Financial Watch:

Informatica Helps Dannon Cultivate Business Insight

Informatica Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise analytic software, announced that The Dannon Company, producer of the world's top-selling brand of yogurt, has successfully implemented the Informatica data integration platform in less than three months. Replacing custom code that was expensive to create and maintain, the Informatica platform integrates data from numerous applications across the enterprise, providing Dannon with a significantly more flexible and responsive foundation for gaining insight into products, sales and customers.

"In order to stay competitive as a company, our timeframe for delivering analytic information to end users throughout the company has been substantially reduced," said Greg Northrup, IS Senior Manager at Dannon. "Informatica relieves us from having to write custom integration code, while letting us accomplish the same results in a fraction of the time --in just days instead of weeks or months. Consequently, we are now able to quickly respond when meeting user demands for timely information from across the enterprise value chain, which in turn promotes faster, more insightful business decisions."

Continued Northrup, "Informatica has also enabled us to reduce the amount of IT resources required for data warehousing by approximately 30%, meaning we can now leverage those resources elsewhere. The Informatica platform is very well polished with a short learning curve."

The Informatica platform automatically consolidates data from a wide variety of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other systems throughout Dannon, including financial, trade-management and order-management systems. Anyone in the company requiring information can access a single repository containing granular information on products, customers and sales. The scalable Informatica platform ensures the consistency of the massive amounts of data integrated from these myriad sources and accelerates the process of producing meaningful analytics in the face of changing data sources, mounting information volumes and evolving information needs.

"As a leader in a highly competitive industry, Dannon is keenly aware of the need to derive maximum value from its information resources," said Diaz Nesamoney, president and COO of Informatica. "We are pleased to provide Dannon with a flexible, scalable and cost-effective platform upon which to base their business-analytics initiatives going forward."

The Dannon Company Inc is a leading national producer of yogurt products in the United States. Dannon produces about six million cups of product each day in nearly 100 flavors, styles and sizes. For more information about Dannon, visit the company's Web site at www.dannon.com.

About Informatica

Informatica provides enterprise analytic software that enables decision makers to transform business insight into competitive advantage. Informatica provides the industry's only integrated set of analytic products, including a powerful data integration platform, a suite of cross value chain analytic applications, and soon the real-time delivery of personalized analytics via Web, wireless and voice. More than 1,300 customers, including 60 percent of the Fortune 100, rely on Informatica software to integrate, analyze and deliver critical information to managers, executives and other decision-makers to optimize business performance. The company's list of global customers includes 3Com, AMD, American Airlines, BMW, Borders Group, Chevron, Cisco, CNET, the Department of Justice, Deutsche Bank, eBay, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, MetLife, Motorola, Philips, Polo Ralph Lauren, Sprint, UBS and the U.S. Postal Service. For more information, call 800-970-1179, or visit the Informatica Web site at www.informatica.com.

Data Ventures Lands Analytics for Coca-Cola Loyalty Program

Data Ventures LLC, a leading data analytics and decision support company in the consumer packaged goods industry (CPG), announced a three-year contract with Coca-Cola North America (CCNA).

Data Ventures will provide data warehousing and analytics to Coca-Cola North America's loyalty card data analysis and consulting services with major grocery retailers. The three-year Coke program has brought keen insights to numerous retailers across multiple categories. Data Ventures will use Coke's software and enhance the analytics package available to retailers.

Dave Campbell, director of category management service, Coca-Cola North America, said, "Of the firms reviewed, Data Ventures had the greatest depth of understanding our business and how it applies with our customers, the retailers. Their technology team combined with their business analysts made it the right fit. We are confident of their ability to improve the bottom line for us and our customers."

Loyalty Card Analytics Package Available Commercially

Terry Montgomery, president/CEO of Data Ventures, stated, "This commitment from Coke is a continued indication of our leadership in the analytics of loyalty card programs for manufacturers and retailers with large geographic coverage and market share. Combining our forces will ensure ongoing innovation in developing technology to enhance the business intelligence necessary to compete in today's fast-paced environment. In addition, the loyalty card analytics package will be available commercially through Data Ventures to global retailers and manufacturers."

About Data Ventures, LLC

Data Ventures, LLC provides insights and value to CPG manufacturers and retailers in category management, loyalty card intelligence and stock availability management. Using leading edge pattern recognition technology and database management, Data Ventures serves major CPG manufacturers and retailers globally. The company also provides fraud detection services to the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). The 3-year-old company is headquartered in Charlotte, NC, with the technology center in Los Alamos, New Mexico. For more information on Data Ventures and its products, visit their Web site at www.dataventures.com.

Contact Gina Columna of G-Force Advertising & Marketing, 704-548-1955 gina@gforcceintl.com, for Data Ventures LLC.

KXEN Launches UK Operations

KXEN, a global analytic software company that provides powerful, predictive and descriptive modeling technology for both data mining professionals and business decision-makers, announced the launch of its groundbreaking data modeling products in the UK.

Grayson Amies, KXEN's UK operation manager, said: "Peterborough is the perfect location for our new UK sales office. It's situated at the very center of the East of England which is renowned worldwide for its information technology, biotech, and telecom business -- it's a dynamic region for growing companies. We are grateful for the on-going support of the East of England Investment Authority and Greater Peterborough Investment Agency in helping us to develop our UK operations."

"In the economic slowdown, business intelligence (BI) is being hyped as the technology that will enable companies to hang on to their existing customers," explained Amies. "According to a report by Giga, the global BI market will be worth $17 billion by 2004. KXEN's software not only helps organizations retain customers, it will also identify any new customers that are out there. The launch of KXEN's Peterborough operations is a boost for UK businesses that previously could not afford extensive data mining resources, but will now be able to predict customer behavior quickly and without consuming technical expertise."

Roger Haddad, CEO of KXEN, said: "The fact that business data is invaluable and that the years of experience it represents must be drawn on as much as possible has been well documented. Data modeling enhances the data mining process enabling companies to draw critical information from mountains of data and then turn that information into knowledge. Using predictive techniques, organizations can both anticipate the behavior of existing customers and accurately identify potential customers."

"By enabling business-focused staff to do this themselves in a fraction of the time it would usually take an analyst, KXEN Components free analysts from a time-consuming task and put the tremendous power of the latest data technology where it is needed most -- in the hands of the people who can maximize commercial gain from analysis," added Haddad. "Using our software, all personnel will be able to extract new knowledge on customers and markets."

KXEN Components can be easily integrated into existing applications and specific industry solutions, including customer relationship management, sales automation, supply chain management, network management, financial technology, fraud, forecasting, and biotechnology. The KXEN suite automates the data preparation, coding, and modeling process and enables users to build predictive and descriptive models in near real-time. KXEN software components are available through systems integrators and original equipment manufacturers including Accenture and Norkom.

About KXEN

KXEN (Knowledge Extraction Engines) is a global analytic software company that provides powerful modeling technology for both data mining professionals and business decision-makers. KXEN's patented technology quickly and easily transforms data into knowledge, enabling users to make better business decisions. KXEN partners with systems integrators and original equipment manufacturers to integrate its analytic software into their applications. KXEN offers a state-of-the-art suite of predictive and descriptive modeling engines based upon Vapnik's theory of mathematics for scoring, classification, clustering, and variables contribution. KXEN is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with Research & Development facilities in Paris, France, and additional offices throughout the U.S. and Europe. For more information on KXEN, visit www.kxen.com.

Contact Karen Higgins, TMP Worldwide for KXEN, 610-251-6880, karen.higgins@tmp.com.