Syntel Given DW Dvpt Project By School Specialty

Syntel, Inc. announced it has been awarded a contract to develop and implement a data warehousing solution for Appleton, WI-based School Specialty, Inc. Financial terms of the contract were not released.

With estimated fiscal 2000 revenues of over $690 million, School Specialty is the largest and fastest-growing supplier of non-textbook education products to educators in the United States. School Specialty offers over 60,000 different products to more than 108,000 schools throughout the United States.

"We chose Syntel for this strategic effort because they clearly demonstrated an understanding of our business needs and the role advanced technology can play to make us a more competitive corporation," said Michael Killoren, Chief Information Officer of School Specialty, Inc. "This new data warehousing solution will enable us to understand our customer needs, analyze our marketing effectiveness, and respond more quickly to changing business conditions."

Since 1995, School Specialty has acquired more than 15 companies as part of an aggressive expansion plan. The new data warehousing solution will also combine data from several processing systems in a common platform so School Specialty can run "what if" scenarios as part of its business planning efforts.

"We're pleased with School Specialty's confidence in our abilities as we work to implement this solution over the next 10-12 months," said Jay Clark, Syntel Vice President of Global Applications Management. "School Specialty is leveraging advanced technologies in ways that will have a positive impact on how they run their operation."

The project is being managed through Syntel's Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence Practice, which provides a host of services from project scoping and pilots through data warehouse design and comprehensive implementation solutions.

For more information about School Specialty, visit http://www.schoolspecialty.com.

For more information about Syntel, visit http://www.syntelinc.com.