West Monroe would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you at booth #1522.  We’ll be sharing examples of some of the new projects that they have been delivering for clients, including:

• Smart Grid Consulting and Integrated Business Cases
• Cyber Security Planning and Execution
• Utility Customer Engagement/Experience Strategy,  Planning, and Execution
• Utility Systems Integration and West Monroe GrIP™
• Reducing Operational Spend through Telecommunications Strategy and Implementation
• Organizational Change Management & Workforce of the Future Preparedness

If you plan to attend DistribuTECH, be sure to attend these informative presentations co-presented by West Monroe and their clients:

• Converting Your Communications Network from TDM to MPLS-based IP: From Business Case to Post Deployment Lessons Learned with Dan Belmont
• Training the Smart Grid Workforce: Needs and Solutions, with Jack Winter

Please email John McNally to schedule a meeting at the show.

Join your colleagues and our expert speakers to see how community bankers can use technology to give their customers the products and services they not only want, but will soon demand, without breaking the bank. This session will be unlike prior CBA seminars, in that to help get you more comfortable with these new technologies you will have a chance to try all of them out!  The goal is to allow you at least as much "hands on" time to use the products as to just hear about them.  All of the organizations taking part in the program are actively involved with community banks, helping them more effectively and economically compete with their larger brethren using technology. 

Hands-on demonstrations will be provided by:

• Swiftknowledge
• Adobe
• IT Lifeline
• Q2 Online Banking
• Salesforce.com

In addition, WMP will present the Bank of the Future concept, which allows midsized and community banks to collaborate and share information in real time to better serve their customers, while reducing overall IT expense. West Monroe Partners will give you a look at their Bank of the Future concept that enables functionality previously unavailable to midsized and community banks, specifically:

• How executives and managers can get personalized, customized access to operational metrics, scorecards, dashboards and KPI’s across the bank’s data streams including growth, profitability, cost, and risk management.
• How to facilitate real-time communications with customers, prospects, and staff where product specialists can be located in any of the bank’s branches and still allow face-to-face communications with customers.
• A live demo setting utilizing multiple technologies in a seamless environment

At the end of the afternoon, Technology Solutions Practice Lead Jerin May will lead a panel discussion entitled "Into the Cloud" to discuss the benefits and risks – perceived and real - of moving your bank into the cloud.

Visit West Monroe Partners in booth 817!

West Monroe Partners is the labor optimization authority. We provide world-class engineers and best-of-breed technology to ensure 100 percent productivity from 100 percent of your workforce.

FLEXdls is a stand-alone, best-of-breed labor management software solution that enhances any warehouse management system. FLEXdls generates discrete engineered labor standards for critical tasks within a distribution environment utilizing your preferred work measurement methods and using your existing warehouse management system data.

Mobile Architecture Best Prctices presented by John Sprunger

When developing mobile applications, there are a number of key challenges where architecture and design are fundamentally different from that of a typical enterprise application. We’ll review and discuss the key architectural issues in mobile application development, including performance, usability, data access, security, and connectivity.

John Sprunger is an Architect in the Integration Practice at West Monroe Partners, a business and technology consulting firm. John has over 6 years of experience in performance optimization, systems integration, and building web-based, cloud, and mobile applications.

Mango Roundtable
A discussions about the Mango release will follow John's presentation.

When: Thursday, October 6, 2011 5:30 PM
Where: TechNexus
200 S Wacker 15th Floor
Chicago, IL 60606

ATelerik Ultimate Collection for .NET (worth $1999) will be raffled off during the meeting.

Join Dave Tilson from West Monroe Partners and Nadja Lalvani from the City of Naperville as they discuss Demand Side Management and Naperville's Smart Meter Deployment Campaign.

With major provisions of Wall Street reform yet to be finalized, community banks are facing a great deal of uncertainty—and opportunity—in the coming year.

Join Moss Adams LLP and guest speakers as we discuss the pressing issues and latest developments affecting bank CEOs, CFOs, controllers, and audit committee members including:

• The State of the Industry:  What's happening in the industry now and what will it look like tomorrow?
• The Economy: An economic debate between Dr. Stephen Happel, ASU Emeritus Professor, and John Mitchell, former Chief Economist of U.S. Bancorp.
• Tax:  What you need to know to optimize your institution's tax positions.
• Enterprise Risk Management:  You are ready to implement, but where do you start?
• Compensation:  What new trends should you be aware of in the banking community?
• Accounting and Auditing:  We'll cover what's new in the world of financial reporting for banks.

West Monroe Partners' Cathy Pricco and John Stockamp will present tried-and-true best practices for getting the most out of bank and credit union mergers, specifically:

• Customer Relationships
• Product Design & Pricing
• Expense Management
• Distribution Channels
  

Improve Business and IT Alignment with CI Relationships

Presented by Scott Fuzer and Gerry Yates
Hosted by Microsoft

Understanding how IT enables and affects the business is more important today than at any point in history.

Join your fellow IT Service Management professionals and learn how several organizations have leveraged a practical, scalable, and successful approach to implementing, populating, and managing an ongoing CMDB/CMS in order to enable effective IT and business alignment.

About the Presenters

Scott Fuzer, Sr Manager West Monroe Partners
Scott Fuzer has over 18 years of experience in IT and has led and participated in several global projects to implement IT Strategic Services, IT Service Management initiatives, IT Governance and Compliance Strategies, aligning and integrating IT with the business. Mr. Fuzer is also the Practice Lead responsible for and skilled in the IT Service Management and IT Asset Management practice areas and regularly speaks at local and national events regarding these topics.

Gerry Yates, Technical Account Manager with Premier for Microsoft, US National Practice
Gerry Yates has over 20 years of experience in IT with an emphasis of IT Operational Excellence committed to delivering quality IT Services that add measurable value to the business and customers. Mr. Yates was recently a Principle Lead of IT Service Management and was responsible for initiating, designing, socializing and implementing IT Services Management program at a local Blue Cross and Blue Shield company, and currently facilitates proactive service quality initiatives at Microsoft.

Event Details

Date: Tuesday September 20, 2011

Place: Microsoft Studio Campus
Studio B/Room 1519
15101 NE 40th Street
Redmond, WA 98052

Agenda:

4:00-4:30pm Networking and Brainstorming
4:30-6:00pm Presentation - Interactive Sessions
6:00-6:30pm Networking

Space is limited. If you will be joining us remotely via Webex, please contact leslie.landry@itpreneurs.com for connection and dial-in information.

As the popularity of mobile computing rises, so does the importance of location-based data. Join us to see how you can easily combine Visualforce, Apex, and a 3rd party Web services API to create a geo-location aware application. As an example, we'll study a custom application that locates the nearby bus times and bus stops for the Chicago Transportation Authority. We'll provide code walkthroughs and a demo, and you'll leave with all the tools necessary to build your own location-aware applications.

Do you want to enhance your site but don’t have the time, budget or technical resources to develop custom solutions? Come see actual case studies demonstrating how to implement high impact solutions that give the appearance of a tailor-made site, without third-party Web Parts or custom code. You’ll learn how to develop sites to improve the overall look and feel, create detailed reporting capabilities and produce a site template for recurring meetings.

FIA Chicago’s 11th Annual Summer Outing - Dinner, Drinks, and the Chicago White Sox vs. New York Yankees

• Date: Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
• Location: Upper Deck Terrace Suite at U. S. Cellular Field
• Time: 5:30 PM until the game ends (game time 7:05 PM)

FIA Chicago’s 11th Annual Summer Outing will be held on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 and feature your very own Chicago White Sox versus the New York Yankees.  This invitation is open to FIA Chicago Full Members.

West Monroe Partners is a Bronze Sponsor of the event.

Is your company missing a Billion dollar opportunity or ignoring a Billion dollar risk?  CharterMast, Ativo Research, one of the nation’s top ranked equity research firms, will report on an innovative study that shows how sustainability performance has Billion dollar impacts on shareholder value.

Numerous companies have realized that sustainability strategies have financial implications far beyond short-term cost savings and ROI.  Indeed, sustainability is quickly becoming an important value creator that impacts longer-term revenues, valuations and reputations.

West Monroe Partners, in concert with CharterMast Partners, invites you to a compelling one-hour webinar on the enormous financial opportunity of sustainability and the significant risks associated with inaction. This Webinar will examine the relationship between sustainability and financial value creation, plus provide insights into the driving forces behind sustainability and necessary actions to ensure success.

It’s our favorite time of year again! Please join us for our annual Scotch and Beer Tasting for Capital Markets and Trading Firms.
-  Meet and mingle with your peers in the industry.
-  Sample smooth scotch, tasty microbrews and fine wine.
-  Enjoy the Chicago skyline on one of the city's best rooftop decks.
-  Enjoy appetizers catered by Poag Mahone’s.
-  Enter a drawing to win a premium bottle of scotch!

WHEN:
Thursday, June 16th
4:30 pm - 8:00 pm

WHERE:
175 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago
22nd Floor Rooftop Deck 
 
Sponsored by: West Monroe Partners and Environmental Systems Design

This is a private invitation only event. Please contact us if you are interested in attending.

Are you attending IIE? Stop by session 4101 to hear industry expert George Bishop talk about Standards: Should We Pull The Plug On Standards?

Also stop by booth #205 for a one-on-one conversation with George to discuss labor standards.

West Monroe Partners, the labor optimization authority, utilizes a unique engineered labor standards methodology supported by companies and unions, alike. Applying innovative solutions — including our FLEXdlsTM labor management software and Elemental Data Warehouse — our labor management consultants and industrial engineers improve workforce performance and eliminate waste throughout the supply chain.

The Bank of the Future concept allows midsized and community banks to collaborate and share information in real time to better serve their customers, while reducing overall IT expense. This is your opportunity to get a view into our Bank of the Future concept that enables functionality previously unavailable to midsized and community banks, specifically:

• How executives and managers can get personalized, customized access to operational metrics, scorecards, dashboards and KPI’s across the bank’s data streams including growth, profitability, cost, and risk management. 
• How to facilitate real-time communications with customers, prospects, and staff where product specialists can be located in any of the bank’s branches and still allow face-to-face communications with customers. 
• A view into the Workflow management that insures processes are easily acted upon by employees, allowing the bank to make faster and better decisions. 
• A live demo setting utilizing the latest Microsoft technologies including Lync, Exchange, SharePoint and SQL.
  

About this Course:

Using a combination of Microsoft technologies which many banks already own including Lync, Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server, West Monroe Partners has built a functional demonstration of a “Bank of the Future.”  This demonstration bank allows bank employees to utilize workflow technologies in SharePoint to facilitate fast decision making and collaboration technologies in Lync and Exchange to cross-sell products to customers regardless of the location of the product specialists.  Finally, it demonstrates how real-time access to the bank’s data enable the executive team to measure performance using dashboards and key performance indicators that are easily accessible and actionable. During this session, banking and technology experts from Microsoft and West Monroe Partners will demonstrate these technologies and answer your questions regarding how these tools can be applied in your bank.

Who should attend?

This program is designed to allow technology directors and executive management of midsized and community banks to collaborate and share information in real time to better serve their customers, while reducing overall IT expense.

Price: No charge to WBA members and guests of West Monroe and Microsoft.

Location: Microsoft Civica Building 205 108th Ave NE, South Tower - Suite 400, Bellevue, WA 98004

Learn how sustainability will transform your business and how the new ULE 880 sustainability standard is leading the way.

As many organizations did during the quality movement some 30 years ago, today’s companies are beginning to realize that how they respond to the challenge of sustainability will profoundly impact their competitiveness—perhaps even their survival.

West Monroe Partners, in concert with UL Environment, invites you to a compelling one-hour webinar.  Whether your company is a sustainability leader or still in the learning stage, this webinar will introduce you to sustainability thought leadership and include an in depth introduction to the new ULE 880 company-level sustainability standard.

At this casual networking event you’ll have the chance to talk with representatives from West Monroe Partners, Microsoft and SHI about the latest technologies that can help you improve performance and availability, control IT costs, solve your business needs, and manage continued growth.

At this event you will learn about:

• Unified Communications, secure & compliant Instant Messaging, Microsoft Lync Server and Exchange Server 2010
• Improving systems reliability and IT operations with System Center Business Intelligence solutions including SQL Server 2008-R2, PowerPivot and Visual Studio 2010
• The flexibility and scalability of the cloud-based Microsoft Azure and Office 365 platform
• How to license Microsoft’s latest technology from the experts at SHI, Microsoft’s #1 software licensing partner
  

Please contact us  if you are interested in attending.

West Monroe Partners and Salesforce.com hope you can join us on Thursday, April 7th for a Masters viewing party, drinks, and appetizers. Join us to meet and mingle with the Chicago Private Equity community and enjoy some great food and drinks. 

 
Please contact us  if you are interested in attending.

Building No Code Solutions Using SharePoint Business Connectivity Services

Raymond will be discussing the basics of the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and he will focus on the no code solutions that can be created using SharePoint Designer. In this presentation he will show how to create External Content Types (ECTs) and then how to use those ECTs in both SharePoint and Office. He will also show how to configure permissions using BCS including how to leverage the Secure Store to provide single sign on capabilities.

Raymond Mitchell is a Senior SharePoint Consultant at Avtex in Minneapolis. He has worked with every version of SharePoint since its release as SharePoint Team Services. He has been a speaker at the Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and St. Louis SharePoint User Groups, as well as at several SharePoint Camps and SharePoint Saturday events.

Many software vendors—facing reduced revenue streams—have stepped up audits to ensure that companies comply with the terms of their license agreements. Some researchers predict that as many as 70 percent of companies will be subject to software audits in the next two years. At the same time, though, many IT organizations also waste money by over-purchasing licenses.

Could you save 20 to 30 percent annually on your software costs?

Although many organizations maintain inventories of their hardware and software assets, most lack complete and up-to-date information due to decentralized ownership, inexperience, or simply a lack of resources.

West Monroe Partners invites you to participate in a webinar that will show you how to implement a practical, efficient, and effective software management and optimization program.

In the current economic environment, it is easy to rationalize a merger or acquisition on the belief that a bank is “a great deal” based solely on price.  But is your organization considering strategic objectives in addition to the financial ones when weighing potential targets?  Has your institution given thought to the operational synergies and/or impacts that can occur with an acquisition?  How confident are you that your bank has the proper skill set to execute the systems conversion and identify the post-conversion integration opportunities?

Best practices for every step of the acquisition process

We invite you to attend a special webinar discussion on March 17th that can help guide your bank through every step of the acquisition process—from defining your objectives and assessing readiness, through post-close integration and stabilization. Learn industry-leading practices that can help you:

• Identify and rank your strategic objectives
• Implement a structured screening process
• Make the right decisions regarding due diligence and deal structuring
• Plan for conversion and risk mitigation
• Integrate and communicate post-conversion
  

An approach built on hundreds of M&A projects

With a wealth of experience both in the banking industry and in M&A transactions, West Monroe Partners has refined an efficient, structured approach based on lessons learned from our M&A projects across the country—experience that can help you drive real value from acquisitions. Click here to learn more about West Monroe’s M&A capabilities.

We encourage all executive level managers and leadership involved in the M&A process to attend.

If your bank is exploring merger or acquisition opportunities—or thinking about doing so—don’t miss this valuable webcast. RegisterToday!

Chicago Information Technology Architects Group - March 2011 Meeting

Best Practices for Mobile Application Design and Development, by John Sprunger

When developing mobile applications, there are a number of key challenges where architecture and design are fundamentally different from that of a typical enterprise application.  We’ll review and discuss the key architectural issues in mobile application development, including performance, usability, data access, security, and connectivity

Presentation at 5:30pm, doors open at 5:00pm

SharePoint 2010 provides better information management through new capabilities for taxonomy and metadata. Yet many organizations struggle to organize their content and don’t understand the options for creating good information architectures within SharePoint 2010. 

Find out how you can leverage taxonomy and metadata to improve navigation and search in your SharePoint environment.

Refreshments will be provided by West Monroe Partners. 

    Date:        Thursday, February 24
    Time:        12:30 PM  Networking
                     1:00 PM - 4:30 PM Event
    Location:  Microsoft Corporation
                   200 East Randolph Drive, Suite 200
                   Chicago, Illinois
Click here to register or register at: www.clicktoattend.com with event code: 153773.

This event has limited seating and registration will be closed when maximum capacity is reached. For more information on this event or on the Chicago SharePoint User Group contact Jamie Story at (312) 980-9428 or visit www.cspug.org.

Are you interested in learning how to:

• Engage your patients and families in the coordination of their care? 
• Drive strategic growth by connecting with referring physicians?
• Improve transitions of care between internal and external providers?
• Reduce costs and administrative inefficiencies?

If so, join West Monroe Partners and Microsoft for an educational webinar as we discuss strategies you can use to achieve these goals utilizing Microsoft's latest technologies -- SharePoint 2010 and HealthVault Community Connect. 
 
Who should attend? 

Healthcare provider executives who are interested in:

• Improving care coordination and patient loyalty. 
• Meeting Meaningful Use criteria by providing patients with electronic access to their records.
• Growing revenue by expanding the referral network and capturing additional market share of ancillary services.
• Leveraging their existing investments in Microsoft technologies.
  

Designed and developed by a Board of Directors that includes SharePoint customers, consultants and solution providers, theSharePoint Summit 2011 is a unique place to meet the key players in the world of SharePoint and learn from their successes (and their mistakes).

Come see three West Monroe Partners SharePoint experts speak on the following topics:

• Enterprise Search Using SharePoint 2010 and FAST
• Records Management Capabilities in SP 2010
• How We Did It/Case Study: A SharePoint 2007 extranet solution provides valuable new capabilities and helps transform members' online experience

We live in an age of transformation. Most of our industries, our customers, business partners are going through one sort of transformational change or another, whether it be regulatory, market changes or drastic shifts in our global economy. How is a technology leader to navigate such changes? How can technology leaders help facilitate desired transformation for a corporation? This session will cover some basic tools of leadership alongside illustrative examples of subsequent technology implementations.

The presentation will be at ACXIOM 3333 Finley Road in Downers Grove, IL near the intersection of I355 and I88 from 8:40 to 9:30 am for the Technology Leaders Association.

West Monroe Partners, a full-service provider of business and technology solutions, works with retail organizations to achieve the right balance between labor efficiency and customer service in their operations. Through direct observation, detailed process engineering, and proprietary methodologies we work with a variety of retailers to improve all facets of retail store operations.

Come visit us at booth #137!

Retail's BIG Show 2010
NRF 100th Annual Convention & EXPO

In this session we will cover what’s new and different about SharePoint 2010 Records Management capabilities. We’ll go over the tool set that is provided to us with SharePoint 2010 and discover how we can solve business problems using SharePoint 2010 Records Management.

This session will outline how the below new capabilities in SharePoint 2010 will help you bring Records Management to another level in your organization.

To learn more about SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach, click here.