Beloit Corp.
University Baptist Medical Center
Sikorsky Aircraft
Ace Parking Management
The Wharton School
Tennessee Valley Authority
Charles Schwab
Empire District Electric Co.
MTV Networks
Oppenheimer Funds
The InfoWorld 100
By Kathy Lou Schultz
In the fifth annual InfoWorld 100, we look at how IT leaders are using
technology in an innovative fashion to solve today's toughest business
problems.
Rather than defining where we thought innovation was taking place, we
went to you, our readers, to tell us. We took nominations via
telephone, e-mail, and a dedicated Web site. We received many
excellent entries in areas we anticipated: year-2000 fixes, remote-
access solutions, and Web-based projects, including business-to-
business Internet-commerce sites, and sophisticated intranet
architectures. We also heard about projects we couldn't have imagined,
such as Sikorsky Aircraft's real-time, engineering-functional
helicopter model (No. 3), and MTV's streamlined video-procurement
system (No. 9).
An InfoWorld editorial review team chose the 1998 InfoWorld 100
winners from 300 entries. The team selected winners based on the
complexity of the business problem and solution, as well as the
business benefits of the project.
The entries show examples of courage in the face of seemingly
insurmountable problems, creativity on a shoestring budget, and

effective uses of cutting-edge technologies.
We begin the three-part InfoWorld 100 series this week. Next week
we'll round out the top 10 winners with full-page case studies on each
of these interesting innovators.
The following issue, Oct. 12, will include descriptions of the rest of
the winning projects a list of amazing diversity and depth along
with more case studies of top companies.
If you think you should be included in the 1999 InfoWorld 100, we hope
to hear from you. We will accept entries from October 1998 to May
1999.
THE BIG WINNERS. Beloit Corp., a giant in the design and manufacturing
of pulping and paper-making equipment, takes the No. 1 spot this year
with a highly complex bids and proposals system. The system cut in
half the company's normal 30-day period for generating proposals for
manufacturing paper-making machines machines typically the length
of one-and-one-half football fields.
Proving that advances in technology directly affect the health of
society, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center is in the No. 2
spot with its use of handheld terminals to input and access patient
data, which has helped improve patient care.
The InfoWorld 100 exemplafies that creativity occurs across
industries: This year's top 10 includes representatives from the
manufacturing, health-care, aerospace, service, education, government,
and finance, utility, and entertainment sectors.
In addition, showing that deregulation may beget innovation, two
utility companies, Tennessee Valley Authoraty (No. 6) and Empire
District Electric (No. 8), are in this year's top 10.
JAVA JUBILEE. Java, cited in last year's InfoWorld 100 as a trend that
failed to materialize, makes an impressive showing this year, breaking
into the top 10 in Empire District Electric's 100-percent-Java-based

customer-information system. Charles Schwab (No. 7) deployed their
extranet using the Java Development Kit and Java virtual machine.
In addition, a Java-enabled Web browser has helped streamline the
procurement system at the Georgia Institute of Technology
Microelectronics Research Center (No. 20).
Overall, the Web is big. Extranets are everywhere, from Schwab's top
10 solution to provide up-to-the-minute data to its fund managers to a
joint project by the U.S. Navy and Boeing to support the T-45 training
jet (No. 11). Our No. 29 entry, Workrite Ergonomic Accessories, has
joined the growing trend of business-to-business I-commerce sites with
its new, custom Web-based catalogs that can be added to a customer's
intranet. And as for intranets, they are gaining sophistacation, as
exemplified by the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (No.
5).
With an increasing number of business transactions taking place via
the Internet, security concerns are becoming parimount. Oppenheimer
Funds (No. 10) found a solution that has prevented the company from
losing money because of security breaches.
Web-based applications are replacing traditional databases in
industries such as insurance, where Producers Lloyds Insurance (No.
19) has armed its agents with an Internet application that allows them
to keep up with the rapidly fluctiating rates of crop insurance.
In education, where needs are high and budgets are low, IT
professionals are using Web technologies to get the most out of each
education dollar. In Walden, Colo., students at the rural North Park
School District (No. 24) now can take courses such as advanced
mathematics with the help of videoconferencing.
GO, TEAM! There's a lot of talk in the enterprise these days about
teamwork. Among our top 10 winners, the essential nature of teamwork
is mentioned again and again as a key component of a project's

success. In addition, many of our top innovators stress the importance
of getting users involved in the development side of a project, a
factor that has eased implementation in a number of cases.
Jeff Milhone, project manager for the bids and proposals system at
Beloit, points to his cross-departmental team of more than 50 people
from aplication engineers to customer-service representatives
along with a constant focus on the project's business objectives, as
key components of his successful project implementation. At Beloit,
the spirit of teamwork has extended to outside consultants who worked
along with Milhone's in-house players.
At Empire District Electric, Ron Yust says one of the most important
elements to his success was recruiting a team made up of developers
and end-users. Everyone on the team played a role in decision making,
which led to widespread user acceptance as well as unexpectedly
innovative design decisions.
Fred Brown, IS staff specialist and project manager for the
Computerized Patient Records project at the Baptist Medical Center,
even found that his user-involvement approach smoothed the financial
road for his project. According to Brown, once the technical solution
was identified, cost was not an obstacle because user buy-in and the
strenth of the determined need drove decision making.
"User acceptance was astounding," Brown says. "When we heard the
horror stories from others, user acceptance was horrendous. We wanted
to make sure we had no such risks; that's why we went into all the
pilots and demos."
To read about the inovative people behind the winning bids-and-
proposals-system implementation at Beloit, turn the page. And if your
head is still spinning because of the 290,000 lines of non-year-2000-
compliant source code mentioned in the first paragraph, take a look
next week at Ace Parking Mangement (No. 4). Folks there are still

alive to tell about it.
They're the people who increasd your company's sales from $100 million
to $500 million without adding any new customer-service
represenatives. They stared down 290,000 lines of non-year-2000-
compliant source code and came out on top. They cut your proposal-
production time from 10 days to three hours. They're the most
inovative IT professionals in the enterprise today. They're the
InfoWorld 100.