I have been using Adobe ImageReady and I have been completely happy with it... but the marketing department swears there are better programs to use (they just dont know what they are)

I tested the following programs on a 468x60 banner which had been optimised (as far as it could go) to 14k in ImageReady...

Advanced GIF Animator - rubbish
Animagic GIF Animator - got same results as ImageReady
Barbarosa GIF Animator - got same results as ImageReady
SuperGIF - got a 14k imageready file down to 11k (http://www.boxtopsoft.com/)
Zoner GIF Animator - got same results as ImageReady
A Smaller GIF - got a 14k imageready file down to 12k
GIF Movie Gear - got same results as ImageReady
GIF Cruncher - got a 14k imageready file down to 10k (http://www.digfrontiers.com/)
and about 11 others which failed to download or were totally useless.