Value. They received their awards today during the fifth annual MSVP Annual Vendor Summit on Microsoft’s corporate campus in Redmond.
“MSVP Excellence Award winners are the best of the best among over 20,000 vendors that Microsoft works with throughout the U.S.,” said Mike Huber, General Manager and Chief Procurement officer at Microsoft. “Their hard work, the value of their services and the quality of their contributions has helped Microsoft better serve its customers and improve as a company.”
Established in 2002, the Microsoft Vendor Program is designed to both enhance Microsoft’s relationship with a select group of vendors that are critical to the company and to make it easy for Microsoft employees to work with vendors that have been pre-qualified.
The following vendors are this year’s MSVP winners:
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Vendor of the Year: Trammell Crow. Trammell Crow, one of the largest diversified real estate services companies in the world, provides real estate advisory services, administration of global-portfolio leases, project accounting, and information technology support services to Microsoft’s Real Estate and Facilities team. In response to rapidly increasing head count at Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Trammell Crow secured more than 3 million square feet of property in the Puget Sound area while negotiating fair-market prices for Microsoft in a tight real estate market. Trammell Crow’s impressive results were achieved by a strong, flexible team that improved all its services to Microsoft during this dramatic increase in real estate activity.
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Quality award: GE Plastics. GE Plastics provides specialized plastics for more than 40 components in the Xbox 360™ console, controllers and accessories. For the launch of Xbox 360, GE delivered its advanced materials technologies with no production or service issues and exceeded all of Microsoft’s engineering, quality and environmental requirements. GE Plastics met this high-quality bar while significantly reducing the industry’s average lead time.
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Service award: Taylor Nelson Sofres. TNS, one of the world’s leading providers of market information, conducts a variety of in-depth research and analysis projects for Microsoft each year. One increasingly complex worldwide study has been managed by TNS for Microsoft over a number of years, and each year TNS has improved the delivery, content and design of the ongoing project while simultaneously reducing turnaround and lowering costs.
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Technology award: MRM Partners Worldwide. MRM Partners Worldwide, a full-service agency that provides direct and interactive marketing solutions, implemented an integrated Microsoft SharePoint® system that enabled cross-discipline integration and improved client and agency collaboration and information sharing. Subsequent to the successful launch of this new SharePoint system at Microsoft, MRM Partners Worldwide extended this solution to a number of its other clients.
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Value award: Milligan Events. Milligan Events, a comprehensive event services company, based in Boise, Idaho, has managed more than 40 major events for Microsoft in the past year that have drawn over 150,000 customers, partners and Microsoft employees. Events that Milligan has managed this year include Microsoft Convergence 2006 and Microsoft’s global sales meeting. Milligan Events received high marks for quality and collaboration and drove significant value.
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