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Gateway Tuesday announced its entrance into the home networking market, incorporating Intel's AnyPoint Home Networking product line into the successful Gateway Performance, Gateway Essential, and Gateway Select desktop product lines. At an event in San Mateo, Calif. today, Gateway and Intel representatives unveiled the new solution, which will be available on Monday, April 12. "Gateway is committed to becoming the premiere provider of Home Networking solutions to the consumer market," said Bob Burnett, vice president of Product Management and Planning, Gateway. "When it comes to bringing new cutting edge technologies to market in an affordable, easy-to-use solution, Gateway prides itself on being a pioneer. Our clients expect no less." Home networking allows clients to easily connect multiple computer systems using existing telephone wiring. Once connected, the networked systems share resources such as Internet access, printers, and files, and even play multi-player games. Clients can purchase a Gateway Performance, Gateway Essential, or Gateway Select desktop equipped with an AnyPoint PCI card that's ready to be networked right out of the box. "Intel understands Gateway's desire to provide the best overall home networking solution for their clients," said Dan Sweeney, general manager of Intel's Home Networking Operation. "By incorporating Intel's AnyPoint Home Network products into their consumer desktop product lines, Gateway is offering a solution that helps maximize value, performance, and overall client experience." For more information about Gateway's Easy Share Home Networking and other Gateway products, call 1-800-GATEWAY, click www.gateway.com, or visit any Gateway Country location. Gateway, a Fortune 500 company founded in 1985, provides complete computing solutions for clients worldwide. The company has manufacturing facilities in the United States, Ireland and Malaysia and employs more than 19,000 people worldwide. Gateway products and services consistently win top awards from leading industry publications. Revenue for the year 1998 was $ 7.5 billion.

Every time David Seifried checks out the latest news from the Tour de France, he probably has an eye on jerseys--specifically, the type with the "CSC" in front.

Seifried is no ordinary biking enthusiast. As business development director for Computer Scienees Corp.'s Nordic region, he is the point person in the El Segundo-based company's sponsorship of a Danish-based racing team. "We started with what we see as the best way to create some top-of- mind awareness within the marketplace," he said.

While corporate sponsors nearly overwhelm the venerable bike race throughout France, Computer Sciences is an unlikely participant, having only a limited brand awareness in Southern California, much less the world. But four years ago, a group of regional sales executives convinced higher-ups at the El Segundo-based company to sponsor a racing team.

The original goal, he said, was to enhance visibility in Europe, where it wasn't even getting a phone call when many big outsourcing or computer services contracts went out to bid. "Our capabilities exceeded our recognition in the marketplace," Seifreid said. "We saw too many large-scale deals that we were not being invited to."

Since Team CSC was formed in 2001, revenue growth in the Nordic region has averaged 25 percent a year--the best for any region in the company.

New clients like the Swedish airline SAS AB and the Danish Tax and Customs Authority have helped propel CSC's European business to $4.3 billion in the fiscal year ended April 1, up from $2.6 billion four years ago.

Still, the bulk of CSC's work comes from commercial and government customers in the United States, including the Defense Department. For the most recent fiscal year, U.S. entities made up $8.5 billion of CSC's overall revenues of $14.1 billion.

That's where the unexpected benefits of team sponsorship have come in.

Through U.S. media coverage of the race, CSC will gain higher name recognition in its bread-and-butter domestic market, said Yan Skwara, president of San Diego-based International Sports and Media Group Inc. "They are part of the media hype of the excitement of the race," he said. "That ultimately translates into sales."

Team CSC competes in 80 races worldwide each year and the sponsorship costs more than $5 million annually. Computer Sciences is also a race sponsor, bartering information technology services in exchange for additional name branding.

"As we achieved more success, we achieve a stronger view of our sponsorship," said Peter Maneri, CSC's vice president of corporate communications and marketing.

All this for a company that does virtually no advertising, save for employee recruitment. But as the defense and private information technology sectors have become more global, the company found it has to raise its profile when competing against International Business Machines Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. on consulting, system integration and outsourcing work.

The company's commitment has increased significantly since 2001, when it spent a little more than $1 million in a co-sponsorship for a brand recognition campaign in the Nordic region. (The other company bowed out after a year.)

As Team CSC has gotten stronger, professional cycling has seen a rise in overall popularity, due largely to the heroics of cancer survivor Lance Armstrong.

Discovery Communications Corp. signed a three-year deal last year to name Armstrong's team the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, with plans to package the athlete's life on and off the race course.

The Discovery Health Channel has already broadcast segments ranging from Armstrong's cancer treatments to his training for races. They are shown in dozens of countries.

Along for the ride is CSC, getting exposure every time its logo appears on the cyclists' jerseys, on the standings board or in newspaper stories. It's also able to provide its clients and prospects with access to the riders.

At the Tour de France, Computer Sciences hosts a VIP tent at the finish line where clients and potential clients mingle with the cyclists after each day's race. They also are in communications with team owner and race director Bjarne Riis on race strategy. "It would be like standing on the sidelines during a football game where you get all the inside information," said Seifried.

The sponsorship deal came about after Seifried and other CSC officials in Denmark heard that Riis was looking for backers to form a cycling team. He reached out to Riis and the two cut a deal.

Team CSC's 27 members come from 11 different countries (nine are allowed to enter the Tour de France). "It was very clear in our discussions that we wanted Bjarne to create that best team possible," said Seifried. "His PR is very important for creating full value of the cyclists for the sponsor."

Adding to that brand awareness, the CSC team has been racing well. In fact, David Zabriskie held the overall lead until crashing on the third stage (Armstrong tried to refuse the yellow jersey out of deference to his former teammate). Another CSC team member, Jens Voigt, took the yellow jersey at the end of the ninth stage but dropped out when he got sick.

It can happen in any number of ways. Your volume grows to the point where it begins to overload your systems. Assumptions on which you based your current business plan fail to pan out. Your market changes, forcing you to rethink where you fit in. For one reason or another--or a combination of reasons--you suddenly need to change the way your company does business. You've hit the wall.

If it is any consolation, you are not alone; any custom builder who stays in business long stands to have a similar experience. Any set of management systems is appropriate to a range of business activity. When the pace of business approaches the upper boundary of that range, strains appear. The remedy is a more refined or elaborate set of systems geared to the next phase of growth. Partners Brace Giffin and Geoff Crane, custom builders in Santa Barbara, Calif., have navigated that cycle a couple of times. When they first hit the wall they had been in business for four years and had reached an annual volume of between $2 million and $3 million. Up until that point, both men were working in the field--Giffin doing foundations and framing, Crane the finish work--but when volume reached that first threshold, they realized it was time to hand off their field duties. "At $2 million to $3 million we couldn't wear the bags anymore" says Giffin. Hiring superintendents freed the partners' time for sales, estimating, and project management.

"We saw that one coming," Giffin says. "What really tilt us was when we jumped from $7 million to $10 million in one year." At that point, the issues were less clear. The company's internal staff had ideas of how to resolve the bottlenecks that had developed. But the partners were uncertain, so they brought in a series of consultants, whose conclusions largely confirmed the staff's original recommendations. In short, Giffin says, "We had to replicate ourselves." The company added two internal project managers to assemble proposals and estimates and a full-time accounting manager. "We gave people more authority but also more accountability," Giffin says. A better system of internal reports now allows the partners to keep an eye on their paperwork without reading every line. "Before that, Geoff and I would review every invoice before every billing."

The process was costly, in consulting fees, increased overhead, and the effort required to retool. "It was a difficult two or three years," Giffin says. "Our volume remained the same and our margins went down, largely due to liability insurance but also from getting our systems in place." But the exercise was necessary. "We couldn't stay at $10 million unless we increased overhead," says Giffin, who believes that his current systems will take the company to $15 million without strain. And they have already been tested. The company recently finished a show home for a national magazine: 13,000 square feet, a $5 million contract, 364 days from ground breaking to occupancy permit. "Because of the systems we have in place we could do that and 10 other projects at the same time."

When asked if he's ever hit the wall, Andy Beck, a custom builder in Vail, Colo., answers without blinking. "Three times we've reinvented ourselves in the 30 years we've been in business" he says. The last time was about seven years ago. "We had started pushing $15, $16, $17 million a year, then we bumped to $27 million. Once we got that big it got hard to handle everything the way we were doing it before. We weren't making much money. Subs were whining that we were slow in paying. We had to revamp." Beck hired construction industry business consultants FMI to analyze his systems and prescribe solutions. "When we grew, we became a company of people doing things their own way. We were doing good things, but we were all doing them differently." The solution--largely paperwork-based was to fully standardize company procedures. After hiring people to revamp his systems, Beck realized that his company's revolution coincided with the broader revolution of the Information Age; everything he was implementing on paper would work on the Internet. "Instead of a giant paper chase, we could have a big electronic document chase," he says. The shift to electronic document management allowed Beck to trim his office staff and helped him set up for the next reinvention, which he says will be his last. "I'm trying to retire here in a couple years."

Companies that grow will sooner or later bang into a wall, but one can also back into one when the market shrinks. Three years ago, Tim Chupp, a custom builder in Valparaiso, Ind., was running two new-home crews and grossing $1.2 million a year. "The following year," he says, "it all kind of fell apart for us." The market tightened up; more builders were chasing fewer jobs; clients were focusing on price over service. "It all happened after Sept. 11," says Chupp, who had until then enjoyed a string of progressively bigger and better new-home projects. Clients had chosen him for craft and service rather than a low bid. It took time to realize that the market had changed. "We kept waiting for these big jobs," he says. "That cost me big time." By the time Chupp finished out 2002 with $200,000 in work, he knew that he had hit the wall. But rather than try to bust through to the other side, Chupp decided to get comfortable where he was, dropping back to one crew, returning to the field full-time, and focusing on "less volume and more profit margin." Working for high-end remodeling clients, who, he finds, are still more oriented toward quality than price, Chupp finished 2003 at the same $200,000 volume, but with a healthier profit margin. He expects to do $750,000 in 2004, but he's still keeping a lid on growth, turning down nearly as much work as he has taken on. "I'm getting back to where I feel comfortable," he says. "I don't want to get too much bigger."

Homeownership, long an integral part of the American dream, has eluded too many African Americans for too long. But a recent partnership between Fannie Mae, the nation's largest source of financing for home mortgages, and the NAACP hopes to help underprivileged and minority families become homeowners.

The five-year, multimillion-dollar partnership will provide expanded mortgage financing, homeownership counseling and homebuyer information to at least 20,000 African American families. Working with lenders such as NationsBank, Fannie Mae will expand its commitment to provide mortgage financing. It will also provide up to $110 million in special financing products, including a new $50 million underwriting experiment tailored to meet the "unique credit needs of NAACP clientele." Under the partnership, the NAACP will provide homeownership resource information to households in areas served by its Community Development Resource Centers. The CDRCs are local arms of the NAACP that provide a range of consumer lending counseling services.

"Although the national homeownership rate is at a record 66.8%, the rate of ownership for minority Americans remains substantially lower," says Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines. "Through this partnership, we hope to provide assistance to underserved borrowers on a wide range of mortgage products."

WITHOUT A WEB SITE AS PART OF YOUR marketing plan, your small business has as much long-term survival potential as a snowman in a bonfire--or so goes contemporary hyperbole. The reality of how small businesses prefer to reach their customers casts doubts that e-commerce is a necessity at all for home-based businesses.

For one, home-based business owners don't think that a Web site and e-commerce go hand-in-hand, says Merle Sandier, senior analyst at Boston-based Small Business Research Group, a division of IDC. A recent study by IDC found that out of 850 small businesses, while 70 percent had the ability to go online, only a third of those online had a Web site. "Plus, only a third of those Web sites are actually capable of transacting business online," says Sandler.

A slightly different picture emerges from ActivMedia's study of 1,013 small businesses. Fifty-six percent of respondents claimed to be set up for accepting orders over active Web sites, while 64 percent say they use it primarily for marketing purposes. Moreover, only about a third of the participants in the ActivMedia study claim to generate revenue over the Internet.

"Currently, of the 15 million domain names registered worldwide, just over seven million are using the `.com' domain extension," says Chris Wheeler, vice president of information services at ActivMedia Research, based in Peterborough, N.H. "But, there are only approximately 500,000 substantial Web businesses found in the various published directories."

So, why are the majority of small businesses staying offline? Wheeler says it's a matter of understanding the wants and needs of the customer. Louis Rivet, a small-business owner, agrees. He says that his business simply doesn't lend itself to an online operation. For the past 30 years, Rivet has operated Pleasant Mailboxes, a provider of packing and shipping services and rental mailboxes to individuals and businesses in Claremont, N.H. "I can't rent mailboxes online because of all the strict picture-I.D, regulations," he explains.

Good bets on where to find the best bargains and greatest selection

Home office veterans may remember the days when buying a desk or chair meant foraging through the dusty office furniture reseller store located downtown. Once there, you'd likely find repossessed commercial furniture from a defunct company. A little ding there, a small scratch here--what did it matter that the oversize green metal desk in your price range wasn't in perfect condition, or that it didn't match your decor?

Fortunately, in the 1990s, office supply superstores sprouted up everywhere, selling affordable, brand-new, ready-to-assemble furniture, ergonomic chairs, and durable file cabinets--all designed to fit residential spaces and the growing needs of the home office professional.

Since then, the industry has flourished, and retailers, online sites, and catalogs are tripping over each other to sell you the latest and greatest in home office furniture. If you're like most people, you'll play it safe and go to the office superstore where, no doubt, you'll find a great selection to fit your budget and decor. But it might be worth your time and money to be a little more adventurous and look beyond the superstore to other retailers, e-tailers, and catalog houses that stock distinctive home office furniture.

Home office furniture emporia can be roughly divided into four categories to suit the four types of shopper:

Full-Service Retail stores are your best bet if you prefer to see, sit on, and test-drive the furniture before you buy. Your options include office supply superstores (such as Staples, Office Depot, and Office Max), traditional furniture stores (such as Ethan Allen), and "lifestyle" stores (such as Crate & Barrel).

Some Hand-Holding If you don't need to touch before you purchase, yet crave a live voice to answer questions about the furniture you're interested in buying, catalog shopping is the way to go. Turn back the corners of a catalog page and mull over your decision for a few days, then shop whenever you like.

Hewlett-Packard Company Tuesday announced that GetThere.com, a business-to-business Web travel procurement company (formerly Internet Travel Network), has chosen HP 9000 N-Class Enterprise Servers to run the database for its business-critical Internet service.

GetThere.com, which has been delivering travel services over the World Wide Web since 1995, is a supplier of Web-based travel procurement solutions to business customers and airlines. GetThere.com said it implemented the N-Class systems to provide superior performance and scalability to support the increasing volume of requests to its databases.

The N-Class Makes a Difference

According to GetThere.com, an increasing volume of customer information required more processing power for GetThere.com's Oracle relational database and from the servers that run it. The move to HP 9000 N-Class Enterprise Servers has significantly increased the company's database capacity.

"We chose HP 9000 N-Class servers and the HP-UX(1) 11 operating environment because of their scalability and performance, and especially their ability to handle Oracle database requests," said Eric Sirkin, vice president of Engineering and Operations at GetThere.com. "The HP N-Class servers are ideally suited to run relational databases such as Oracle, which is important to our business. We need massive scalability to keep pace with the growth of customer information on our database servers associated with Internet travel booking. HP's N-Class is the only solution we found that gave us the confidence we need to accommodate increased business demands by providing outstanding performance today plus headroom to grow with a strong upgrade path to future technologies, both PA-RISC(2) and the emerging IA-64 architecture."

The HP 9000 N-Class Enterprise Server is a midrange system ideally suited for business-critical Internet solutions. The server features up to eight of the world's fastest processors, HP's 64-bit PA-8500, and includes many standard features to help companies harness the power of the Internet. It delivers outstanding performance across a number of workload environments.

The conversion to the HP N-Class was completed in June, and since then the company has realized major increases in efficiency.

TONY Todaro had 20 subcontractors and an impressive roster of high-tech and financial services-industry clients, but he was still working out of his home in Redondo Beach. He was hesitant to lease office space again. Five years earlier, he moved his marketing-communications firm, Todaro Communications Inc., into the 18th floor of a Los Angeles high-rise building. When the 1994 Northridge earthquake struck, extensive damage to his office and equipment sent him back to the home-based world.

By late last year, however, he was looking around again for a real office.

"I needed a formal place to make formal presentations to clients," said Todaro. He also felt an office would improve his image because "big companies like to have a feeling of doing business with a company of their peers."

This time he found a great alternative to a full-time office -- classy offices and conference rooms he can use on an as-needed basis. He found what he was looking for at eVirtual Suites, located in a sleek, blue-and-yellow office building near the Los Angeles International Airport eVirtual Suites rents offices, conference rooms and business services on an as-needed basis, while making available fulltime receptionists to answer private, dedicated phone lines.

The company provides clients with a permanent address, a building directory, and phone, fax and voice mail service. When using the space, Todaro can take advantage of clerical services from word processing, faxing and copying to mailing, printing and notarizing. When he's not there, "telereceptionists" answer his calls. A pop-up screen on their computer terminals provides specific information to his business. They can also patch calls through to him anywhere in the world. By not having fulltime space, or hiring a receptionist or clerical support, Todaro keeps his overhead low and can pass those savings on to his clients.

Flexible, affordable bridge

More and more home-based entrepreneurs are relying on virtual offices or renting time and conference rooms in traditional, temporary office facilities. A virtual office provides a flexible and affordable way to bridge the gap between working at home and moving into a permanent space. Part-time real estate arrangements, coupled with high technology, create a seamless feeling of having an outside office even on the days when you're working from home, according to Loriann Hoff Oberlin, author of "Working at Home While The Kids are There Too."

Meeting the demands for shared low-cost, high-speed Internet access from the growing number of home and small office/home office (SOHO) customers with multiple PCs, Proxim, Inc., Monday announced that its Symphony cordless networking technology will be integrated with Cayman Systems' ADSL 3220H Internet gateway and ADSL modem.

This agreement marks the industry's first pairing of cordless networking with a broadband Internet access solution for the residential and SOHO market. Now customers can distribute high-speed Internet access to other computers throughout the home or office without installing any new cabling, and can do so regardless of location of computers and other resources within the network. This technology combination mobilizes users, giving them the luxury of high-speed Internet access wherever they choose to use their computers, with minimal setup requirements.

"When you bring DSL into your home, you are likely going to be running extra lines to extend that DSL service in your home," said Daniel D. Briere, president of TeleChoice, Inc., a telecom management consultancy. "That's going to add up quickly in cost, and you still are going to be tied to specific physical locations in your home via some sort of tether. The Cayman/Proxim combo is the ultimate in tetherless solutions because you don't have the high cost of standalone wireless and DSL solutions - you get ADSL and wireless in one package."

The award-winning Symphony Cordless Networking Suite is a comprehensive, low-cost, easy-to-use cordless networking solution which leverages Proxim's more than 15 years of experience providing the world's most popular wireless local area networking (LAN) technology. The ADSL 3220H is a leading digital subscriber line router that can be used with ADSL services being offered by Pacific Bell, SBC, Bell South, and Ameritech, allowing for multiple-Mbps digital Internet access, instead of 56 Kbps access through traditional analog modems.

Customers using Symphony's cordless networking technology to distribute high-speed Internet access from the ADSL connection can share files and printers, and can play network games between computers using Symphony network interface cards for laptops and desktops, all located anywhere within the network of the home or small office.

Los Angeles area entrepreneurs are finding a way to "open for business" with the help of small SBA loans, underwritten by a unique program spearheaded by Innovative Bank (IB). This plucky little financial institution recently acquired the Bank of Oakland and then proceeded to carve out a niche in the $5,000 SBA Loan marketplace, using Nevada as a testing ground. Now IB has entered Los Angeles and in a dramatic fashion and is focused on Minority Business Enterprise and its limitless number of small office home office based businesses. Thus, evolved the acronym for IB's product--SOHO. Recently, IB has increased its lending policy and has added $10,000 and $15,000 loans to its lending arsenal to satisfy a growing demand for micro-business working capital.

IB's novel program employs community intermediaries to host loan application workshops, during which the application is completed. The intermediary also reviews poignant information that may accompany the application. Usually within a week to 10 days of receipt of the application by the bank, the intermediary will be able to apprise the applicant of acceptance or whether additional work is necessary to proceed. Loan funding often follows several days after approval by the bank and acceptance by the prospective borrower.

Los Angeles SBA Director Alberto G. Alvarado welcomes the advent of this SOHO SBA loan product as an economic development tool for his tri-county service area. "Innovative Bank has devised an approach which has allowed loan aspirants to "get into business" with little or virtually no cash outlay. It is a true 'open door policy' for which we are grateful to the bank," mused Director Alvarado.

The North LA SBDC, hosted by Valley Economic Development Center, is one of the inaugural intermediaries and has within the last three months generated more than four dozen of these SOHO loans. The strongest contributor to this SBDC's small loan production success is Marlen Bello, a Business Development Officer (BDO) for North LA SBDC.

If the question is, "How can I get scores, check the weather and get headlines about my favorite topics", then the answer for many is the Yahoo! portal.

But if your information needs run more toward secure access to CRM applications, personalized presentation of bank and 401(k) balances and platform-specific customer support tools, then an Enterprise Portal is probably a more suitable answer.

Customization. Personalization. Presentation. Satisfaction. Retention. All describe the benefits that a well-selected portal can bring to your Enterprise Web strategy. Portals allow enterprises of all kinds to create a unique presence for every customer, all sporting a single branded 'look and feel,' yet each one an opportunity to enhance your corporate image, improve customer service, increase employee productivity, and strengthen supplier and channel partnerships.

Your question now should be "How do I do that?" Our answer: Start by attending this informative eSeminar sponsored by Vignette.

You'll learn how you can integrate applications, enable Web-based searches of key databases and improve collaboration and workflow processes by developing a portal strategy tailored for the way your enterprise does business. You'll also learn how Vignette's portal solutions can help your organization manage and deploy a global portfolio of integrated Web sites that deliver personalized, contextual views of critical business information. Most importantly, you'll learn that by choosing the right tools to help deploy an Enterprise portal, you can reduce the effort involved by using ready-to-integrate tools, or portlets, to easily incorporate your e-mail, calendar, CRM, and ERP applications.

We hope you'll register today, and discover how Vignette solutions can help you create the Enterprise Web that can give you a competitive edge.

The growing demand for reusable semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) has generated a merchant market that totals $500 million today, and is expected to grow at a rate of more than 100 percent per year.

Hoping to follow the success of companies like MIPS, ARM and Rambus, hundreds of SIP start-ups have entered the market.

However, the move by some SIP suppliers to begin manufacturing and selling ICs to supplement revenue and a number of recent acquisitions of SIP companies by IC manufacturers have prompted skeptics to argue that a business based solely on the sale of SIP can't succeed. While barriers do exist, it is possible for SIP providers to generate sufficient revenue if they can provide very clear benefits to system-on-a-chip (SOC) designers and are committed to the business model.

Because SOC design requires intimate knowledge of every feature and function within the system and extensive time and dedicated resources, it is unreasonable for vendors to take on this task independently. Experienced developers estimate it would take approximately 500 years and $75 million for an engineer designing 100 gates per day to deliver a chip with 10 million gates. By acquiring commercial SIP, SOC designers should be able to reduce time-to-market significantly.

As with any emerging market, the evolving infrastructure and lack of standards have created barriers to SIP integration and manufacturing, and have made many companies wary of bringing in SIP from an outside source. Still, SOC designers will purchase SIP if it enables them to cost-effectively break through a high barrier of entry to a market. SIP must therefore be highly differentiated and backed by extensive support. In addition, it must be designed for use in a variety of high-volume applications. SIP vendors who deliver on all of these requirements will be able to build a financially lucrative business based on the sale of SIP.

Of all of America's institutions, surely we can rely on the nation's hospitals to treat us fairly. Right? Wrong! At least according to a Virginia entrepreneur whose 11-year crusade is reaping huge profits.

Picture this: you've just come home from the hospital and already there's a bill waiting on your kitchen table. You open it and your jaw drops open: it seems you're being charged $2,500 that wasn't covered. That can't be, you think, my coverage is supposed to be the best. You look closer...and that's when the errors appear.

You've been charged for an operating room you've never used...medications never given...doctor visits that never occurred. All in all, you figure there's $5,000 in overcharges. And that doesn't include all the things the insurance company is disallowing. But the biggest surprise is - you shouldn't be surprised at all! Studies show that over 90% of hospital bills typically yield mistakes (Two-thirds of which are in the hospital's favor). Often these errors amount to thousands of dollars.

The Start of a Revolutionary New Home Business

One such medical victim was Pat Palmer's dad. Pat got curious when her father's hospital bill seemed too high. After requesting an itemized bill and sticking to her investigation, Pat found and recovered thousands of dollars in overcharges.

That's when Pat envisioned a brand new business.

Within three months, Pat had uncovered thousands of dollars in overcharges for her neighbors alone. Excited, she split the recovery with them, quit her job and began auditing medical bills on a full-time basis.

That was eleven years ago. Since then, Pat helped her fellow Virginians recover overcharges they had neither the time nor the training to spot. Her clients can't thank her enough for her help. The beauty of her business is...

It Works Equally Well with Patients and Insurers

First off, most people with health insurance coverage generally pay 20-30% of their bill, plus the deductible, which can easily total thousands of dollars - making them top prospects for overcharge recovery.

But the really interesting part is - many insurance companies (including HMOs) will split with you 50/50 on any overcharges recovered...and that includes their share of the bill too!

That's not to mention those patients working for firms that self-insure and must bear the full brunt of a big hospital bill!

CIO uses business strategy and outsourcing to bring legacy mortgage system up to Web speed.

Dan Roberts applies business savvy to his technical know-how in order to keep up with the Web, and the resulting accelerated pace of change.

"In the past we've been reactive," says Roberts, senior vice president and CIO, Corporate Information Services, PMI Group Inc., San Francisco. "When a customer makes a request, we react to that. When we see other firms doing something that would make sense for us to do as well, we react."

With the Web, the need to react instantaneously is much more prevalent than it was in the past. "Web-time permeates everything we do, not only Information Technology," says Roberts, adding that his personal goal is to apply the right Web technology to improve business.

The PMI Group is a leader in risk management technology and provides various products and services for the home mortgage finance industry, as well as title insurance. As one of the largest private mortgage insurers in the U.S., PMI is one of the first to use the Web to streamline the underwriting process and offer contract underwriting and mortgage insurance services over the Internet to their customers.

Listening to Customers

Roberts based his strategy for building PMI's e-business infrastructure on customer input and on data gathered from technology providers.

"We are trying hard to receive input from our customers on what [capabilities] they would like us to provide through our systems," says Roberts. "We're also in touch with major providers of technology in the mortgage industry to assess where there are logical points of contact that would make sense for us to participate in. And then we marry together what we believe the customer needs."

A couple of years ago, PMI built a client/server Windows NT application in-house using VisualBasic and C++. "We wanted to enable our customers Web access to our policy-servicing application running on the mainframe," says Roberts. "We were getting good results and processed about half-a-million loan applications through this system last year, but we wanted a better running solution."

It's been a busy year for manufacturers of prescription drugs, over-the-counter (OTC) products and dietary supplements.

They were creating new drug delivery systems ... helping to insure patient safety ... control ling costs ... complying with regulations ... trying to stay ahead of counterfeiters ... examining their supply chain to make it safer and more cost efficient ... and thinking about the packaging needs of tomorrow.

A look at some of today's trends also reveals what's in play for future packaging innovations.

* Demand drives market growth

Our population is aging. The 50-plus segment is growing faster than any other. When you consider that nearly 75% of pharmaceutical customers are senior citizens, it's no wonder that the drug business is booming.

Baby boomers, the largest buying group in America, have started to reach their fifties. Although they are getting older, they refuse to get old. They want to stay healthy. The fitness craze has helped fuel the popularity of vitamins and other dietary supplements. More than 150 million consumers use supplements and nutraceutical products each year to treat or prevent ailments, to help with weight loss and/or to boost strength and energy.

In addition, strong activity in the biotech sector is producing new types of drugs. Nearly every company in the top 20 on our pharmaceutical list (see p.56) has invested heavily in biotech R&D to ensure a secure product pipeline.

The packaging solutions:

The new crop of products is causing drug manufacturers to consider novel drug delivery methods during product development. In addition to the typical tablet or capsule, we're seeing more inhalers, transdermal patches, aerosols and needle-less injection devices designed to help improve a product's efficacy and reduce side effects.

These packages--and others, such as prefilled syringes--also help simplify drug administration. Packages that reduce the number of preparation steps and/or help ease administration respond to two critical issues: (1) health care professionals are busy, which heightens the potential for dispensing errors, and (2) more and more products are being administered by the patient or a caregiver at home or in an extended-care facility. Not having to visit a doctor's office cuts costs and saves time for both patient and doctor.