For printer Banta Corp., that's meant consolidating four disparate enterprise-resource-planning systems into one PeopleSoft Inc. platform and increasing EDI connections to customers. At game-maker Electronic Arts Inc., the focus has been on launching an Oracle-on-Linux environment designed to lower costs, improve reliability, and reduce customer churn, all related to its subscription-based Sims Online virtual-world game.
In the newspaper business, companies such as the New York Times Co. and Knight Ridder Inc. have approached the problem of IT fragmentation in a variety of ways. The Times is rolling out a state-of-the-art publishing system at its flagship daily as well as at the Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette, setting the company up to compete more effectively with simplified editorial and production processes. It also launched a partner portal that lets the newspapers and their business partners collaborate constantly on routing, delivery changes, and customer-complaint resolution, replacing a process that had become error prone because of its manual nature and the complex transfers of information between transactions systems.
But Knight Ridder has perhaps been more ambitious. The publisher of 32 daily newspapers, including the Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, and San Jose Mercury News, has been standardizing its circulation, advertising, editorial, and payroll systems to create a more-centralized infrastructure and thus more efficiency throughout the chain, VP of technology Steve Hannah says. The benefits are expected to be numerous: sharing of best practices among publications, improved flexibility in selling multinewspaper ad packages, and simplified IT upkeep, to name a few.
Improved visibility into all aspects of the business may be the greatest payoff. The new systems, Hannah says, will "allow for consistent reporting across the organization."
| INDUSTRY LEADERS | ||||
| Rank | Company | Revenue in millions | Income (loss) in millions |
IT employees |
| 92 | Electronic Arts Inc. | $2,482 | $317 | 330 |
| 167 | New York Times Co. | $3,079 | $300 | 200 |
| 217 | Banta Corp. | $1,367 | $44 | 239 |
| 222 | Knight Ridder Inc. | $2,842 | $257 | 542 |
| 237 | Dow Jones & Co. | $1,559 | $202 | 840 |
| 254 | Advo Inc. | $1,130 | $42 | 162 |
| 259 | Harrah's Entertainment Inc. | $4,136 | $235 | 481 |
| 352 | Cablevision Systems Corp. | $4,003 | $90 | 421 |
| 467 | Quad/Graphics Inc. | -- | -- | 335 |
| 482 | AMC Entertainment Inc. | $1,792 | ($20) | 54 |
| Financial data is from
public sources and company supplied. Revenue is for latest fiscal year. Employee data is from InformationWeek 500 qualifying survey. |
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