Company: Oracle Corporation EMEA
Company Description: Twenty-six years ago, Larry Ellison saw an opportunity other companies missed when he came across a description of a working prototype for a relational database. Oracle is the world's leading supplier of software for information management, and the world's second largest independent software company.
Nomination Category: Team Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Support Team

Nomination Title: Oracle Corporation Greek Marathon Support Team

1. Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved in the past year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Oracle Corporation is the world's largest enterprise software company, providing
enterprise software to the world's largest and most successful businesses. With
annual revenues of more than $10.8 billion, Oracle is the first software company to
develop and deploy 100 percent Internet-enabled enterprise software across its
entire product line: database, server, enterprise business applications,
application development, and decision support tools.

‘Thank you for your quick response, dedication and timely resolution of our
problems. You really saved the day.’
  Customer A

In August 2004, the Olympic Games returned to Greece, the ancient birthplace,
and to Athens.  A great level of responsibility was placed upon all organisations
that supported the Games.  Oracle, recognising the criticality of the moment was
dedicated to helping all the organisations with Oracle systems to succeed in their
efforts to make the Games the best ever. Rising to the changes that these world-
class games demanded.

The Marathon Support Programmes started as an initiative from Oracle Support
Services Greece. A cross–functional team was formed with full senior
management backing and sponsorship - comprising proactive and reactive
activities at all levels, Local, Regional and Global. The team was comprised of
various internal and external teams from Development, Consulting, Partners and
Support working closely with Customers. The objective of this team was simply to
ensure that any customers facing issues with Oracle products had them resolved
as soon as possible.

‘Thank you for your timely response and solution of our performance problem. It’s
great working with you on our side’
 Customer B

The customers participating included:

· The Athens 2004 Organising Committee
· Greek Police & Security Forces
· National Telecommunications and Post Commission (E.E.T.T)
· Athens International Airport
· General Electric (US)
· NBC Television (US)
· O.T.E. Telecommunications
· COSMOTE Mobile Communications
· Vodafone Mobile Communications

The team had obstacles and challenges to make all this work and succeed. 

· Coordinating all the different internal organisations and Lines of
Business meant weekly conference calls and very close liaison;
· Ensuring all customers were corrected identified, monitored and the
priorities set was vital to successful implementation;
· Having in place alerts to ensure that the Global organisations were
quickly engaged to resolve any issues;
· Having an on-site task-force to be able to crisis manage;
· Having in place a local 24x7 escalation team and path for customers;
· Constant notification and programme status and development to the
line management;
· Daily customer status conference calls during the actual Olympics to
communicate the status of all nominated customers;
· And finally, the root cause analysis of the crisis incidents to help
identify the causes of failure and thus help prevent it from happening again.

The eight core members of the team worked extremely hard and often during
unsocial hours to achieve their goal.  They also received great praise from our
customers after the success was realised and the Games were considered an
international triumph.  Among the many comments came this:

‘You are all part of the winning team. Thank you for your commitment.’ 
  Customer C

Jean Reiczyk
SVP Customer Support Operations
Oracle Corporation

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://www.oracle.com
http://www.oracle.com/oramag/profit/04-may/p24greece.html
http://www.oracle.com/services/index.html
http://www.oracle.com/support
http://www.oracle.com/products/index.html
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/story.html
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressroom/index.html
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/awards.html
http://www.oracle.com/support/seminars.html

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of this nominated team:

Jean Reiczyk is senior vice president of Oracle Support Services EMEA and
AsiaPacific, reporting to Mike Rocha. Mr. Rocha is responsible for Oracle's
Worldwide Support Services, Outsourcing, Platform Technologies, and Global
Information Technology.

Prior to joining Oracle in 2001, Mr Reiczyk had over 25 years experience in the
Telecommunications and Information industry, including serving as president of
Managed Storage International Inc, senior vice president of Global One, a vice
president at AT&T, and CIO of Digital Equipment.

Team Leader:
Argyrios Derlopas (Service Delivery Manager - Greece)

Local Team:
Theofilos Astyfidis (Customer Support Organisation Manager - Greece),
Steven Marinelis (Critical Accounts Triage - Australia),
Carlos Martinez (Service Delivery Engineer - Spain),
Alex Melidis (ARE Performance - Greece),
Nikos Plevris (Support Country Interface – Greece),
Javier Rubio (Service Delivery Manager - Spain),
Stelios Stylos (Local Product Support Engineer - Greece).