Stibo Systems and Grainger Win 2013 Ventana Research Leadership Award

ATLANTA, GA, April 24, 2013 – Stibo Systems today announced that for the second consecutive year, the company is being honored, along with its customer, as a winner of the 2013 Ventana Research Leadership Award for Service and Supply Chain Excellence by Ventana Research.  Ventana Research analysts awarded Stibo Systems and W.W. Grainger, Inc., the Operational Leadership Award for Service and Supply Chain, based on innovative master data management (MDM) and product information management (PIM) technology, as well as business impact and customer value.  

Ventana Research selected Grainger for its ability to use product information as a valuable asset to create a better customer experience.  Both Grainger and Stibo Systems will receive their awards at the Ventana Research Business Technology Leadership Summit being held on May 29th and 30th, 2013 at the Hyatt Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, CA.

"For the second year in a row, Stibo Systems and its customers are recognized for their ability to deliver significant business value,” said Mark Smith, CEO & Chief Research Officer of Ventana Research.  "Grainger is a fantastic example of how product information can be used to derive clear and demonstrable results.  We congratulate them for their MDM efforts and for using product information strategically to better the customer experience and improve its overall service and supply chain management.”

A $9 billion, Fortune 500 Company and leading supplier of maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products, Grainger helps millions of customers in more than 150 countries save time and money by providing the right products to keep their facilities up and running.  Recognizing their product information is a valuable asset, Grainger began its MDM initiative in order to create a better customer experience. The company created a single source of product information and a publishing environment that is used to facilitate product portfolio management, global merchandising, and global marketing across all channels and customer targets using Stibo Systems' multidomain master data management (MDM) solution, STEP.

"Our product information management approach has enabled us to better serve our customers, as we manage millions of products, across a multi-branded and multi-channel global business,” said Gene Rados, Senior Director of Projects and Content Management, at Grainger.  “By leveraging Stibo Systems' MDM platform, we create highly valuable information that can support our global, targeted, print and electronic publishing efforts, as well as search and select across all current and emerging channels.”

The Ventana Research Leadership Award is the latest recognition for Grainger's MDM initiative, as the Company was recently named a top three finalist in the Gartner Master Data Management (MDM) Excellence Awards 2013.

The Ventana Research Leadership Awards recognize and promote individuals and organizations that have contributed to advancing the use of technology in their organizations bringing together people, process, information and technology to achieve the best potential outcomes.  As part of the scoring process and methodology, Ventana Research examined submissions and nominations from the research team to assess, score and select the technology that has the best impact for that specific category.  Stibo Systems enables organizations to leverage a single, unified MDM software platform to manage all of its critical data assets and domains including customer, supplier, product, location, and hierarchy.

"By enabling organizations to link all of their product, supplier, customer and operational information, Stibo Systems helps our customers to achieve real value from their information assets and a greater return on their MDM investment,” said Mikael Lyngsø, CEO of Stibo Systems.  "We are thrilled that Ventana has recognized our technology and congratulate our customer, Grainger for their highly success enterprise MDM initiative and for their ability to create a more satisfying and rewarding customer experience.”

About the Ventana Leadership Award
The 2013 Ventana Research Leadership Awards recognize individuals and organizations that have advanced business leadership by effectively utilizing their people, processes, information and technology to achieve the best outcomes.  The Leadership Awards showcase not only organizations but also the leaders and pioneers who have contributed to their organizations’ successes. These practitioners exemplify the fact that delivering business success requires the successful efforts of a team guided by strong, visionary, effective leadership.

The awards are judged by the analysts at Ventana Research, an industry-renowned research team with hundreds of years of experience in business and technology. The team evaluated each submission to assess the organization’s use of people, processes, information and technology, the best practices it developed and the project’s business impacts on the organization in 2012 and 2013 as well as the projected value in 2014.

About Stibo Systems
Stibo Systems gives data direction by providing organizations with a leading multidomain master data management (MDM) solution. Stibo Systems enables its customers to better manage enterprise intelligence on a global scale, improve sales, and quickly adjust to changes in business requirements. Stibo Systems' STEP technology is a flexible, uniform MDM solution that provides a single trusted source of operational information for the entire enterprise. Stibo Systems is a subsidiary of the privately held Stibo A/S group, originally founded in 1794 with corporate headquarters in Aarhus, Denmark. For more information, visit stibosystems.com.