OWENS AND MINOR PRESENTED WITH 1999 LEADERSHIP IN DATA WAREHOUSING AWARD

The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) educational association has selected Owens & Minor of Richmond, Virginia as the winner of its 1999 Leadership in Data Warehousing Awards competition. Owens & Minor was nominated by Business Objects of San Jose, CA, in the Warehouse and the Web category. This competition, along with the Best Practices in Data Warehousing Awards competition, provides thousands of practitioners with outstanding practices they can follow as data warehousing makes its transition from early adoption to mass proliferation.

"The competition for the Leadership Award was exceptionally strong this year," said Steven Crofts, President of The Data Warehousing Institute, "but Owens & Minor stood out due to the scope, ingenuity, and foresight in its data warehouse."

Owens & Minor (O&M), a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, is the nation's largest distributor of national name-brand medical/surgical supplies. The company's distribution centers throughout the United States serve hospitals, integrated healthcare systems, and group purchasing organizations. Because of the size of its business and the complexity of its supply chain, Owens & Minor requires easy access to detailed and timely sales, inventory, and accounts receivable data. To obtain a single, comprehensive view of its supply chain would reap potential savings from suppliers and offer better service to its customers. Unfortunately, the information stored on its mainframe transactional systems was difficult to access and analyze, and reports generated from the mainframe and routed via mail or fax often were outdated by the time they were received.

To unlock this critical data from the mainframe, Owens & Minor built a data warehouse for decision support purposes. Using WebIntelligence, the decision support tool for the internet from Business Objects, as its front end, the company was able to identify cost-saving opportunities and extract millions of dollars of costs savings in its supply chain by analyzing sales, inventory, and accounts receivable data. The company then allowed its customers and suppliers to tap into this same data warehouse through an e-business intelligence extranet. The application is a supply chain extranet for customers, suppliers, and partners that allows them to tap into product usage information contained in Owen & Minor's data warehouse. This online system, called WISDOM (WebIntelligence Supporting Decisions from Owens & Minor), sits atop the company's data warehouse. Customers and suppliers access it for up-to-the-minute reporting and analysis on customer sales and usage, product inventory, contracts, pricing, and orders/shipments. Currently, 700 people use the data warehouse.

"To be judged the winner of the Best Practices in Data Warehousing Award is a wonderful tribute to Don Stoller, Director of Information Management, and his entire team," said G. Gilmer Minor, III, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Owens & Minor, "I am very proud of what our overall technology team, led by Lee Marston, Senior Vice President and CIO, continues to create to help our customers meet their challenges. The best is yet to come."

Judging

Owens & Minor, chosen from thirteen Best Practices Winners, addressed nine leadership qualities in a presentation at the Best Practices & Implementation Conference in San Diego, California, September 19-24, which included:

1. Having a project, and a project team, and earning the respect of the business user community.
2. Having the right team assembled, with the right mix of people, to make the project a success.
3. During all phases of the project, paying the right level of attention to data cleanliness.
4. Demonstrating innovation in their product. There was a culture of "working outside the box" to achieve outstanding results.
5. Possessing a solid "business driver" in place that showed a healthy "disrespect" for terminologies, technologies, and methodologies, so that things could always keep moving.
6. Possessing a clear understanding that "the real job starts 90 days after it's built " so that the right long-term infrastructures were in place.
7. Balancing old and new technologies with the product.
8. Adequately managing expectations so that results spoke louder than words.
9. Possessing, as a team, a willingness to share its good and bad experiences with others, both outside and inside the organization.

"We are honored to accept this prestigious award from the Data Warehousing Institute," added Minor, "Our partnership with Business Objects has given us an edge in providing supply chain solutions to our customers."

Visit the Data Warehousing Institute on the Web at: http://www.dw-institute.com/.