Efm Events

1. The Struggle with Outsourcing: When Outsourcing Makes Sense and When it Does Not.
   Presented by: Randy Remington, VP, Director of Information Technology, Bankers Trust Co.
   Bankers Trust Company recently went through a process to bring most IT functions in-house, resulting in reduced cost and increased productivity.  Randy Remington, VP and Director of Information Technology for Bankers Trust Company, will discuss the process undertaken to get where they are today, the issues encountered, and what functions it still makes sense to outsource.
   Thought Leader Sponsored by Software Plus
   
2. Get It Together: Driving Data Quality and Data Integration Initiatives for Deeper Customer Perspective
   Presented by: Jeff Hoffman, Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing, Chubb & Son
   In the absence of a true enterprise data warehouse, Chubb & Son has tackled the challenge of integrating multiple internal and external data sources to enable segmentation, predictive modeling, market analysis and prospecting. Ultimately, Chubb’s customer and market intelligence team has developed a valuable customer signature and criteria for market assessment. Hear how this global insurance provider began at the core of any data integration solution – addressing data quality – to drive insight into its diverse customer base.
   Thought Leader Sponsored by: SAS Institute
   
3. Consolidating Distributed Data back to the Data Center
   Presented by Randy Cairns, AVP & Corp. Security Office, American Republic Insurance
   This breakout will discuss getting your arms around data growth, management of the data and WAN considerations. Also discusses will be business continuity for medium sized companies that may not be able to afford the extensive programs like those of Fortune 500 companies.
   Sponsored by CommVault

Pursuing IT Excellence through Service Management Processes

1. Updating WAN Connectivity: Avoiding the Potholes
   Presented by: Dave Thalacker, Director of IT, Ruan Transport Corporation
   Ruan Transport Corporation operates 150 Wide Area Network (WAN) sites from their corporate office in Des Moines, Iowa. Remote sites needed bandwidth upgrades that would have been costly for only marginal improvements within the antiquated Frame Relay network. Instead, Ruan provisioned broadband circuits with managed hardware VPN devices. Converted sites were pleased with their newfound speeds and reduced monthly expenses. Not all conversions were smooth and lessons were learned that improved the process for subsequent sites.
   Thought Leader Sponsored by: ASAP Software
   
2. Creating a Service Oriented Architecture to Integrate Business Information to Support Processes, Compliance and Decision Making
   This moderated breakout session connects key business drivers – improved new product and service introductions, and improved customer service – to the strategic decision to standardize on an architecture for the enterprise. This architecture creates a vision for the organization to integrate disparate applications using web services, orchestrate the services into end-to-end business process, manage the processes, and deploy them across the enterprise.
   Presented by: Jeff Gleason, Director, IT Strategies, Aegon Transamerica
   Thought Leader Sponsored by Sun Microsystems