2014 Beacon Award Finalists Announced by Saugatuck
Westport, CT (PRWEB) October 24, 2014 -- Six firms have been selected as finalists for the 2014 Beacon Awards, presented annually by research consultancy Saugatuck Technology to recognize innovation and improvement in digital business through the advanced use of IT. The award winners, who will be chosen from these finalists, will be presented during Saugatuck’s annual Cloud Business Summit event, to be held on November 12, 2014 at the Yale Club in New York City.
“The rapid global expansion and integration of Cloud for business advantage has helped to catalyze a global shift toward Digital Business – a core theme for this year’s Cloud Business Summit, and the focus of the 2014 Beacon Awards for business excellence. The Beacon Awards are our way of recognizing and promoting the range of digital business transformation, along with bottom-line improvements, that real firms are achieving right now,” stated Saugatuck founder and CEO Bill McNee.
The winning firms will be selected from the following six finalists for this year’s Beacon Awards (listed in alphabetical order):
• InsideTrack, an educational coaching/services provider which went from a custom-built application stack for its core systems, to a Cloud-based platform that can be built out without developers having to manage the whole stack, helping IT to be more nimble and dynamic in meeting business needs – along with an average 15 percent increase in graduation rates across client institutions, and 5 percent budget reduction in external developer resources.
• Johnson & Johnson, for its “sandbox”-driven, “skunkworks”-style comprehensive development and business improvement operations that enabled new opportunities, new business, reduced costs, and an improved ability to innovate in everything from product development to sales to customer support.
• MFG.com, which has utilized Cloud and related technologies to improve and expand global service availability and improve regulatory compliance, including ITAR and SOC 2 compliance, while reducing operating costs by as much as 30 percent, and cutting down internal resources dedicated to compliance and security by half.
• MSC Industrial Supply, for utilizing data mining from its business network to not only improve its own supply chain, forecasting, and purchasing, but leveraging that ability to help customers, and even suppliers run their businesses better.
• Post Holdings, for its Cloud-based financial consolidation and reporting efforts, which enabled best-in-class Finance management capability rapidly and cost effectively, while clearly demonstrating that Finance organizations can embrace Cloud without compromise.
• Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, for its innovative use of hybridized, two-tier business management software to enable measurable, global standardization and improvement of business management, from interfaces, apps, and data, to reporting, localized compliance, resource management, and customer support, from headquarters down through the smallest, resource-constrained remote offices.
“We are proud to recognize not only these terrific finalists, but all of the firms that were nominated for our inaugural Beacon Awards. It’s a tremendous feeling to see the broad and deep ranges of business and IT innovation being developed and deployed to create and improve enterprises, processes, ways of doing business, and even new business opportunities – it’s what our Cloud Business Summit is all about,” added McNee.
About Saugatuck Technology
Saugatuck Technology, Inc. provides subscription research and management consulting services focused on the key market trends and disruptive technologies driving change in enterprise IT, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Infrastructure, Social Computing, Mobility and Advanced Analytics, among others. Founded in 1999, Saugatuck is headquartered in Westport, CT, with presence in metro Boston, Silicon Valley, and Frankfurt, Germany. For more information, please visit http://www.saugatucktechnology.com, or call +1.203.454.3900.
To request a briefing with our analysts, contact: chris.macgregor(at)saugatucktechnology(dot)com.
About The Beacon Awards
Saugatuck Technology founded the Beacon Awards in 2012 to recognize outstanding business and IT innovation through the use of such advanced technologies as Cloud, mobility, social / collaborative IT, and advanced analytics. All nominated companies receive a thorough review and assessment by seasoned industry analysts from Saugatuck Technology.
For more information, go to http://cloudbusinesssummit.com/beacon-awards.html ;
About the 2014 Cloud Business Summit
The Cloud Business Summit, to be held on November 12, 2012 at the Yale Club in New York City, is a one-day executive forum that brings together large enterprise CIOs, CTOs and senior business leaders from across a wide range of industries to explore how they can and are realizing value from the Business Cloud. To learn more about the Cloud Business Summit, go to http://www.cloudbusinesssummit.com, or contact Chris MacGregor from Saugatuck Technology at +1.203.454.3900 or via email at chris.macgregor(at)saugatucktechnology(dot)com.
CHRIS MACGREGOR, SAUGATUCK TECHNOLOGY, http://WWW.SAUGATUCKTECHNOLOGY.COM, +1 203-454-3900, [email protected]
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