2009 Chairman's Award for Excellence: Innovation at Heart
Every business is on a journey. And whether that journey has just begun or is taking a new turn, innovation fuels the way. CSC has been turning fresh ideas into innovative technology solutions for more than 50 years. Each year we honor the most innovative projects taking place in the company and the value they're creating for our customers.
The recipients of our 2009 Chairman's Award for Excellence represent some of the brightest minds in the IT industry. From signing for a package delivery in England, processing a traffic violation in Germany or verifying insurance at a doctor's office in the United States, the following CSC groups are truly revolutionizing the role technology plays in even the most common daily events.
"The Chairman's Award recipients exemplify the innovative spirit propelling CSC's success in providing business value to our clients," says Lem Lasher, president and Chief Innovation Officer with CSC's Office of Innovation. "These collaborative innovations are the result of our commitment to find the most extraordinary business solutions for every industry and leverage them across the world."
The recipients of the 2009 Chairman's Award for Excellence are:
Justice Served
Award: eJusticeSOA: Service-Oriented eProcessing and Case Management of Law Violations
In Germany, the processing of law violations is extremely complex, requiring the interaction of multiple authorities, such as police and administration agencies, public prosecution services, regional courts and enforcement agencies. The lawful proceeding of legal cases must also observe some of the strongest legal principles of the German Constitution, including separation of powers and judicial independence. The resulting process is strongly regulated, and largely based on paper case files to be transported between authorities, requiring considerable time and resources.
Engaged by the Hessian Department of Justice, CSC developed eJusticeSOA, a cross-government, process- and service-oriented integration platform for the fully digitized processing and case management of law violations. The ambitious aim of the Hessian Department of Justice was to accelerate the processing of traffic offenses by bringing the underlying multi-agency process to an electronic level, and creating the basic technology for electronic case files and system integration in the e-justice domain. The CSC team consisted of Rudiger Eggers, Roland Heinrichs, Guido Reiff, and Stefan Knopp.
"In Germany and all over the world, governments are thinking about their workflows," says Eggers. "Our technology allows them to plug each other together and start thinking about bigger workflows."
CSC applied concepts of service orientation, business process management and enterprise content management to legal regulations and constitutional principles across multiple agencies. "We had to form goodwill between different independent authorities," says Knopp. "The result is an electronically based system that is faster, more cost effective and serves justice better."
eJusticeSOA is Germany's first comprehensive solution for paperless processing of law violations. While transport of paper-based case files took up to three days, electronic case files are now transferred in minutes. And existing legacy systems are seamlessly integrated into the cross-agency collaboration process. The SOA/BPM platform provides the necessary flexibility to support a variety of judicial processes and rich options to integrate additional services and systems.
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Modern, Mobile Workforce
Award: A CSC-Managed Mobility Service for Royal Mail Group's Tracked + Product Launch
As the Internet changed the way people communicate, shop and access information, traditional postal services quickly followed suit. In the United Kingdom, fewer letters, more online shopping and customer demand for real-time tracking made Royal Mail realize its business model needed extensive modernization to compete with new rivals and changing preferences.
A CSC team of Suzanne Cannon, Lance Illsey, Colin Walker and Mike McKechnie developed a revolutionary system for the national postal service. "The purpose of the project was to provide Royal Mail with a solution that allows them to catch up with the market and effectively move ahead in a number of instances," says Walker.
The challenge was to enable Royal Mail to track and trace any postal item from source through delivery, including electronic signature capture, in real time. "Real time means that we know exactly where it is in the network at any point in time and the customer can inquire on that package and they can find where it is. And if it was delivered in error somewhere and somebody else signed for it, they can see it straight away," says McKechnie.
Incorporating our industry-leading performance engineering expertise, the team seamlessly integrated a unique solution into existing Royal Mail systems. They designed a user-friendly PDA (postal digital assistant) with an application that supports the tracking process. Initially, 27,000 were deployed, with the ability to scale to 80,000.
The PDA allows the postal worker out at a site to get tracking information onto the electronic device and back into their back-end systems in real time. The results of the PDA deployment include efficiency, better service and expanded business opportunities for Royal Mail, and with CSC's help, every Royal Mail business unit is now profitable for the first time in 20 years. But, says Cannon, this is not just a postal solution: "This can be exploited further across CSC for anywhere that a mobile workforce is required - National Health Service, mining, meter reading. It's limitless."
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Intelligent Data
Award: Blue Health Intelligence - World's Largest Healthcare Informatics Data Warehouse
In the United States, the independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans provide healthcare financing for almost one in three citizens. But accurate research data is critical to providing effective treatment, improving outcomes and helping reduce spiraling costs.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield faced the challenge of creating the world's largest healthcare informatics data warehouse, dubbed Blue Health Intelligence, to enhance benchmarking capabilities and enable advanced predictive analytics. A CSC team composed of John B. Clark, Jr., Kumar Chebrolu, Amit Ghosh and Craig Guinn designed, developed and implemented a system that would integrate data from up to 40 member companies.
They built an overall architectural design incorporating "continuous certification," providing the most comprehensive source of accurate healthcare research data to be found anywhere.
The data warehouse is key to the Blue Health Intelligence's overall 10-year strategic plan. No other consortia-based analysis tool exists at this scale: The warehouse is capable of processing medical and other types of claims for 90 to 100 million people, while providing the client with huge competitive advantage.
Recognized by both BHI and industry as a one-of-a-kind solution, the BHI data warehouse will lead to greater healthcare transparency by delivering unmatched detail about trends and best practices.
"We are working with other CSC teams on how to leverage this solution in other industries," says Chebrolu. "This is one of the largest data warehouses that we've developed at CSC, and we can use the same patterns and similar architecture on projects across other industries."
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Maintenance on the Tarmac
Award: Mobile Maintenance for Aircraft at Paris Airport
Before and after flight, customer safety, security and satisfaction depend on efficient and timely aircraft maintenance. Facing business growth, increased costs, new airports constraints and strict regulations, Air France called upon the CSC team of Vincent Roullet, Antoine Lapert, Laurent Bourdery, and Christophe Lienhard to initiate, launch and manage a global transformation program
The challenge was to create a maintenance hub that would integrate new logistics processes and information systems into a new, centrally located building. "It was a long-term project, involving infrastructure development, IS development, logistics, process redesign and change management," says Roullet.
CSC helped Air France design a new information system for logistical flows and maintenance e-file management, deploying a fleet of mobile maintenance vehicles equipped with robust information desks. "Everything is much more efficient and productive," notes Lienhard. "With the new information system, you don't need any more paper files, and no longer have to go back and forth between aircrafts and buildings."
Mechanics can now gain access to more than 80 percent of Air France aircraft in less than seven minutes, allowing them to service up to 300 flights every day. Eighty dedicated vehicles perform aircraft checks 24/7, accessing more than 400,000 different parts right at the aircraft, reducing maintenance mileage by 25 percent.
"We had very close collaboration," adds Roullet. "The customer is pleased. The solution is in place. And it's making a difference."
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Talking the Language of Business
Award: OASIS - Optimization Assessment and Systems Integration Study
Every business enterprise needs immediate, accurate server and storage information to maximize efficiency and return on investment (ROI). The CSC team of Billy Rollin, David Baird, Michael Paxson, and Randy Arthur created OASIS, a revolutionary set of tools and processes that can provide a rapid, non-intrusive means of making intelligent optimization recommendations.
"We put together OASIS to try to give the clients an idea of what they could do with their environment to reduce server sprawl, power consumption and facilities' requirements," says Rollin.
In the past, discovery and analysis efforts could take three to six months or more - and the output was often inconsistent. By mapping client business drivers and system inventories to 15 key OASIS data elements, the team developed an overall solution that generates a "future-state" roadmap, including Green IT reporting, in just one to three weeks.
Analysis on 20 pilot accounts shows a potential annual savings of nearly $19 million. "There's always an upfront cost to adopting new technology, and OASIS factors that into the ROI calculations," says Arthur. "So, we talk the language of the business. We're talking about money. We're not just talking about the technology."
CSC is using OASIS globally throughout all vertical lines of business and business units. "We developed OASIS for commercial outsourcing, but it rapidly became noticed in the Consulting Group, now it's a consulting service; in the North American Public Sector, it's being used for cost-cutting measures," says Rollin.
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B2B Social Networking
Award: WikonnecTSM
Business is more than boardrooms and balance sheets - it's people, increasingly connected everywhere, at all times. The CSC team of Carolyn Emerson, Bob Evans, Divya Khanna and Medha Sutaria researched the growing phenomenon of social networking to determine how it could be applied to CSC's community of 1,200 insurance industry customers.
The team's goal was to create "WikonnecT," a solution that shifts the focus of interaction from "brick and mortar" and "organization-to-organization" to "person-to-person" and "community-to-community."
According to Evans, the team's biggest challenge was the timeline. "We really settled in on the requirements that we wanted to meet, the platform we wanted to use in mid- to late-July, and our event was coming up in September, so we had a very aggressive timeline to meet." But by using an open source framework and employing social networking processes, the team was able to work quickly while maximizing flexibility and cost efficiencies. In less than six weeks, CSC launched the first global business-to-business social networking site for the insurance industry, providing a proactive environment for CSC customers and employees to collaboratively solve business issues.
Customer collaboration was key, especially as we developed the site," says Emerson. "That was the main focus of WikonnecT, to give customers a place where they can have that collaborative environment around the clock."
Originally deployed for the insurance industry, today WikonnecT has grown to more than 7,600 users across 100 communities. WikonnecT can be used anytime by anyone from CSC or our customers wishing to work together to solve a problem or share experiences.
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