Sun Chemical Expands Relationship with Sagent

Sagent, a leading provider of Business Intelligence solutions, announced that Sun Chemical, the world's largest manufacturer of printing inks, coatings and organic pigments, is extending the implementation of Sagent's data movement software for data warehousing, celebrating one of the first data warehouse tools to be deployed worldwide.

Sun Chemical is installing the Sagent Solution in the company's United Kingdom location, with several other global ones to follow. The installation of Sagent software, being led by Sagent's Professional Services team, will enable Sun Chemical to better manage its customer and business data across all divisions, at all sites concurrently.

Using the Sagent Solution's open architecture as a single source to move data, Sun Chemical will deploy large-scale data warehouse solutions. By doing so, a global repository of business and customer data will be created so that management will be able to capture a consolidated, high-level view of its data, by connecting many disparate ERP and financial systems company wide. As a result, division managers will be able to drill into their respective data and their colleagues' data to more effectively and efficiently manage their business from a global perspective. This will allow Sun Chemical to reduce inventory, decrease production costs, identify profitable and non-profitable business sectors, create global pricing, establish global customer service, and raise the visibility of its customer service worldwide.

"We chose Sagent as a single source for all of our data warehouse processing because of its powerful development platform, experienced and knowledgeable professional services team, and dedicated account management team," said Stephen B. Kern, director of data warehouse and business analysis, Sun Chemical. "Although we have been a Sagent customer for several years, we contemplated using a competitor or a combination of tools for this important project. But, in the end, Sagent provides a lower total cost of ownership, and a much more intuitive product suite."

About Sun Chemical

Sun Chemical traces its history back to 1830 when Samuel Morrill, a newspaper printer, began manufacturing printing ink in the kitchen of his home in Andover, Mass. Today, the company is the world's largest manufacturer of high-quality printing inks and coatings and high-performance organic pigments. In 2000, the company had sales of about $3.3 billion. Sun Chemical is composed of seven divisions: The Colors Group, Sun Chemical-Europe, Sun Chemical Ink (GPI), Sun Chemical Latin America, Kohl & Madden, U.S. Ink, and Coates Lorilleux. Together, these divisions serve the graphic arts, plastics, cosmetics, textile, paint and coatings industries. Sun Chemical operates more than 300 manufacturing, sales and service locations in Europe, the Caribbean and North, Central and South America, as well as maintaining independent agents in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific Rim.

About Sagent

Sagent's suite of Business Intelligence solutions enables companies to measurably impact their business by implementing highly successful customer relationship and financial management initiatives. Through Sagent's powerful enabling technologies, organizations can easily and rapidly turn company data into relevant information that can be used for effective decision-making, analysis and reporting. Information can be extracted from multiple sources (internal and external), optimized for decision support and delivered in a customized format for Web-based or client applications. Even the most complex analytic application can be developed in weeks, not months.

More than 1,500 companies have selected Sagent software to enhance customer retention, cross-sell/up-sell, improve customer service, increase efficiencies of marketing campaigns, streamline business operations, analyze financials, and reduce costs. Customers include AT&T, BP Amoco, Boeing Employees Credit Union, Bristol Meyers, British Telecom, California State Automobile Association, Citibank, GPU Energy, Hughes Aircraft Employees Federal Credit Union, Johnson & Johnson (UK), Kemper National Insurance, Provident Central Credit Union, Safeway and Siemens. Sagent retains strategic relationships with partners such as Advent, Commerce One, Compaq, EDS, IBM, Microsoft, NEC, SAS and Sun Microsystems. Sagent is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and can be reached at www.sagent.com.

Contact Sagent, Clearwater, Fla., Michael A. Piotrowski, 727-725-9727, mpiotrowski@sagent.com.