News Feature

Enterprise Value Awards Winners Guide 2004

Grand CIO Enterprise Value Award Winner

Chicago Police Department
Government

Chicago

www.cityofchicago.org

Revenue: NA

Employees: 16,600 sworn officers and civilian employees

Winning system: The Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR) relational database contains 8.5 million arrest records. By querying CLEAR data, Chicago Police more effectively and efficiently solve, predict and prevent crime.

Winning strategy: Ensured user participation in development and testing; received consistent support from top management

System anatomy: Oracle 9i relational database; SQL query and Crystal reporting tools; Sun SunFire database and Internet application servers; Sun StorEdge Disk Array storage area network; removable MicroSlate notebooks for police cars

Business value: CLEAR has helped police increase Chicago’s crime-solving rate by 11 percent, created time savings (193 full-time equivalents annually) by automating core tasks, and enabled integrated crime fighting with 225 other law enforcement agencies.

Initial investment and maintenance: $40 million to date funded jointly by Chicago and partner Oracle; Oracle licensing fees of $550,000 for the first five years and $288,000 for subsequent years

IT executive: Ron Huberman, assistant deputy superintendent, information and strategic services

Business sponsors: Philip J. Cline, superintendent of police; Barbara McDonald, deputy superintendent of administrative services

Academic Management Services Corp.
Banking/brokerage

Swansea, Mass.

www.amsweb.com

Revenue: $1.4 billion loan portfolio

Employees: 500

Winning system: Integrated Counseling and Enrollment (ICE) is a Web portal that provides academic loan counselors with integrated access to several internal and external systems, helping them match the right loan products to a family’s financial needs. ICE gives counselors the ability to create and track their own accounts. The system also enabled AMS to enter the loan consolidation market.

Winning strategy: Executed in-house what AMS does best (programming); outsourced what it doesn’t do best (user interface design)

System anatomy: Hewlett-Packard eight-way N Class platform running Oracle’s relational DBMS, and Dell and Sun servers; XML; Java; Web services

Business value: In its first year of operation, ICE enabled AMS to grow its consolidated loan portfolio to a $175 million business and cut the the time to process loan applications from 50 days to five days.

Initial investment and maintenance: $311,500 for development; $124,600 for annual maintenance

IT executive: John Mariano, CIO

Business sponsors: Claudia Schutz, senior vice president of customer services (retired); Suzanne Reynolds, former manager of loan customer service

Ace Hardware Corp.
Retail/wholesale

Oak Brook, Ill.

www.acehardware.com

Sales: $3 billion wholesale; $13 billion retail

Employees: 5,000

Winning system: Ace’s enterprise data warehouse fueled expansion of its customer loyalty program from 1 million members to 5 million. Ace leverages this customer data to plan more effective marketing campaigns, improve category management and set prices to optimize profitability.