Chem Systems Announces New Suite of Online Business Tools

Chem Systems is pleased to announce that it is now taking orders for its new suite of online decision support tools. "Business Decisions - Online, Real Time" is a suite of products to support the business planning and decision-making efforts of industry researchers, market analysts, business planners and corporate strategists. Chem Systems, once a paper-based consulting practice, now provides online access to its extensive warehouse of industry data and interactive modeling software.

The core value of the Business Decisions suite is that its individual products provide quick and reliable answers to key questions influencing major business decisions within a customer's company. Richard Sleep, Chem Systems' global Business Decisions practice leader behind the suite's development, offers the following: "The output of our Business Decisions products can address simple data needs and enable more sophisticated analysis of strategic questions leading to significant impact on a company's performance."

At the heart of the Business Decisions suite is a powerful industry simulator built by Chem Systems. This new simulator is an interactive, comprehensive model of the entire petroleum and petrochemical industry that simulates and forecasts the markets, consumption drivers, supply and demand, process technology, profitability, pricing mechanisms and global trade flows of the industry. The simulator replaces 30 years of Chem Systems' data, analysis and models with one 'online, real-time' model designed and built by Chem Systems in collaboration with IBM. Taken as a whole, the Business Decisions suite offers the following product attributes, features and benefits:

• "Online - Real Time" information and data
• Accurate and current data warehouse to drive optimization models
• Simulation of industry value chains from petroleum feedstocks, commodity chemicals and plastics
• Tracking and forecasts for capacities, supply and demand, trade balances, production economics, margins and profitability
• Historical and forecasted data for chemicals in production facilities worldwide
• Analytical tools, developed and optimized by renowned Chem Systems experts
• Economic models based on process models, speculative plants, delivered costs and operating rates With regard to content, the Business Decisions products provides:
• Downloadable data to augment specific corporate data and analysis
• Uploadable data for analytical processing
• Ability to change assumptions in analytical tools
• "What-if" analysis and alternative scenario planning
• Customized services to align analysis with corporate and portfolio strategy needs

Individually, the Business Decisions products can be summarized as follows: Industry Researcher: Easy access to historic global data and analysis covering capacity, demand, price margins and production economics. Market Analyst: Set of offerings to enable forecasting and trend analysis across industry value chains and all major geographies. Business Planner: An innovative service concept, built around the global industry simulator, but also enabling and allowing online, real-time scenario planning. Corporate Strategist: Customized services to monitor and forecast corporate/portfolio performance and assess business impact of specific strategic initiatives, such as new investments, mergers and acquisitions and e-business, among others.

"We are immeasurably pleased at the efforts involved and the results of what we feel is a major step forward in the practice of global chemical industry consulting," said Don Bari, vice president, Chem Systems. "We are also confident that these 'Online, Real Time' business decision products will become the premiere source for industry leaders to obtain critical decision-influencing information."

For further information on Chem Systems' suite of Business Decisions products, please visit www.chemsystems.com/businessplanner.

About Chem Systems

Chem Systems, with offices and representatives in New York, London, Bangkok, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Chennai, Hong Kong, Houston, Moscow and Tokyo, was founded in 1964. The company is a leading provider of consulting services for various industry segments, including energy and refining, petrochemical and commodities, specialty and fine chemicals, plastics, polymers and advanced materials, utilities, and fertilizers and inorganics. Chem Systems helps clients increase business value through consulting assistance in all aspects of business strategy. The company was acquired by IBM in April 1998.

Contact Chem Systems (an IBM Company), Patricia Carron, 914-288-5612, chem08@us.ibm.com.