This week eC-BP.org hosted its Second Annual Best Practices Awards Dinner. The ceremony was an invitation-only event held on Tuesday evening at the Oak Tavern in the Opryland hotel. It was held during the UConnect conference, making it convenient for many of the nominees who were attending UConnect this week.

The nominations for 2006 included companies in several different industries including manufacturing, food processing, retail, distribution and logistics, and fast foods. Each nominee had different business problems, but all had the need to improve the flow and processing of business information as it moved through their own systems and to and from those of their trading partners.

This year, those companies that won awards each demonstrated superior levels of skill, commitment, and ability in converting their business problems to advantages. For that reason, eC-BP has presented awards to six companies in recognition of particular achievement in specific areas of competency.

eC-BP.org thanks every organization that submitted a nomination and offers our congratulations and thanks to each of the six companies. Those companies are:

• Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) for Achievement of Strategic Goals - Terri Heger
• Datatrac Corporation for Integration with Business Practices - Gerald Duvall, Jr.
• Lamps Plus for e-Commerce as a Competitive Advantage - Bill Graetke
• McDonalds Corporation for Best Use of Technology - Scott Klute
• Northern Tool + Equipment for Level of Adoption - Brad Therrien
• Whirlpool Corporation for Creative Problem Solving - James Morrison

This year's awards build on those presented last year and expands the range of organizations that have been recognized for their superior efforts. Last year's recipients were:

• DOT Foods
• Food Lion
• Bon Ton
• Smart & Final
• United Food Services Group.

Read the specifics about this year's recipients at these links:

Terri Heger of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) for Achievement of Strategic Goals

ADM created a new e-Commerce Team by combining the company's EDI team with its e-ADM Team. The team took the approach of being what it terms an "e-Commerce Aggressor", which is a change from its previous stance of following its business partners in e-Commerce. The mission of this new group is to provide our business partners with efficient methods in which to conduct business. These value-added electronic services make it more convenient and profitable to do business with ADM.

Gerald Duvall, Jr. of Datatrac Corporation for Integration with Business Practices

Shippers, freight forwarders and delivery service companies use Datatrac's flagship shipment tracking product, eTrachttp://www.datatrac.com/solutions/etrac.html, to track package location and movement in real-time. Adding, connecting, and integrating new clients such as shippers and other customers required custom programming.

Bill Graetke of Lamps Plus - e-Commerce as a Competitive Advantage

Driven by a growing internet business, Lamps Plus needed to evolve its processes from manual (all purchase orders were done via fax) to automated. Today, Lamps Plus has achieved its goal with more than 90% of orders placed, received and invoices electronically processed with its suppliers.

Scott Klute of McDonalds Corporation - Best Use of Technology

The purpose of McDonalds' EDI conversion efforts has been to provide EDI/integration services that support collaborative relationships, drive down IT costs, and reduce cycle times for McD-USA, McD-Canada and Chipotle utilizing AS2 for a large number of large suppliers, allow for decentralized purchasing for Restaurants, and simplifying processing for McD-USA's thousands of active suppliers and each year turn over 50%

Brad Therrien of Northern Tool + Equipment - Level of Adoption

Northern Tool was faced with new EDI demands as sales in each of its retail channels were experiencing strong growth: The company's catalog sales climed by 15%. It's online offering of more than 15,000 items increased by 35%, and the company increased its store presence to 55 stores in 10 states.

James Morrison of Whirlpool Corporation - Creative Problem Solving

Whirlpool consolidated its internal integration technology which included refining their systems down to one SAP central platform for Master Data, EAI, and Trading Partner Integration.

The company standardizes product information through a GDS implementation of SAP, and wanted to enable data exchange with more trading partners and at a lower cost. The end goal was flexibility and simplicity in both the solution and vendors.