Corporate Headquarters
160 North Craig Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Advanced Catalogs and Item Synchronization
This session covers a problem not easily overcome. All retailers and manufacturers struggle with the synchronization of item information – from prices, to innerpacks, to payment terms and promotional events. Maintaining item synchronization requires the extensive sharing of information from multiple internal applications. By Utilizing the 832 transaction set, implementing the item synchronization document could potentially impact many areas in your organization. The session will cover how an ECG will make catalog control and synchronization easier to handle.
Level: Advanced
Audience: IT Professional, Business Manager

Advanced Concepts in Internet Security for EC
Details how to effectively implement security in an EC environment including how to protect sensitive information and handling cash or credit card transactions. The presentation includes an overview of the relevant technologies, processes to deploy those technologies, encryption mechanisms and strategies, legal issues and ramifications, and how to develop a corporate security policy for Internet commerce. Also covered are the key elements of a security audit to ensure compliance with the security procedures.
Level: Advanced
Audience: IT Professional

Advanced Forecasting Techniques to Enable Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)
A key piece of running a VMI program is not only supplying REAL usage of goods and materials but also the forecasting of usage. This session will examine the ways to use different technologies to help incorporate forecasting into a VMI or JIT (just-in-time) initiative.
Level: Introduction
Audience: IT Professional, Logistics Professional

Bar Code and the Advanced Ship Notice (ASN)
In this session an in-depth examination of the 856 transaction set will be done. Also the strong tie between Bar Code technologies and the ASN will be investigated. This session hits hard on the fact that mapping an ASN is a 'piece of cake', but putting the necessary data together is the bigger problem. This session helps solve that problem.
Level: Introduction
Audience: IT Professional, Business Manager

Building a Staff of 'A-Level' Players: How, Who & Why It's the Winning Strategy
By strategically hiring 'A-Level' players, Innovate E-Commerce Inc. grew 1647% over 5 years and ranked #111 on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing privately held firms for 2002.
     As business-to-business consultants, Innovate understands the importance and value of hiring the best people, the 'A-Level' players.
     Through interactive group discussion, learn how and why Innovate arrived at this strategy, how the strategy is implemented, why it works, and the challenges of managing a staff of exceptional people.
     Similarly, learn the risks and costs of "bad hires" and how hiring the wrong people will affect your organization in ways you've not previously considered.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: C-level, Human Resources

Building an E-Corporation
The Internet and E-Commerce are having a dramatic effect on a corporation. They change the entire competitive landscape in an industry. The changes brought about by these capabilities are fundamentally changing the way companies go to market. They can also have a dramatic effect on the optimization of a corporation's entire value chain. This session looks at how companies are building a nimble E-Corporation that enhances competitiveness, lowers costs, and enhances shareholder value.
Level: Advanced
Audience: Senior Level Manager, Executive

Building an Inc. 500 Business Out of $10,000
Innovate E-Commerce, business-to-business e-commerce consultants, ranked #111 on the Inc. 500 in 2002 with 1647% growth.  The company began with a $10,000 investment, offices in a basement, a wish...and a prayer.
     Innovate executives will reveal how the high-tech company quickly achieved stability, growth and success.  What were the priorities?  Greatest obstacles?  Learning experiences?  What caused pain and suffering?  How was management shaped?  Financing obtained?  Cash flow handled?  And how is Innovate's future being charted?
     Finally, what are the personality traits necessary for successful entrepreneurship?  Find out from technology pioneers whose backgrounds include Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment, Sterling Commerce and more.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: C-level Management, Entrepreneur

Collaborative Planning to Streamline the Supply Chain
This presentation looks at the leading-edge technologies and processes being developed to support Collaborative Planning between sellers and manufacturers. Significant resources are being devoted to the CPFR initiative. Learn what is happening and develop a strategy on how to take advantage of this fundamentally re-engineered business process capability.
Level: Advanced
Audience: Business Manager

Controlling Software Costs - Case Studies
Innovate E-Commerce is renowned for assisting organizations to improve their SAM processes in order to significantly reduce software costs. This presentation examines actual case studies of cost reduction, tools and techniques used, as well as lessons learned. The presentation will also include the description of an analytical approach towards contract negotiations, which has been proven successful.
Level: Intermediate--Advanced
Audience: System Software Managers, IT Purchasing Managers, Software Contract Managers/Negotiators,
Data Center Managers, IT Directors, CFOs

Developing an EC Strategic Plan
This presentation reviews the key elements of a strategic plan for EC including building brand equity through EC, supporting the organization's strategic business plan, change management, competitive analysis and benchmarking, project prioritization, and cost-benefit analysis. It is targeted to senior executive management to help build awareness of the capabilities of EC and how an organization can leverage those capabilities to maximize return on investment.
Level: Advanced
Audience: Senior Level Manager, Executive

EC Audit & Control Systems
This session reviews the latest approaches being used to develop exception-based audit and control systems that monitor and track information from XML, EDI, EDIFACT, proprietary local standards, the Internet and wireless technologies. The fundamentals of securely tracking business information remain the same; the number of communication methods and data structures used to send and receive data is expanding everyday. Learn how leading-edge companies are successfully addressing this issue.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: Director through IT professional

EC Cost-Benefit Analysis
The presentation is a one-hour version of the half-day session delivered at the DISA conference. It presents a model for cost-benefit analysis, areas to find paybacks, and reviews real-life results from several clients, not at a surface level, but detailed analysis of how it was done and what the benefits were.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: IT Professional, Business Manager

Effectively Measuring Supplier Performance in an EC Environment
This session addresses the problem of measuring supplier (your or your key partners') performance while leveraging the capabilities of EC. Topics include development of scorecard metrics to measure performance, approaches, what to do first, and how to build collaborative plans to support categories of products. EC implementations supporting scorecards include: Managed Inventory (VMI, SMI, Quick Response, Continuous Replenishment, JIT), ERS, Transportation, Cross Docking, and Healthcare-related programs.
Level: Advanced
Audience: IT Director, Logistics Professional

Electronic Commerce – Integration into the Enterprise and the Supply Chain
This presentation, conducted in concert with the National Association of Purchasing Management (NAPM), was televised on the PBS network to a national audience of Purchasing Managers, Directors, and Vice Presidents. The content of the presentation focused on the impact that Electronic Commerce will have on the Purchasing Organization as a whole and on the individual purchasing agent. Subjects covered included: optimization of the supply chain, purchasing cards (P cards), the Open Buying on the Internet (OBI) initiative, on-line catalogs, implementation procedures, required technologies, staffing, organizational redesign, and other relevant topics. Videotapes and presentation materials of this four-hour presentation are available from NAPM at a reasonable fee.
Level: Intermediate – Advanced
Audience: Purchasing Managers

Enabling EC: A User's Guide to Security
As Electronic Commerce (EC) becomes more Internet-based, companies are beginning to recognize the importance of security. This session will discuss how to manage the threats and vulnerabilities posed by connecting to the Internet. A step-by-step process for protecting the enterprise will be provided. Participants will learn how digital signatures work; how Public Key Certificates will be used inside the enterprise and with external trading partners; and how to make sense of a myriad of new acronyms such as SSL, VPN, IPsec and others.
Level: Intermediate – Advanced
Audience: IT Professional

The Extended Electronic Enterprise - What's Critical Today - What's Developing for Tomorrow?
Bill Claire of Innovate E-Commerce Inc. coined the term "Extended Electronic Enterprise" to describe his e-commerce consulting firm's expertise: Specialists in Building the Extended Electronic Enterprise (EEE).
     The EEE is an enterprise using information technology strategically along the entire value chain to move, share, track and secure electronic information.  Many companies are now doing "pieces," but few are truly exploiting all of the potential for doing business, both internally and externally, in the most modern, electronic fashion, leading to remarkable efficiencies and cost savings.
     E-commerce pioneer Claire will open your eyes to how your business could be doing business better, and more competitively, electronically.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: C-level Management, Entrepreneurs

The Future of Electronic Commerce – The Extended Electronic Enterprise (E3)
Where is Electronic Commerce headed and when will it get there? What business processes can be optimized and how? Which technologies do I need to implement? Who are the thought leaders and where are they headed? How do I develop an EC strategic plan for the future? These are key issues for any corporation that wants to survive in the next millennium. This presentation answers these questions and provides a framework for fact-based decision-making that can help an organization remain on the leading edge over time while providing tremendous value for its customers.
Level: Advanced
Audience: Business Manager, Senior Level Manager

Having the Courage To Do What's Right When Everybody's Doing What's Wrong
Back in the days of the dot-com feeding frenzy, e-commerce consulting firms were feasting on the opportunities wrought of the Internet and its new players.  Or were they?  Far too many consulting firms got burned by visions of clients in high growth markets with virtually unlimited spending plans, many of which ended up in bankruptcy and never paid all the bills.  Some consulting firms were so over-capitalized that they themselves failed in the miraculous trickle-down.
     Innovate E-Commerce (Inc. 500/2002) bucked the trend and followed a different course: serving solid (back during the bubble, some might have called them "staid") business-to-business clients whose mission is not digging gold, but building the electronic enterprises of the future.
     Bill Claire, Innovate's CEO and co-founder, will re-tell the story, recall the hype, and re-cross the bridges that enabled him and his business partner to stick with their convictions and ignore the hoopla surrounding them.  Claire will speak to experience, intuition, and developing trusting relationships with customers and advisors who can help businesses make the right decisions, when everywhere around, other are doing something else...something doomed to be wrong.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: C-level Executive, Entrepreneur

HIPAA: 12 Ways the Business Benefits Upstage the Costs
This seminar will address the full range of information technology issues facing the healthcare industry due to HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). In addition to reviewing what precipitated HIPAA and what changes are mandated by when, the seminar will focus on how HIPAA's changes can be used to an organization's advantage, resulting in improved business processes, lower costs, increased revenues, improved use of personnel, fewer errors and improved customer service.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: Business Users, HIPAA Liaison, IT professionals

The Internet – What and How to Use it Effectively for E-Commerce
How can the Internet be used as an effective tool to help roll out E-Commerce in your organization? This session will help you determine how to best deploy Internet capabilities in your EC environment by using and demonstrating real world problems and examples to meet this need. The Internet is not the end-all, but yet another tool in an organization's tool box for E-Commerce.
Level: Introduction
Audience: Business Manager, IT Manager

Integrating EC with Enterprise Requirements Planning, Supply Chain Management and Customer Relationship Management Systems
Many organizations are implementing packaged solutions in order to optimize their business processes for both the front office and back-office operations. This presentation reviews best practices in implementing EC in support of these systems. It addresses business process, technology and organizational change issues associated with projects in this area. It provides a framework for successful implementation of EC linked directly to these systems.
Level: Intermediate – Advanced
Audience: IT Manager, Business Manager

IT Legacy Apps - Put Them to Work, Not to Pasture
Are your e-business plans too demanding for your applications?  It's tempting to just scrap those legacy applications and move on to third-party software packages with enhanced real-time functionality... but it's often not practical or cost-effective.  Furthermore, in a down economy, maximizing old technology may be the only option.
     Innovate E-Commerce Inc., business-to-business e-commerce consultants, has successfully tackled many legacy migrations, particularly to web enablement, successfully integrating the supply chain partners.
     Innovate will shed light on evaluating and planning legacy modernizations, and include real-life examples of customers who have ended up with applications "like new" or "re-tooled" that meet current and future business objectives.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: C-level Executive; Information Systems Management

Keys to a Successful eGovernment Implementation
The eGovernment revolution allows citizens, businesses and government organizations the ability to interact with each other through the Internet and perform the essential functions of government quickly and conveniently. The ability to pay parking tickets, apply for and renew licenses, pay taxes, and search out useful information online and in real time are just the beginning. Many constituents are demanding the convenience that eGovernment applications offer and government organizations can be most successful in their eGovernment implementations by adhering to some basic principals that incorporate a total life-cycle methodology. This seminar will outline the life-cycle methodology, including planning, infrastructure and application selection.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: CIO, CTO, Business and Technical Management planning in e-government solutions.

Leveraging EC in Support of Supply Chain Initiatives
What is Supply Chain Management and how can you take advantage of EC to support it? This presentation is a shortened version of the 4-hour Supply Chain and EC course developed in conjunction with the National Association of Purchasing Management (NAPM). It includes relevant case studies from JC Penny, Pharmacia & Upjohn, and the City of Charlotte, NC. Learn how Retailers, Manufacturers, and Government agencies are using EC to streamline their supply chains.
Level: Advanced
Audience: Purchasing Managers

Market A Lot, Spend A Little
By marketing a lot, but spending a little, Innovate E-Commerce, business-to-business e-commerce consultants, grew 1647% and captured the #111 place on the Inc. 500 list of America's fastest growing companies for 2002.  What are this high-tech company's marketing philosophies, strategies, and tactics?  What has worked, and what hasn't?  How has the company kept costs down but marketing up?
     Karen Puchalsky, president, COO, and co-founder of Innovate, will reveal the course of Innovate's marketing, the company's philosophy toward marketing, and the specific marketing activities (including PR, branding, third-party endorsements) that Innovate has found to work...many of which have been relatively low-cost.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: C-level Executive; Marketing Management; Entrepreneur

Optimizing Customer Relationships through EC
This session reviews the way leading-edge companies are implementing customer relationship management and building customer retention capabilities into their E-Commerce systems. While E-Commerce usually involves the exchange of goods or services between organizations or individuals with an electronic transaction component, many organizations are looking beyond these capabilities to drive ways to streamline the business processes between the organizations in the areas of customer service, support and sales. In order to optimize the return from E-Commerce, an organization must use it to help define and leverage their "brand" while providing value to its customer and suppliers.
Level: Advanced
Audience: Senior Level Manager, Executive

The Real Truth About the Pros and Cons of IT Outsourcing
Outsourcing is one of the greatest business trends of the last decade.  IT outsourcing has surged 40% since 1994.
     But outsourcing IT isn't for everyone.  You need the right mindset, the right goals and a return on investment.  Otherwise, the application might be better off in-house.
     Innovate E-Commerce operates an application service provider (ASP) for business-critical e-commerce applications, including the processing of invoices and purchase orders.
     We will use real-world examples to illustrate when outsourcing works, and when it doesn't.
     Step-by-step, we will share a methodology to help your organization make the right decisions about IT outsourcing.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: Management including IT, C-level and Finance

Security Concerns
This advanced session details how to effectively implement security in an EC environment including how to protect sensitive information and how to handle cash or credit card transactions. The presentation includes an overview of the relevant technologies, processes to deploy those technologies, encryption mechanisms and strategies, legal issues and ramifications, and how to develop a corporate security policy for Internet commerce. Also covered are the key elements of a security audit to ensure compliance with security procedures.
Level: Advanced
Audience: Security Director, Senior Administrator

A Strategy For Building E-Government Services
Building common services in government ensures cost-effective use of IT resources, consistency and reliability while maintaining fiduciary and management oversight. Implementing E-Business services in government is a challenge given disparate technology bases and statutorial, legal and governance differences. Innovate E-Commerce has successfully accomplished this in a state well-known for its leadership
in e-government. Innovate will draw on actual experiences of successful implementations building multiple commonly shared services, with a focus on a common payment engine.
Supporting a wide technology base, this highly successfull common service is the model for enterprise development in the state. From business requirements to policy to implementation, the participant gets a 360-degree view on how to build e-government solutions.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: CTO, IT-Managers, Technical Architects

Technology and Process Update: What's New, What's Hot
What new technologies or processes are on the leading edge today? How can you use them in improving your EC program? This presentation will discuss the business process, technology, and application tools that can help you enhance you EC program while saving you time and cutting costs in the process.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: IT Professional

Utilizing CPFR to Streamline the Supply Chain
This presentation looks at leading-edge technologies and processes being developed to support Collaborative Planning between sellers and manufacturers. Significant resources are being devoted to the CPFR initiative. Learn what is happening and develop a strategy on how to take advantage of this fundamentally reengineered business process capability.
Level: Advanced
Audience: Business Users, Executives in Marketing, Distribution, Planning and Merchandising.

Utilizing Data Warehousing in an EC Environment to Improve Business Effectiveness and Efficiency
This session looks at the business benefits of implementing a data warehouse to improve organizational results. Included in the presentation are: how to plan for a data warehouse, tying warehouse implementation to business objectives, how to leverage current EC initiatives, web-enabling the warehouse to improve information flow for enhanced supply chain efficiency, and best practices from multiple successful implementations. The presentation also evaluates architectural implementation alternatives to support an enhanced EC environment.
Level: Intermediate – Advanced
Audience: IT Manager, Director, Data Warehouse Professional, Systems Personnel

What Does it Take to do Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) Well?
This session deals with moving from Product Acquisition to Product Replenishment. It also focuses on the four phases of Electronic Logistics. The transaction sets used in all four phases are examined in detail.
Level: Intermediate
Audience: IT Professional, Business Manager

Workflow Automation in Support of EC Initiatives
EC enables your organization to receive data much faster and easier. However, it is still data unless you can turn it into useful information and use it to support the workflow processes throughout your company. For example, I might receive a price change, but how do I support the business processes to approve or disapprove of the increase, how do I use the data to make informed decisions about product alternatives that might be available, and finally, how do I get new products to market faster? These are all questions that can be answered through the automation of defined workflow processes. Learn how one retailer is using this technology to reduce the time to put new products on the shelf by over 80% – and to eliminate over 50% of the individual process steps associated with item or price maintenance.
Level: Intermediate – Advanced
Audience: IT Manager and Above