A judging panel of the Information Management editorial team led by Editorial Director Jim Ericson chose these submissions for their demonstrated creativity, their creation of competitive advantage or their positive impact on the bottom line.
"This year we saw a mix of projects with a narrow focus on specific areas of cost (such as procurement) or revenue (such as sales support) that were closely monitored with performance metrics. Just about all of the companies on our list are keen to sustain ongoing value from their programs in large part by setting high standards for data quality and governance,” says Jim Ericson.
Thanks to our participants. Please consider nominating a solution next year. View the slide show here.
The winners are listed in alphabetical order by category.
Analytics
VSP Vision Care with Verint Witness Actionable Solutions
VSP Vision Care is the largest nonprofit vision benefits and services company in the U.S., with more than 55 million members and over 26,000 doctors. VSP wanted to help its customer service representatives continually enhance performance. The company found that significant cost and efficiency opportunities could be achieved through the implementation of a workforce optimization strategy and solution.
VSP is tracking its return on investment in a host of ways, including first-call resolution, staffing costs, cost per call, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction.
Since implementing Impact 360, VSP Vision Care has improved its contact center handle times, CSR availability and shift scheduling, resulting in a savings of approximately $3 million in the first year alone. Additionally, since the “Be the Best” initiative began, VSP has realized impressive results, including improvement of overall first-call resolution from 83 percent to 85 percent, equating to call avoidance savings of just short of $900,000.
VSP has found Impact 360’s advanced scorecard capabilities particularly beneficial. With Impact 360 Scorecards, CSRs can monitor their own performance in a trended, real-time environment. This capability completely changes the conversations between the CSR and supervisor, making them a team in developing performance plans that are agreed to and managed together. VSP has found this to be transformative — and it’s helping VSP think about the business in new ways.
Business Intelligence/Performance Management
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company with Teradata
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company’s procurement department lacked timely visibility to enterprise indirect spend data, consistent spend classifications, a global definition of spend and vendor hierarchy, and a standard retention process for historical data. As a result, procurement was unable to negotiate effectively, achieve volume leverage, identify areas of sourcing opportunities and identify related vendors.
To address procurement issues, Goodyear launched two critical initiatives: Global Aggregation Strategy Process and Master Data Management - Vendor. The project took 15 months (January 2008 - March 2009) to implement and the software products used include: Teradata Database 12.0, SAP MDM 5.5 (to establish a central repository and interface with ERP systems), Informatica Power Center v8 (for data loading) and Cognos C8 toolset (as the reporting environment).
Payback is anticipated in three years (approximately March 2012) and is estimated to have savings of $3.5 million to $5.5 million. One additional initiative to analyze and adjust global payment terms for direct material purchases has already realized a cash flow benefit of nearly $4 million with potential additional cash flow improvements of $5 million by the end of the year.
The EDW is the centralized data repository and reporting environment for enterprise-wide purchasing and accounting data, and includes indirect and direct spend data. The primary benefit is the ability to support strategic sourcing at the global level, something few companies can do.
Goodyear now has timely visibility to enterprise spend data, consistent spend classifications, a global definition of spend and vendor hierarchy, and a standard retention process for historical data.
Business Process Management
Clipper WindPower with Datastay
Clipper WindPower, a manufacturer of wind turbines, was originally in search of a solution that could adequately manage the development process of their products.
Clipper needed a solution that would give them control over the product development process and include a central repository where all product-related data could be stored. Clipper wanted to implement a product development and engineering change order solution that would ensure enhanced engineering productivity and help prevent product errors.
With Datastay, Clipper built a tailored solution for their organization. Using a number of different components to build their solution, they were able to address the core business drivers identified. Datastay was implemented at Clipper within five weeks of the final decision to use Datastay as the vendor of choice. As a software as a service offering, there was no need for any changes to infrastructure. It was easily integrated into existing ERP system.
Datastay’s platform technology provides a no-programming approach that allowed Clipper to create the solutions needed – product lifecycle and quality management - to control business process.
Clipper achieved the ability to be more responsive to customer and market dynamics and demands, improving the ability to gather information and execute more frequent planning cycles, avoiding traditional annual cycles. They identify problems earlier on in the process and determine the necessary actions to correct it.
The most significant of the benefits Clipper was able to achieve was enhanced collaboration, improving internal communications while including partners, customers and suppliers in the process.
Content Management
Den-Mat with Salesforce.com
Den-Mat, a leader in the global aesthetic dental industry, needed a new business platform to help its team become faster, more efficient, and more innovative to increase sales and improve customer service to dentists.
They were able to streamline the process by consolidating customer information in Salesforce’s Sales Cloud 2 and enabling customized dashboards to show key business metrics in real time.
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