1. 20 InformationWeek Great Ideas To Steal These InformationWeek 500 innovators are trying unique approaches to solve business problems.Could your company use a few extra bright ideas? Southern Puts Worker Data In Its Place Southern Co. operates 76 power plants with more than 12,000 workers, many of them contrac- tors, rotating among different plants as needed. Until recently, it kept records on worker certifica- tions, training, drug tests, back- ground checks,and other informa- tion at each plant. When a worker switched plants,it was often easier to redo tests and training rather than chase down information at a another plant. But that approach was costly and annoyed workers. Last year, Southern centralized all the worker information with a Web application that provides a Emergency Room Waits Worth Advertising central repository of worker data. Now, workers can easily move Healthcare services provider HCAs East Florida division is so sure pa- from plant to plant, using technol- tients wont have to spend a long time waiting to see a doctor at its emer- ogy like hand scanners to gain en- gency rooms, it advertises average wait times on digital billboards around try. The system will save the com- communities where its hospitals and surgery centers are located. pany $5.8 million over 4.5 years in The billboards evolved out of an effort to streamline the workflow in the labor and drug-testing costs. Its East Florida divisions emergency services department. The division devel- also being sold to other utilities. oped software that extracts ER wait times and averages them over a rolling four-hour window. This gave staff a way to easily monitor workflow and wait times. Once that was accomplished, the division decided to make wait-time data available to the communities it served. Using RSS feeds, it posted wait times on its hospital Web sites, created an iPhone app, and provided text messages, along with the billboard messages. This type of transparency is not common in the hospital industry and re- quired great confidence in our emergency services operations, says HCA, which runs 163 hospitals and 105 surgery centers in 20 states. Generally, 65% of a hospitals inpatient activity is derived from ER admis- sions. The ER wait-time service is credited with helping increase emergency room admissions at HCAs East Florida division by nearly 7%.informationweek.com Sept. 13, 2010 71 Copyright 2010 United Business Media LLC. Important Note: This PDF is provided solely as a reader service. It is not intended for reproduction or public distribution. For article reprints, e-prints and permissions please contact: Wrights Reprints, 1-877-652-5295 / ubmreprints@wrightsreprints.com

2. 20POS Data Drives Great Ideas To Steal Wet Seals Project iRunwayProducts To Shelves Teen clothing retailer Wet SealsDel Monte had two problems: iRunway iPhone app takes personal-It didnt have a consistent de- ized marketing to a new level. It letsmand forecasting process across customers scan product bar codes inthe company, and its sales team Wet Seal stores and see all outfits thathad a lot of information about other customers have put togethercustomers but wasnt synthesiz- with that item.ing it well. IRunway links to Wet Seals social First the company created a sin- media platform, where customersgle demand planning process us- post outfits created with the retailers ing i2 TechnologiesDe- clothing. Eighty-five percent of all mand Manager. This items in a store have customer- improved forecasting generated outfits that are rated by efficiency and accuracy, their peers. and took five days out Wet Seal uses products customers of the sales and opera- scan to create personalized notifica- tions planning cycle. tions and product offers for them. Then it worked with One Network Enter- prises to create a soft- Data Visualization Speeds Up Eli Lilly Drug Trialsware-as-a-service-based systemthat combines daily point-of-sale In developing new drugs, Eli Lilly compounds and doses, as well as toand forecast data to directly drive devotes significant time to drug and optimize study designs.replenishment processes and pre- disease modeling.Before its Modeling Executing simulations and compil-vent its products from going out and Simulation Explorer effort, re- ing results, which previously requiredof stock on store shelves. ferred to as MuSE, generating and days or weeks of modeling experts The results have been dra- packaging simulation results was a time, can now be done in minutes.matic: Replenishment planning manual process that took a significant And Lilly clinical trial designs are ben-that used to take days and reams amount of modeling expertstime. efiting from improved dose/responseof paper is now done several MuSE created an interactive envi- relationships,better trial dose startingtimes a day. And more important, ronment that makes it possible to points, and the ability to simulatein-stock levels are running at extract and visualize model-derived multiple trial endpoints. All of theseabove 98% to 99% during key information in real time. This infor- contribute to more efficient clinicalpromotional periods. mation makes it easier to pick drug trials with fewer failed designs.Data On Demand From P&Gs CockpitTo enable its employees to collaborate more effectively,Procter& Gamble created the Decision Cockpit, a digital platform thatsupports faster, real-time decision-making across all brands andbusiness units. Users design their own portals, identifying rele-vant business intelligence thats available in real time,on demand. In some businesses, 370 tracking reports have been reducedto 30. Overall theres been a 50% to 70% reduction in reportsand touches, with 16 fewer data requests on average from eachperson using the cockpit. P&G has seen a 30% to 50% cost sav-ings in some markets, improved data sharing security, and asavings of more than 400 miles of paper in just one year.72 Sept. 13, 2010 informationweek.com

3. McCoys Helps Contractors Sell ThemselvesBuilding supplies and farm equipment retailer McCoys provides its bestcontractor customers with customized Web pages where they can advertiseservices they offer, their qualifications, licensing, warranties, and pricing, as Deeres Big Machineswell as photographs of their work. Get Health Service McCoys retail customers can go to the network,plug in a ZIP code,and see alist of participating McCoys contractors in the ZIP code specified.They can view John Deeres construction andthe customized page of each contractor and contact them about a project. forestry division has introducedWhat makes McCoys Contractor Network intriguing is that contractors must be Fleet Care, a service that relies oninvited to join;its not a pay to playprogram.Also,customers seeking a contrac- actual data from the machine totor dont fill out a form and wait for responses.They contact contractors directly. drive when fleet maintenance gets done, rather than relying only on scheduled intervals. Fleet Care leverages an existing telematics platform called JDLink that transmits data to and from a machine over wireless cellular soon to be satellitedata net- works. Machine operating data is transmitted to John Deere daily, and higher-priority error and problem indicators are sent on demand. The telematic data along with laboratory analysis of machine flu- ids is automatically fed into an ex- pert system. Other inputs into theVans Creates Unique had a dated interface and limited system include preventative main- social capabilities. The site now of- tenance schedules and visual in-Shoe-Buying Experience fers live chat, a scratch pad where spections of machines. The data isVF, maker of Wrangler, North Face, customers can save shoe ideas processed through a flexible rulesLee, and other clothing brands, re- while trying out new designs, and engine that codifies Deere engi-designed its Vans e-commerce site support for multiple-angle viewing. neers vast experience and under-to make it easier for customers to The site also lets Vans pre-config- standing of how to interpret com-create customized sneakers and ure shoes to give customers a start- plex machine data. The systemthen share the experience. ing point. The project resulted in a translates this data into plain lan- Vans had a customization app on significant increase in Vans custom guage and suggests how to proac-its site, but it was difficult to use and shoe sales and Web site traffic. tively maintain machine health. Sept. 13, 2010 73

4. 20GPS-Equipped Garbage Great Ideas To Steal reroutes drivers when dispatchersTrucks Cut Waste add stops midroute. It gives dis- patchers real-time updates on a ve-Waste Management has put GPS hicles progress. And it lets dispatch-tracking and on-board touch-screen ers reassign work and automaticallycomputers in its Seattle garbage notify drivers of changes through in-trucks to capture real-time route stant messages.status information and provide Under the new system,missed pick-wireless communications between ups are down 60%. And Waste Man-drivers and dispatchers. The system agement has exceeded tightly de-includes custom mobile software fined service levels in its contract withrunning on ruggedized touch- Mobile software provides a map the city of Seattle.Waste Managementscreen tablet PCs with a Web-acces- of collection service points, replac- also has cut paper consumption bysible custom dispatch application. ing a paper address list. The system more than 1 million sheets per year. RACE Cloud, provides on-demand Data Mining Reroutes computing for sales and other mo- ER Frequent Fliers bile workers. It has an extensive im- age library of server configurations. Group Health Cooperative of IT and R&D recognized that SASs South Central Wisconsin, a non- product testing groups could benefit profit managed care provider, from the image librarys repeatable launched a data mining project and reusable capabilities. last year to cut costs for services A small group of developers now provided outside of its own clin- build library images that are used by ics. Among 17 potential targetsSAS R&D Gets Boost all testers,resulting in faster testing cy- that the group identified wasFrom Cloud cles. Developers no longer spend what became known as emer- weeks staging and preparing servers gency room frequent fliersCloud computing has let SAS for testing.SAS already is provisioning just 98 of the cooperativesstreamline its R&D development, more than 4,000 environments a 62,000 members who visited ERstesting, and delivery. The analytics week. At any time there may be 1,200 more than six times a year, rack-software developers Remote Access environments running, and thats ex- ing up charges of $2.2 million.Computing Environment, called the pected to double by years end. The cooperatives Care Manage- ment and Community Services de- partments con-Interface Helps GM Collaborate Across Factories tacted each of the frequentGeneral Motors has developed a user interface for its factory systems that fliers and dis-has transformed its factories from highly manual, isolated places into more covered thatcollaborative environments. The Assembly Processing System bridges the many didntgap between engineering and manufacturing users. Its interactive software understand thefrees users from time previously spent on step-by-step communication and importance oflaborious manual tasks, like compiling inconsistent spreadsheets. having a primar y healthcare The system has an information portal that contains engineering part spec- provider. They also didnt knowifications, process and quality mandates, and local process specifications.The about the companys urgent careportal ties in social media, including blog-like information sharing. The sys- facility, a lower-cost alternative totem also provides mashups of some previously unavailable data streams. the emergency room. In the pro- GM credits the system with assembly time reductions of 15% annually, re- grams first six months, costs as-sulting in savings of several million dollars per plant. The company plans to sociated with ER frequent flierssell the system commercially next year to other manufacturers. decreased by $481,000.74 Sept. 13, 2010 informationweek.com

5. 20 Great Ideas To Steal Royal Caribbean Links than 300 46-inch monitors strategi- Digital Signs And Data cally placed to provide information to passengers. The displays vary Royal Caribbeans Oasis of the Seas from passive screens with safety is the worlds largest cruise ship, demos and information on activities measuring almost 1,200 feet long, to fully integrated and interactive 213 feet tall, and 208 feet wide.Thats touch panels that provide real-time nearly 50% larger than the previous information regarding activities on largest cruise ship, with a maximum the ship. For example, the monitors capacity of 6,300 guests and 2,200 can display which restaurants have crew. A ship this size requires de- open tables and which have a wait- tailed planning to help passengers ing list, based on data captured us- get around, and its guest mobility ing shape-recognition cameras.They system is a ship-wide digital signage support multiple languages, includ-United Stationers network to do just that. ing English, Spanish, French, Italian,E-Commerce Breadth It consists of a network of more German, and Portuguese.United Stationers, a wholesaledistributor of office products, istransforming itself into a providerof broader, revenue-generatingservices, such as online marketingand technology, to resellers. The company provides a rangeof services to help 25,000 resellerswith e-commerce, includingcross-media content for print, theWeb, and e-mail. Its search engineis embedded in hundreds of re-seller Web sites. Increasingly, United Stationersalso is selling technology. It offersresellers a wholesale distributionsoftware suite that they can cus- Verizon Wireless Makes Selling Simplertomize. And it recently acquiredMBS Dev, a software and services In mid-2008,Verizon Wireless needed to make a drastic change to its retailprovider to resellers, so it can pro- sales system.The existing one lacked the speed and flexibility Verizons morevide more services, including inte- than 2,400 retail outlets needed. The company decided to create a stream-gration of e-commerce and other lined sales-order processing system, called SHOPP, aimed at reducing thebusiness functions, such as cus- sales transaction time and improving efficiency.tomer service, purchasing, fi- SHOPPs interface provides a simple and intuitive view of everything salesnance, credit and collections, and reps need to complete an order, including a real-time credit module, pricinganalytics. and discounting modules, and a payment and signature module that makes Next, United Stationers plans to sure a device is ready to use when the customer leaves the store. SHOPP cancreate a development laboratory be used on a mobile tablet PC, letting sales reps move through the storefor online marketing and mer- while completing the entire sales transaction.chandising techniques for office SHOPP has cut order processing time by at least 40%, saving about 500,000products. Its also planning a pri- hours of order processing time across the company. And within IT, it has re-vate cloud that will provide a rev- placed four separate order processing applications, resulting in a single codeenue-generating ERP and e-com- base. This has driven operational efficiencies across the technology group,merce offering to resellers. while reducing maintenance, development, and training costs.76 Sept. 13, 2010 informationweek.com

6. Performance Catches On At First Horizon SOA Expands Insurers Marketing OptionsFirst Horizon National, aTennessee financial services Progressive has developed anprovider, implemented a e-commerce system that lets acompany-wide per form- competing car insurer send cus-ance management system tomers to Progressive for motor-called Bonefishso named cycle, boat, and RV insurance, butbecause its financial metric keeps Progressive from trying todiagram resembles a fish sell those customers car insurance.skeleton. One part of that effort, MyPlan, makes Bonefish goals transparent acrossthe company. It lets First Horizon cascade those goals from the CEO down tothe bank branch tellers. All employees participate in goal creation and align-ment, and as a result are more focused on the banks profitability.Users Show CenterPoint How To Manage DataCenterPoint Properties, an indus- drag and drop a message to a folder. Using a service-oriented archi-trial real estate developer, was wrest- Instead of fighting e-mails popu- tecture, Progressive integrated itsling with out-of-control growth of larity, CenterPoint leveraged it by apps with those of other insurers.unstructured data. Critical informa- creating Cubby, an Outlook add-in It writes rules so the site recog-tion was locked up in peoples in- that exposes everything that a user nizes when customers are re-boxes, hurting overall productivity. works with, including objects in ERP, ferred from an auto rival site, and When content management sys- CRM, and custom systems, as a folder suppresses information abouttems didnt solve the problem, Cen- structure. Cubby filters the objects so Progressives auto products.terPoint looked closer and discovered users only see what theyre working The system also lets Progressivethat employees preferred Outlook on. They drag whatever they want to carry other insurers products, sofolders for storage because of the save to the appropriate in-box it can sell partners homeownersproximity to e-mail. It was easier to folder, and Cubby takes over. insurance, for example.FedEx Sensor Pairs GPS And Collaboration Capabilities FedEx SenseAware combines a GPS sensor with a Web-based collaboration platform to let customers shipping sensitive, high-value goods know not just where their packages are, but what conditions theyve endured. Customers put the SenseAware device in a FedEx package, and it provides near real-time data on the vital statistics of the contents, includ- ing location, temperature, and when it was opened or exposed to light. Customers can get alerts when any of those conditions change, and share data on their ship- ments with supply chain partners. FedEx has done limited release of SenseAware to life sci- ence customers, such as biotechnology, pharma- ceuticals, and healthcare companies. Sept. 13, 2010 77