In a race so tight it squeaked, iCode's Everest Advanced Edition 2.0 edged past second-place winner (and last year's winner of this award) Remedy Customer Support by 1 percent of the total vote to take the award for Best Customer Relationship Management Software. Readers cited Everest Advanced Edition's features, ease of use, and superior integration as worthy of their vote.

Everest Advanced Edition is an integrated small-business-management software solution that lets you automate all your small business's departments, including customer relationship management (CRM), accounting, inventory control, sales force automation, and wireless connectivity. The Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) feature gives you real-time access to crucial business information so that you can respond to customers quickly. You can configure BAM to generate email alerts whenever a particular business activity occurs. Everest Advanced Edition 2.0 includes CRM Studio, a feature option that lets you track events that BAM's predefined events don't address. Once configured, CRM Studio automatically sends notifications prompting further action on tracked events by email, fax, or pager and updates all appropriate applications.