E3 Corp Acquires Market Data Solutions and eMillenium

E3 Corp, a pioneer of inventory management solutions, announces the acquisitions of Greensboro, N.C-based Market Data Solutions Inc (MDS) and EMillennium Inc, a partner company of MDS. With these acquisitions, E3 adds consumer-focused merchandising and marketing to its inventory solutions and establishes a broader range of solutions for retail, wholesale and manufacturing trading partners. Financial details of the transactions between these privately held firms were not disclosed.

MDS and E-Millennium provide data mining, profiling and collaborative functionality to leading data warehousing and inventory management solutions through advanced statistical modeling and artificial intelligence. The MDS consumer-focused solution builds significantly on the benefits already achieved by the E3SLIM system, as well as other applications like IBM Inforem. MDS market intelligence studies item and store behavior patterns and adjusts to consumer-specific merchandising needs.

"The two acquisitions give retailers a lot more to ponder as they evaluate packaged applications for collaborative replenishment and inventory management," said Greg Girard in the AMR Alert on Retail Applications, April 7, 2000. He also stated, "E3 has the edge in delivered functionality and domain knowledge -- an advantage for retailers seeking a partner that knows its business."

MDS was the first company to link optimized profiles to an inventory execution system to produce the most unique item forecasts available. Unlike stand-alone software, MDS accepts data from a broad range of databases and ERP providers such as TeraData, DB2, SAP, JDA, Intactix and Oracle applications.

"We are excited to have the MDS and eMillenium teams join us as we take collaborative technologies to the next level through our E3Marketplace strategies," said Dennis Hogue, E3's president and chief executive officer. "These acquisitions allow us to combine the most innovative technologies in the market today and deliver to customers even deeper benefits than they ever thought possible. This greatly enhances our position as a leading facilitator of strategic merchandizing and category management decisions."

"E3 gives retailers critical functionality for improving sales, increasing store-level in-stock rates, and decreasing inventory levels," continued Greg Girard, The AMR Alert on Retail Applications, April 7, 2000. "This is highvalue territory that i2 hopes to claim with Inforem and Rhythm Replenishment Planner which are now nearing beta release. E3 and MDS cover most of that territory today and both have been successful selling into Inforem accounts - E3 by replacing the base IBM applications and MDS by replacing add-on Inforem applications: Seasons, I-Buy and TotalSim."

According to Bruce Wieland, president and founder of MDS, "What makes this acquisition exciting to me is knowing that what we will now be able to do, by combining expertise, will help retailers become even more effective and profitable than ever before. In functionality as well as results, E3's replenishment techniques already position the customer miles ahead of where\ it could be with any other inventory system. The data profiling and collaborative tools of MDS and eMillenium will take E3 and its customers even further." Wieland joins E3 as vice president of collaborative marketplace development and will continue to add advanced analytical functionality to the systems offered under the E3Marketplace umbrella.

Since 1994, MDS has been focused on deploying advanced data mining techniques to improve the forecasting capabilities within supply chain management. The first customers of MDS were retailers using IBM's INFOREM inventory management software, and were soon joined by other Fortune 500 companies with a need to incorporate actionable forecasting tools. Today, the MDS customer base includes a number of brand-name retailers, such as Kmart Corp, Hanes, Kohl's Corp and Ames Department Stores Inc.

All of the MDS analytical tools complement the robust set of solutions E3 offers. The leading data mining application by MDS determines item and consumer behavior patterns, tying them into E3's forecasting solution. It groups similar consumer characteristics together and creates the most accurate profiles available, which help retailers identify items performing in a similar fashion. Another application captures and measures promotional lift, which refers to the increase in inventory needed to support an in-store promotion, and the causal data connected with it. Already incorporated into E3's event planning tool, this powerful technology segments individual store activities, allowing a retailer to be very responsive to individual store promotions, optimize future events and determine more accurate inventory demand.

With the collaborative tools offered by eMillenium, retailers are beginning to leverage core competencies and move traditional business processes to a consumer-centric shared environment. eMillenium offers a demographic scorecard technology that analyzes different types of performance information to determine causal effect. It enables trading partners to share key indicators internally and externally in a consistent format. Collaborative micromerchandising techniques build store cluster information on performance and consumer lifestyle information. The result is an efficient item assortment for each store cluster, tightly integrating the entire merchandizing cycle with the existing collaborative E3 execution system so that the retailer and suppliers can better understand the consumer traits that drive the market.

Retailers using these extended E3 solutions will be able to gain a much clearer understanding of how products sell across the entire chain of stores. By effectively merging this knowledge into the inventory forecasting and management process, customers can better segment store activities, accurately plan individual promotional events, and share forecasting and inventory needs with suppliers. E3's demand-based techniques allow retailers and distributors to increase item accountability at the store level and significantly minimize inventory levels, increasing cash flow and making additional funds available for growth activities.

E3 will be exhibiting in Booth ##2424 at the Retail Systems 2000 Conference in Chicago, IL on April 17-19, 2000. At the conference, E3 will be the corporate sponsor for the VICS 2000 Achievement Awards and will be participating in a panel discussion on Supply Chain Systems at the VICS 2000 R&D Technology Breakfast. For more detailed information on show agendas and schedules, visit the following site: www.retailsystems.com.

About E3 Corp.

E3 is a world leader in demand chain management with customers in 17 countries. The company offers traditional and collaborative inventory management and replenishment solutions to wholesalers, retail chains and manufacturers around the world. Major companies including Ace Hardware, Eckerd Drug, Staples, Best Buy, MGM and many others have all achieved major increases in productivity and profitability through E3 solutions. Visit the E3 Website at www.e3.com.

Contact Katie Bush of E3 Corporation, 770-424-0100 kbush@e3.com.