Arkansas Business

Six Arkansas companies made Information Week's 18th annual list of the top 500 innovators in business technology application.

Acxiom Corp. of Little Rock, ABF Freight System Inc. of Fort Smith, J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell, Alltel Corp. of Little Rock, Arkansas Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Little Rock and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville all made this year's list.

Information Week is a weekly print magazine reaching almost half a million business technology professionals. Rather than identifying the biggest information technology spenders, the annual list is intended to rank corporate IT departments according to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of each company's tech initiatives and priorities.

Only the top 250 innovators are ranked in the magazine.

Acxiom was the highest ranked Arkansas company, coming in at 120 just above Verizon Telecom of New York. Rich Howe, marketing officer for Acxiom, owed the company's ranking on the list to investments in customer data integration and grid technology.

"We already know we are on the cutting edge of business technology, and we are always excited to get recognized for that," Howe said.

ABF came in at 166. J.B. Hunt came in at 180.

The other three Arkansas companies on the Information Week 500 came in somewhere in the bottom half of the list.