As a cross-selling tool, GGT is a significant improvement compared with the old method, which required customer service reps to call up a counterpart in Lands’ End’s specialty shopper service. IT staffers interviewed the specialty shopper folks to build the knowledge database and then linked GGT to the existing order-entry system, a process that was relatively straightforward, according to Giannantonio. The payoff: an estimated $20 million in additional revenue directly attributable to GGT. Giannantonio estimates that it would have taken over $40 million to build a new system.

Organization: Washington State Department of Information Services
Resourceful reuse of software:Shared infrastructure components
Payoff: $300,000 in annual productivity savings
The Washington State Department of Information Services scored a hit with its Applications Template and Outfitting Model (Atom). Launched in the fall of 2000, Atom is an online resource for project management processes and infrastructure components. The brainchild of senior policy adviser Paul Piper, Atom includes the policy information, shared infrastructure components, business planning documents, standards and reusable code needed to create an Internet-based government application.

Atom promotes the reuse of enterprise investments, says Piper, by making information on best practices easily available to state agencies online (see www.wa.gov/dis/atom). The system’s target audience includes business and project managers, application developers and third-party contractors who, thanks to Atom, have now taken an average of 40 hours off of project planning and development time. With 150 projects under way each year, Atom adds up to a savings of $300,000 for the IT department.