The Carl E. Nelson Best Practices Award was established to recognize excellence in the ECM field. This is a unique and exciting way for end user organizations to share their ECM project implementation success with their peers and for ECM suppliers to showcase the ROI that their solutions can achieve. Finalists are presented at the annual AIIM Awards Dinner and winners are selected by the entire AIIM community!

The term "Best Practice" denotes a standard of excellence that has been achieved within an organization and refers to a process that can be quantified, adapted, and repeated. One award may be made in each category per year; an award does not necessarily need to be made in every category each year. Awards will be made to acknowledge "Best Practices" in the following categories:

• Small organizations (1-100 employees)
• Medium organizations (101 - 1,000 employees)
• Large organizations (1,001+ employees)

To be eligible to receive the Carl E. Nelson Best Practices Award, each nominee's submission must refer to a process or implementation with the following characteristics:

• can be quantified, adapted, and repeated;
• documented and/or process management technology has been used to solve a critical business requirement;
• innovative use of document and/or process management technology;
• significant return on investment indocument and/or process management technology.

No member of the Board of Directors can receive an Association award during his/her tenure on the Board (with the exception of the Best Practices Awards, which are voted on by the membership). Members of the Board cannot make nominations for the Awards.

Nominations shall be made by an AIIM Professional Member, or an employee of any AIIM Trade, Advisory Trade, or Channel Member.

Finalists in each category will be invited to the AIIM Awards Banquet at the annual AIIM Expo and Conference.

Submit a Nomination Deadline for nominations is January 9, 2012.

View past Best Practices Award Recipients

Note: the following questions will be asked on the electronic form. 

1. What size company is being nominated?
2. Who is being nominated? Please provide all information. Incomplete responses to this question will disqualify the nomination.
3. Who is making the nomination? Please provide all information. Incomplete responses to this question will disqualify the nomination.
4. What business problem was solved by this solution? (no more than 100 words)
5. Describe what was deployed to meet the objectives/goals. Include a general description of the content, document, and/or process management technology used to solve a critical business problem. Include any Enterprise 2.0 technologies that were implemented. (no more than 400 words)
6. When was this solution deployed into production? (Choose one)
7. When and how does the organization plan to expand the solution into other departments, locations, or business processes? (no more than 100 words)
8. How long did it take for this solution to achieve a quantifiable payback? (Choose one)
9. What types of quantifiable benefits did this solution deliver? For example, reduced storage, reduced cost to acquire customers and lead generation, faster, flexible searching, ease of indexing, ease of categorizing, improved document control and distribution, improved security, improved regulatory compliance, increased end user or customer satisfaction, reduction in costs, etc. (no more than 100 words)
10. What types of non-quantifiable benefits did this solution deliver? For example, improved quality, improved employee motivation/morale, improved customer service, increased knowledge sharing in the organization, increased competitive position in the market, reduced duplicated effort, improved management insight via reporting or analytics, etc. (no more than 100 words)
11. What makes this solution remarkable and innovative? (no more than 100 words)
12. What was the most important lesson learned? (no more than 100 words)