Wednesday, April 19, 2000 COMDEX/Spring 2000

It is a special night celebrating a special honor, the first of its kind: The e.Millennium Awards. These awards recognize the leaders of the net, those people who are breaking new ground, changing the way business gets done, heralding a new century filled with new opportunity.

The e.Millennium Awards is not about speed or software or, even technology. It is about people measuring technology's value to business. The awards honor six categories:

Business to Employee
Business to Customer
Business to Business - Small Organization
Business to Business Large Organization
Technology Excellence
and the highest honor, the Bricks and Clicks award for best overall finalist.

Before we begin the actual presentations, I wish to thank the Small Business Technology Coalition and their IT Congressional Roundtable for their participation in presenting the awards and for placing a national spotlight on e.business. 

I wish also to recognize the people who made this evening possible.

The concept of the e.Millennium Awards was born in a meeting with Bob Bierman, the head of ZD Events and COMDEX/Spring 2000. We would like to thank the entire staff for COMDEX/Spring 2000 including Heather Palmer and Mary Meyer. 

Kevin Williamson and Bruce Guptal and all those at CMGI Solutions who did a magnificent job of architecting the e.Millennium Awards web site. 

Jack Ross and Kathleen Filbin from Hubbard Ross who spent countless hours designing the entry form and coordinating the judging which was an entirely virtual process involving more than 100 judges from around the world.

The Chicago Research & Planning Group has worked for on the e.Millennium Award for months. I would like to thank my staff, Toby Brown, Rose Guban, Brian Hardy, Leslie Rampe and Diana Schaufuss.   I would also like to thank my consultants,  Brian Frederiksen of System Specialties, Michelle Kelley of LoDestro Public Relations, and Jack Ross of Hubbard Ross.

Thank you to our sponsors who represent the most forward-thinking companies in e.business today: Bank One, Freeborn & Peters, CCC, APEX, APC, Intertrade Technologies and Hewlett Packard.

Our judges are top executives representing some of the world's top corporations. They graciously donated their time for the first e.Millennium Award.

And now onto the presentations.

The e.Millennium Awards recognizes the value of relationships, especially between an organization and the people who represent it. The Businessto Employee Category honors the companies which use technology to harness the power of efficiency, internal communication and human resources and how they relate to a business' bottom line.

The second place winner in this category is the world's largest online used car marketplace. The employees of this company need accurate information on demand. The solution was an Intranet made available nationwide to all employees using SAS software, Sun hardware and consulting services. Sales grew 160%, competitive advantage skyrocketed and the benefits of sharing information kept dealers upto date minute by minute. The second place winner is Autotrader.com.

The first place winner in this category has an equally compelling story. It is one of  the largest financial services companies in the world and the fourth largest banking institution in the United States. The challenge was helping employees manage some 45,000 customer relationships in 14 states and more than 60 countries. This award winner developed a Customer Knowledge Center where users could easily access internal and external data. This winner proves that giving the right tools to your employees works.

Revenues and productivity jumped, business retention per banker improved significantly and customer satisfaction has remained steadily high. The Customer Knowledge has supported the mergers of First Chicago, American National Bank and National Bank of Detroit. Congratulations goes to Bank One as the first place e.Millennium Award winner in the Businessto Employee Category. 

If customer relationships were a sometimes elusive challenge before the web, they are an even greater challenge today. The judges for the e.Millennium Awards category for Businessto Customer have selected two companies, however, which have demonstrated the intelligence to win that challenge.

The second place winner in this category is PowerServe International who provided a virtual e-business framework with a front-end shopping site and five bank-end support sites-much like you'd find in a brick and mortar establishment. It allowed its client, WildHippo.com, to have revenues increase by 400% and proved that technology can indeed help business support its customers.  The second place winner is Power Serve International's Wildhippo.com.  

The first place winner in this category is an online auction and e-commerce site which allows businesses and consumer to set the price on brand name merchandise. A toddler by definition, this two-year-old company grew rapidly. Technology could not keep up. How do you handle growth and keep the customer happy with speed, accuracy and zero delays? The company's solution was so successful that they are now selling it, creating a technology product in addition to the auction site. Congratulations goes to U-Bid.com as the first place e.Millennium Award winner in the Businessto Customer Category.

Small business marketers need focused, efficient planning to launch their e-business initiatives. Oftentimes, they delicately balance great ideas and determination with limited budgets.

The second place winner in this category rose above the rest because it used technology to prevent problems - a proactive approach which should be envied among many of the dot-com companies, large or small. This winner is a world pioneer in visual representation of real-time e-business data. They provide information which help their customers prevent costly problems. Their initiatives improved customer satisfaction and saved 80% in the time required to analyze data. The second place winner is High Tower Software.

The first place winner wishes to become the primary
international market maker for select, regionally 
produced and traded agriculture commodities. Members
around the world are
able to anonymously
access a host of real-time
information about current market pricing, sales volume, product movement and availability. Buyers and sellers can then make more informed, faster decisions. The winner designed a dynamic market where, for the first time, participants have real-time information about their products. Since the site automatically classifies and categorizes the products listed based on industry metrics, savings have reached up to 19% on market transactions. And the system reduced inventory carrying costs by as much as $1 million per year for a mid-sized bottlers. Technology can and has, in this case, maximized business value. Congratulations goes to BulkMarkets.com for their site at worldwinetrade.com.  

Large organizations face the harshest challenge in the Internet Economy. Mobilize your people fast. Get there first. Honor established sales force and distributor networks. Make the CEO happy. It's a tough fight, but the winners of the e.Millennium Award Business to Business for Large Organizations have done precisely that in an almost seamless fashion. 

The second place winner answered a simple, but necessary call to action: Provide registered insurance agents with access to customer information including policies, billing, claims and commission statements in a secure, protected environment. The company and its 19,000 employees launched the site just six weeks ago and have received tremendous feedback. Productivity jumped 10% with significant cost savings. Response time increased. The process eliminated mail, eliminated calls into customer service and eliminated delays by giving the agents and customers access to their data. According to the company, the technology solution is a "business phenomenon." The second place winner is Fireman's Fund-Parkway Insurance. 

The first place winner's story is interesting. The organization is a premiere rail car leasing company which owns the largest privately held fleet of railroad tank cars in the world with over 80,000 cars. The company is a true brick and mortar company - it is 100 years old. Yet, its age shows the enthusiasm of youth as it has truly become a child of the dot-com era. This organization's e-solution is a regulatory compliance and management solution that allows the company and its customers to calculate and measure the level of compliance that a tank car has in relationship to the complexities of the Federal Railroad Administration. What were the business benefits from technology? The cost of inspection using this solution decreased the cost by over 30% per car. The ability to manage complex federal regulations and its frequent changes was truly phenomenal. And the most interesting result is that the company's compliance solution positioned them to market it to others creating a new product based on technology. The first place award winner is GATX Rail Corporation.

It is with great honor I present the Technology Excellence Award for best use of technology among all our finalists this evening. This award showcases the power of technology as this company used it to give its employees and customer greater control over information resulting in more business, less time and significant cost savings. The winner of the e.Millennium Technology Excellence Award is BulkMarkets.com for their site at worldwinetrade.com.

This Bricks and Clicks is the final award and it honors the company which demonstrated best-in-class in all categories. It is the equivalent to the Oscar's Lifetime Achievement Award. The difference being, however, that in Internet time a lifetime occurrs literally every ten minutes. So you must be quick and you must be smart and the winner of the Bricks and Clicks has proven itself to be both. The Bricks and Clicks winner for the e.Millennium Awards at COMDEX/Spring 2000 is GATX Rail Corporation.

We would also like to mention those who entered and were semi finalists: