U.S. stock market reaches historic highs amid possible rate cuts

Company: Harrah’s Entertainment Annual Return: 389% If it’s a sunny April weekend in Las Vegas and boxer Vitali Klitschko is scheduled for the ring while the Final Four rages on, you’re simply not going to get a room at Harrah’s casino hotel if you’re not a regular. Dangerous to turn

Autumn Bayles, chief information officer for Tasty Baking Co., expects the May 11 Web services alliance between SAP and Microsoft to make it easier for the $250-million-a-year Philadelphia snack cake company to become more efficient. “It’s definitely good for the future,” says Bayles, whose widely dispersed users operate SAP software,

Plateau Systems hates to be called a niche player. But like it or not, the company has won particular favor among large organizations that need to demonstrate that their employees meet government-mandated training requirements. When the American National Red Cross was selecting a learning-management system to replace its internally developed

Company: Leo Burnett USA Annual Return: 1,514% Project: The advertising agency’s direct marketing unit, iLeo, was looking to boost its profit per employee with better finance tracking and project management. The company decided to use Project Arena, a hosted project portfolio management tool, to control finances and manage projects. Benefits:

Company: Alcan Annual Return: 1,026% Project: The aluminum producer used software from iWay Software to integrate a host of disparate systems supporting manufacturing, supply chain, financial and logistics. With the systems tied together, Alcan was able to build self-service portals for employees, customers and partners to get inventory, human-resources and

Quantifying a return earned on an investment in information technology can be tough. Analyst firms from Nucleus Research to Alinean to Gartner have developed metrics, with acronyms ranging from ROI and ROIT to TCO and TVO. But it’s not an exact science. Just look at the differences between Merck and

The Obstacle Most strategic-thinking chief information officers feel they should report directly to the chief executive officer. Information technology, they argue, is just as critical to the corporation’s success as finance or operations. But many organizations, including most pharmaceutical makers, put the CIO a level or two down from the

Company: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Annual Return: 2,843% Project: Build a system to manage and track the environmental conditions that limit the shelf life of cancer drugs in the hospital’s internal pharmacy. The goal: Prevent premature expiration of key drugs. Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s networked appliances constantly monitor conditions in the pharmaceutical

Voice of ExperienceJoe ArnetteRent-A-CenterVP of TrainingPlano, Texaswww.rentacenter.com Manager’s Profile: In charge of training for the $2.3 billion retailer, which has 14,000 employees at more than 2,800 stores in North America. The company rents a variety of durable goods, including appliances, consumer electronics, computers and furniture. Training Haze: Rent-A-Center’s store managers