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PROFILES ON TECHNOLOGY
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How Leading
St. Louis Companies Use IT to Drive Business
By Brian R. Hook
Companies around the St. Louis region are using information technology
across numerous industry sectors to drive business—encompassing
unique niches such as logistics, customer service, corporate support,
processing, and embedded systems.
GLOBAL LOGISTICS AT EMERSON
IT allows engineers around the globe to work together to design
a product that can be manufactured and delivered anywhere, says
Stephen Hassell, Emerson Co. vice president and chief information
officer. Emerson provides technology and engineering services to
a wide range of industrial, commercial and consumer markets.
“We utilize our engineering and technology skills to solve our customers’
toughest problems,” Hassell says. “The only way to achieve that
goal at the pace of modern business is to leverage information to
increase our speed and flexibility.”
Emerson, headquartered in Ferguson, is made up of over 60 divisions
organized into business segments, each with different customer bases
and business models.
“The trick for IT is to provide systems that provide the scale,
benefits and leverage of the broader Emerson without impeding the
ability of a division to react to its unique business challenges,”
Hassell says. “Finding and maintaining that fine line sets us apart
from other companies that have similar size, but more common products.”
IT helps turn lots of data into an efficient flow of relevant information
to help divisions make better decisions, Hassell says. “None of
the business basics have changed, but the barriers of time, distance
and language are reduced, thus increasing speed.”
CUSTOMER SERVICE AT ENTERPRISE
IT helps lift the burden of administrative tasks for employees across
the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co. branch system, which allows employees
to spend more time focusing on the customer, says Craig Kennedy,
Enterprise senior vice president and CIO.
“Customer satisfaction drives almost every IT decision we make,”
Kennedy says. “Focus on customers first, and employees second and
everything else takes care of itself.”
Enterprise, headquartered in Clayton, operates the largest car rental
company in North America. It also has operations in the United Kingdom,
Germany and Ireland.
Technology helps customers contact Enterprise. “Whether a customer
wants to reach us via telephone, Internet, through their insurance
agent, through a travel agent, or via a travel Web site, we have
technology to make that easy,” Kennedy says.
Enterprise recently increased its focus on how to get more return
from its IT investment dollar. “The idea is to build more efficient
processes and more standardized architectures. The concept is not
to reduce investment, but rather to channel more of the increasing
investment towards seizing new business opportunities,” Kennedy
says.
“As our company grows, our investment in IT will continue at a commensurate
rate. Change is inevitable for us, as our business continues to
evolve and change as it grows. IT must keep pace with these changes
to remain a relevant part of the business.”
EMBEDDED SYSTEMS AT BOEING
“Aerospace and defense systems are more and more IT centric,” says
Don Winter, vice president of engineering and IT at Phantom Works—the
research and development arm in Hazelwood that supports both the
commercial and defense units of Boeing Co.
“Our aircraft have a completely digital flight control system,”
Winter says. “You can’t go to Microsoft and buy a tool set for writing
real-time embedded software.”
Winter describes embedded systems as a distinct sub domain of IT.
“It’s not a market that is well served by the mainstream,” Winter
says. “We’re providing technologies for a critical area within virtually
all of the products that Boeing produces.”
Embedded systems are processors that interact directly with the
physical world, Winter says. They control something or sense something
without human interaction.
“That requires a mix of computer science training and engineering
training,” Winter says. There is no one location known for embedded
systems, like Silicon Valley in California is known for Internet-based
and desktop-based technologies.
“All the technologies tend to be home grown by the companies. You
find large pockets of embedded system developers in unlikely places
like St. Louis,” Winter says
GLOBAL PROCESSING HEADQUARTERS FOR MASTERCARD
MasterCard International Inc. processes trillions of dollars of
transactions at its global technology headquarters in O’Fallon,
Mo. The facility houses a fast, reliable, and scaleable processing
platform, says Rob Reeg, MasterCard chief technology officer.
“Every day, cardholders use MasterCard-branded payment cards at
more than 24 million locations around the world. In addition to
the staff who help enable the network, we also have to be ready
to process transactions quickly and accurately,” Reeg says.
MasterCard has deployed a new core-processing platform within the
last few years. The $160 million initiative, Reeg says, provides
enhanced functionality for three primary customer applications at
MasterCard—authorization, clearing and settlement.
“We monitor not only our own equipment worldwide, but also our customers’
networks,” which includes merchants and financial institutions,
Reeg says. “Our goal is always that our cardholders can use their
cards around the world to make the purchases they want—without giving
a second thought to whether or not the transaction will work.”
SUPPORTING CORPORATE OPERATIONS AT AT&T
The IT organization within AT&T Inc. is responsible for all the
systems and applications that support one of the world’s largest
telecommunications companies.
“AT&T operates in a technology driven industry and therefore the
IT organization must be on the forefront of delivering new IT based
solutions,” says Patty Chapin, vice president of portfolio and process
management. Approximately 3,500 employees work in St. Louis within
the IT organization at AT&T, managing key corporate systems such
as finance, human resources, procurement, data center operations,
and billing operations.
“IT supports the corporation by ensuring all existing systems and
application availability, as well as delivering on new corporate
initiatives,” Chapin says.
“IT is helping the company by automating and simplifying the systems
and applications it maintains and delivers. This adds efficiency,
reduces cost and allows resources to focus on the development of
new opportunities to meet business needs.”
PROVIDING INFRASTRUCTURE AT SAVVIS
SAVVIS Inc. provides the IT infrastructure—including servers, storage,
networks and data centers—for thousands of companies around the
world. The Town and Country-headquartered company operates 25 data
centers across the U.S., Europe and Asia.
“SAVVIS has grown from a dot com start-up in 2000 to an industry
leader with $660 million in revenues,” says Jim Mori, general manager
Americas. “Everyday 5,200 companies rely on SAVVIS to deliver the
computing, storage, networks, and security they need to run their
business.”
Companies often rely on SAVVIS to run IT systems for a specific
set of applications or a business unit, helping to reduce the costs
of IT operations.
“We are the IT plumbing that businesses rely on,” says Bryan Doerr,
CTO. “We deliver the critical IT capacity that is often behind the
scenes, but is truly mission critical. In today’s business world
when a server goes down, the business stops. We make sure the servers
and all pieces of the IT infrastructure are always up and running.”
CONSULTING AND STAFFING AT ENVISION
“We consistently supply highly qualified IT talent at competitive
bill rates by negotiating competitive consultant compensation and
benefit packages,” says Dave Jaenke, president and CEO of Envision
based in Creve Coeur.
Envision provides companies with technology consulting and staffing
services. Jaenke says this often provides the companies with considerable
cost savings.
“Envision’s unique candidate screening process eliminates the risk
that a customer might incur by hiring full-time employees,” Jaenke
says. Envision narrows stacks of resumes to find the highest quality
candidates at the best possible rates.
Envision uses a client portal with detailed progress on each project
and a sophisticated error detection infrastructure, which informs
the development team immediately of any errors in productions. “Envision
has successfully completed several hundred projects utilizing a
wide variety of technologies,” Jaenke says. |
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