Efm Events

1. IT Asset Management
   Thought Leader: Mike Haven, Enterprise Desktop Software and Asset Manager, Conseco IT Client Services
   1)       We identified control, pricing, and support inefficiencies when we first brought forward the idea of a company-wide computer refresh to a leadership board of the company. Each cost center was purchasing its own model of computer individually through different vendors with different specifications. We needed to provide better support and better equipment.
   2)       We decided to do this by upgrading all of the computers, department by department with standardized models from one vendor. We offered equipment that would be replaced on a regular staged basis, that would be covered under warranty, and that would be managed and paid for by IT.
   3)       The primary focus was to provide better support, but the after-effects were much better pricing for the equipment and a reduced amount of staff necessary to support the disparate equipment types. Even though IT took on the extra expense for paying for every person’s computer from the individual budget centers, our company slashed its spending on computers and lowered our computer to person ratio to a more effective number (1.2). We drastically reduced the downtime of every department we worked with sold the idea to other departments and eventually to the Executives of the company who made our system policy.
   4)       We originally implemented the deployment as one mass deployment. We discovered a great deal about our Enterprise that we did not know prior to that experience. Every day we can across a new application that “couldn’t be migrated” or a supervisor that refused to be upgraded. It was a very drastic change for our company to have IT in charge of that decision making process. The largest lesson we learned was something we learned from the second wave of deployments. That lesson was that it is better to smooth the upgrade deployments out over several years rather than to have peaks and valleys of upgrades.
   5)       The success is measured by the reduction in downtime, the reduced support staff, fewer helpdesk tickets, improved turnaround time from request date, reduced budget, and improved image of IT within the business units we support. Our department is audited and analyzed by outside groups every year to find ways of making the company more efficient and after each examination those groups came away astounded at our efficiencies and effectiveness.
   Sponsored by ASAP Software
   
2. Integrating & Visualizing Data to Drive Business Results
   Thought Leader: Susan Hall, Manager of Marketing Services at Steelcase, Inc
   This discussion will focus on how Steelcase leverages information in the Sales function with the power of integrating and visualizing data.  Discussions will revolve around the sales planning process, distribution planning, and distribution analysis, and measurement.
   Sponsored by SAS Institute
   
3. Identifying, Prioritizing and Building a Business Case for Technology
   Thought Leader: Kevin Naylor, Director of IT, Indiana Pacers
   How does your organization decide which projects to implement?  Is it based on user needs?  Is it based on ROI?  This is an open discuss on examples of what IT organizations have decided to implement and what projects could not get sponsorship based on ROI.
   Sponsored by Crowe Chizek

• Account Management - How IT proactively engages with our business client.
• Governance - How IT priorities and resources align across our business clients.
• Portfolio Management - How IT ensures the right items are being worked on.
• IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) or IT Service Management (ITSM) - How IT ensures the right services and service levels are provided. 

1. BizTalk/SharePoint Lessons Learned
   Thought Leader: Darrell Gabbar, eServices Team Lead/Senior Analyst, St. Vincent Hospital and Health Care Center
   St. Vincent Health needed to replace an outdated system used to pre-register patients and verify insurance information across multiple systems. We leveraged Microsoft Visual Studio.Net, SharePoint and BizTalk technologies to successfully deliver a custom solution. In this session we will exam what worked well (and not so well) with our technology choices.
   Thought Leader Sponsored by Microsoft
   
2. Real-World Solutions: Improving the Management of PC and Laptop Users’ Data in the Name of Security and Compliance
   Presented by: Ed Simcox, Jr., Director, Enterprise Technology Planning, Clarian Health Partners, Inc.
   Due to Clarian Health Partners’ growing business and Clarian’s need to create a secure, auditable computing environment. Ed Simcox was challenged with creating a Clarian’s plan for managing and securing user-generated data, such as e-mails, Microsoft Office documents and Adobe PDF files. This project is one of six in a larger, on-going technology refresh program at Clarian.  In this session, Ed will discuss the problems Clarian faced, proposed solutions, pitfalls, and the business justifications for the solution.
   Thought Leader Sponsored by: EMC
   
3. From Standard Backups to Storage Management
   Thought Leader: Mike Runkel, Director of IT, The Schneider Corporation
   After many years of strictly backing up data to tape and adding additional hard drives for space needs, we needed a storage management solution.  We looked at a number of products and eventually selected and implemented the Commvault Galaxy product.  This discussion will focus on the storage management product selection process, the results we have seen, and what we have learned since our implementation.  Our CommVault Galaxy implementation includes disk/tape file system backups, file system migration, Exchange migration, and continuous data replication (CDR) from our data center.
   Thought Leader Sponsored by CommVault

Mike Vance
CIO
Steak & Shake

Russ Bostick
CIO
Conseco, Inc.