Know-How Exchange : Strategy

First decide how the winners will be chosen:
1) By peers or
2) By your organization or
3) A combo (nomination by peers then final selection by your organization)

Second, define the value proposition for why it is an honor to win (when we did this for our clients the first year, we did a large industry-wide PR campaign highlighting all the winners, which they thought was awesome because we got them press and they didn't have to do any work). We also made a point to have our president write a personal letter to the presidents of all our client winning organizations, cc'ing the individual that was recognized. Basically we helped our customers get props from their bosses. You have to make it something that is actually cool to win, that actually means something, and that's all in the way you spin and market it.

Third is all about the details of the event itself...which honestly, is the easy part. Depending on how big the event is and how many people you expect, you may want to look into an event planning company to help you pull it off if this is not something that is in your company's area of core competency. This would allow you to focus more on the content and building up the prestige of the award itself rather than the details of venue, decor, food, entertainment, etc.

I forgot to mention up front that having a really cool and catchy name for the award will make it easier to market.
Hope this helps and good luck!

I agree that you need an all-encompassing plan.

First off, since this hasn't been done before, I'd specify the following:

1. Budget - What resources (money AND time) are available to execute this project?

2. Goals - What does your firm want to derive from these awards? (e.g., solidifying relationships with customers and partners, building awareness among the target market, lead generation, etc.) Everything you do in the planning and execution should be relaable to the goals.

3. Award logistics - What is the process for soliciting/receiving/evaluating and choosing award winners? The timeline for doing so? What will award winners be offered? What need they do to prepare for the ceremony? (e.g., deliver a case study of service?)

4. Communications - How do you plan to publicize the event? A portion of the budget should be segmented for PR/communications to raise awareness in the trades and local media. Consider partnering with award winners to share media relations work.

Also - You'll want to prepare a ceremony packet with the information for the evening, bios/firm information sheets of the winners and collateral about your company.

If you plan to do this on an annual basis, it would be good to have a designer come up with a logo that can be used for each award ceremony. You also can offer this logo to the winners so they can display it on their websites/collateral.

5. Event logistics - How many attendees do you expect? What type of venue would best match your company's image and philosophy? Make sure you schedule the event to leave enough time to "talk it up" and for attendees to add it to their calendars and/or prepare for it.

Also make sure not to schedule the event on the same day/evening as popular sporting or entertainment events in the city.

What time/activities can you build in for the attendees to network? (e.g. cocktail hour, dessert/coffee buffet)?

Will you be videotaping or otherwise recording the event? You'll also want to book a company to do sound and microphones for the speakers

6. Schedule - In addition to the awards ceremony, what other topics of interest can you present to the audience? Is there a well-known business expert you can book as a keynote speaker? Can you assemble a panel from among your customers and prospects to discuss key customer service issues? You also need to decide who from your company will be speaking, and map out a time schedule for their remarks.

There are a lot of tasks involved with an event like this, but bucketing them into categories and creating checklists in order of time sensitivity can help keep you organized. Of course, it wouldn't help to have a couple of other people on the project with you as well!

Good luck!