Business & Money Trail:

INSIGHTFUL/FIRM INC UNITE TECHNOLOGIES

Insightful Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise software solutions for data analysis, and FIRM Inc, a leading provider of Internet-based survey and feedback software, announced an agreement to integrate their respective technologies into a single, seamless market research and CRM solution called confirmit Customer Behavior Modeling (CBM).

confirmit CBM combines FIRM's flagship product, an information and research management application for surveying and reporting customer behavior, with sophisticated predictive analysis technology from Insightful. The partnership offers clients greater insight from market research data to make important CRM-based business decisions.

"This exciting partnership with Insightful will provide our customers with cutting-edge analytics that help people to make smarter business decisions, from product development to customer service," said Tore Haggren, CEO of Firm Inc. "Unlike 'black box' packages, Insightful offers an open and flexible analytical engine that adds high-end statistical data mining into our product, providing better estimates and analysis to our clients. Rigorous analysis is a key step when trying to understand and predict customer behavior."

Insightful's industry-leading analytic expertise will provide decision-makers with the information they need to increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and acquire new customers. For example, sophisticated analytics are needed to accurately process anomalies, outliers and missing data. Less sophisticated software is unable to detect the difference between noise in data and critical information. Effective outlier compensation methods ensure decision-makers get a true sense for customer preference and predict behavior.

"We believe confirmit is the most powerful Internet-based technology for collecting and reporting market research and other critical business information," said Gregg Paisley, vice president of partnerships and alliances for Insightful. "Melding their technology with our powerful business analytics creates a tremendous value for existing customers, offering significant new business opportunities."

Availability

Additional information regarding confirmit CBM can be found on the World Wide Web at www.insightful.com/solutionslibrary.

About FIRM

Future Information Research Management (FIRM Inc, www.confirmit.com) is acknowledged as a leading on-line business information and research management software supplier. FIRM's primary solution, confirmit, is a 100-percent Web-based application which enables organizations to gather, analyze and report key business information across a broad range of commercial applications. confirmit is designed with the specific objective to empower businesses to make informed decisions while simultaneously reducing management cost and operational resources, thus enhancing a company's competitive advantage.

An expansive range of functionality with applications within the business disciplines of CRM, HR, Market Research and e-business combined with unique ease of use and installation have ensured that confirmit is the preferred choice as a business information solution for many of the world's leading organizations. Clients include: AC Nielsen, Agency.com, Avaya Communications, Barclay's, Deloitte & Touche, Deutsche Bank, Dow Jones, Enron, FT.com, GfK, J.P. Morgan Chase & Company, Microsoft, The NPD Group, Lightspeed Research, Mori Ltd, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Progressive Insurance, Symantec, Taylor Nelson Sofres, Toyota, Vault.com, Virgin Atlantic and Universal Music.

FIRM Inc is headquartered in New York as a subsidiary of FIRM AS, which is based in Norway. Other offices include San Francisco, London and Stockholm.

About Insightful

Insightful Corporation provides enterprises with scalable data analysis solutions that drive better decisions faster by revealing patterns, trends and relationships. The company is a leading supplier of software and services for statistics, data mining and predictive analysis, which expedite accurate decision-making and improve business performance.

Insightful's products, including S-PLUS, StatServer and S-PLUS Analytic Server, play a key role in data warehousing and business intelligence initiatives by delivering analytical tools and graphical reports that convert data into insight. Insightful also provides consulting, application development outsourcing, data integration and training focused on data analysis and predictive modeling. The company has been delivering data analysis solutions for over a decade to thousands of companies in financial services, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, telecommunications and manufacturing, plus many research institutions.

Headquartered in Seattle, Insightful has offices in New York City, North Carolina, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom with distributors around the world. For more information, visit www.insightful.com.

Contact Insightful Corporation, Judy McOstrich, 206-283-8802 x356, jmcostrich@insightful.com.