London, U.K. – March 19, 2008 – Standard Bank of South Africa has been voted as the overall winner at the CRM Excellence Awards at Gartner’s CRM Summit in London. The bank is a customer of Graham Technology, a provider of customer-oriented business software and services. The Gartner CRM Excellence Awards are designed to highlight world-class CRM initiatives and broadly share their successes, challenges and insights.

The Standard Bank Group is the largest South African banking group ranked by assets and earnings. Graham Technology’s customer interaction platform, ciboodle, is the technology behind the bank’s customer experience initiative that was selected as a finalist in the awards.

“We are delighted to have won this award, which is a testament to the excellent progress that has been made in the area of customer experience improvement at the bank,” said Rolf Eichweber, director, customer experience at Standard Bank. “Since our deployment of ciboodle, significant improvements have been made in the areas of customer experience, business efficiency, technology optimisation and flexibility.”

Yesterday, Standard Bank presented its case study to the conference participants at the CRM Summit 2008 in London. After hearing presentations from three companies, the summit delegates voted to decide the winning finalist.

“It’s always a rewarding experience when one of our customers is recognised for their achievements in CRM, especially at a major event like the Gartner CRM Summit,” said Mike Hughes, Managing Director, Graham Technology. “Standard Bank have shown great vision and determination to improve their customer facing operations, and we are delighted to have been able to help them make that vision a reality.”

About Graham Technology
For over 20 years, Graham Technology has helped improve the way large organisations interact with their customers. Provider of the award-winning customer interaction software suite, ciboodle, the company also offers a range of professional technology services. This proven combination attracts and retains high-value customers for Graham Technology's clients, while reducing their operational costs.

Headquartered in the United Kingdom, Graham Technology has customers in twelve countries across five continents. With industry experience in a multitude of sectors, the company is consistently recognised by industry analysts as one of the world's leading customer-centric technology providers.