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Briggs & Stratton Powered by Vertex Mobile Data Collection

Vertex Interactive Inc, a leading provider of supply chain execution and order fulfillment technologies, reported the first-phase completion of the previously announced implementation of its SAP, automated inventory management solution (UMDC) at Briggs & Stratton Corporation, the world's largest manufacturer of air-cooled gasoline engines for outdoor power equipment.

Vertex's UMDC solution in conjunction with ABAP-based SAP application logic will enable Briggs & Stratton Corporation to translate real time critical data from their SAP R/3 database to/from their radio frequency (RF) devices seamlessly. The solution allows users and developers to create transactions for mobile data terminals directly in SAP R/3 and supports connectivity to all major SAP R/3 applications including the Logistics Execution System (LES) in place at Briggs & Stratton Corporation.

"By using an ABAP-based solution we are able to integrate the business processes of the customer in a synchronous fashion with the SAP LES Module. This results in substantial savings in implementation time and money for the customer," stated Mike Kula, General Manager, SAP Practice, Vertex Interactive. "In addition, the even greater value that we provide is in the transfer of knowledge to the Enterprise users so that they can continue to develop and maintain their own system to meet their requirements, further enhancing cost reductions. We will provide additional support on an as needed basis," stated Kula.

With the first implementation complete at the Briggs & Stratton Corporation 320,000 square foot facility located in Menomonee Falls, WI, Vertex will be broadening the scope of the project and rolling out the solution in two additional facilities, by end of 2001.

Briggs & Stratton Corporation was looking for a partner with a proven process and track record that could support all major warehouse processes provided by the SAP Logistics Execution System and a solution that required no middleware; Vertex fit that requirement. "With Vertex's technical knowledge and their ability to deliver every aspect of the solution from application software and hardware to professional services and equipment integration, we were able to implement the system in an aggressive timeframe," commented Jim Smith, Business Process Team Leader of Briggs & Stratton Corporation.

"Vertex's solution provided us with an improved matrix for measuring warehouse operations and performance activities," commented Bill Harlow, Distribution Center Manager of Briggs & Stratton Corporation. "For instance, our fiscal year end -- June 2001 -- reported increased percentages in on-time customer deliveries from 93% to 98%, and inventory accuracy on customer shipments from 99.5% to 99.75%. Overall, we have increased throughput and productivity, have minimized errors, and are better able to serve our customers with actual information on orders, speed of delivery and value added services. We are continuously striving to improve our processes and enhance relationships with our customers and suppliers," Harlow added.

Vertex's UMDC enables the emulation of SAP GUI or character screens to RF devices and is designed as part of the SAP system, not a sub-system that has to be maintained separately. UMDC is compatible with SAP R/3 releases 3.0, 3.1, 4.0, 4.5 and 4.6 and offers SAP R/3 users unprecedented connections to most handheld and fixed mobile data communication terminal devices.

About Briggs & Stratton Corporation

Briggs & Stratton Corporation -- We are the world's largest producer of air-cooled gasoline engines for outdoor power equipment. We design, manufacture, market and service these engines for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide. Our engines are incorporated into products for both the consumer market and industrial/commercial applications. Our customers install our engines on walk-behind and riding lawn mowers, garden tillers and shredders, the largest lawn and garden product categories. Briggs & Stratton Corporation engines also power garden tractors, lawn edgers, commercial lawn cutting products, golf course maintenance equipment and a host of other applications. Visit the Briggs & Stratton Corporation Web site www.briggsandstratton.com for additional information.

About Vertex Interactive

Vertex Interactive is a global provider of business-to-business, supply chain execution technologies and enterprise applications integration. Vertex's solutions enhance productivity across the supply chain, with a portfolio of products that includes fixed and mobile order entry, order processing and fulfillment, inventory, warehouse, and transportation management systems. To support its broad range of software systems, Vertex provides consulting services and systems integration as well as fixed and mobile hardware solutions. Vertex's inventory and warehousing applications include "light-directed" systems for picking and packing, technology for handheld devices including auto ID and printing solutions (for standard, 2D and 3D bar coding), and a suite of mobile data collection solutions for SAP R/3 implementations. Vertex has a rapidly growing international presence, with operations currently throughout North America and Europe. Vertex's customers include leading companies such as Andrew Corporation, Air Express International, Applied Materials, Avery Dennison, Bacardi Martini, Bristol Myers Squibb, Daimler Chrysler, Express Dairies, Georg von Opel, IBM, Kraft Foods, Maastricht University, Merck, Nestle, North Sea Ferries, Parts Express, Pfizer, Warner Lambert and Wal-Mart. For additional information, please visit their Web site at www.vertexinteractive.com.

Coremetrics and Watchfire Partner to Offer Website Analysis

Coremetrics, a leading provider of data-driven business intelligence solutions and Watchfire, a provider of Website Management software and services, announced a partnership designed to improve Internet business results by linking online customer behavior to Website effectiveness. Under the terms of the agreement, Coremetrics and Watchfire will join forces to market and sell their complementary software and services to enable businesses to optimize their sites to improve visitor success and increase Web site ROI.

This strategic alliance will afford Fortune 2000 companies the ability to leverage analysis from Watchfire's Website Management software and Coremetrics' business intelligence solutions to better understand how website defects affect online customer success. The correlation between Website defects and customer disloyalty was demonstrated in a recent report from Jupiter Media Metrix, which showed that, for certain groups of users, a 10 percent decline in response time can lead to a 5 percent increase in abandonment rates.

"Companies who have invested heavily in the Internet channel are seeking ways to improve Internet channel performance," said Scott Kauffman, president and CEO of Coremetrics. "This strategic alliance offers tremendous value to our customers, as they can now understand the correlation between Website integrity and visitor behavior."

Due to growing cost-containment pressures, IT and ebusiness managers are intensely scrutinizing corporate investments in Websites. At the same time, managers are struggling to prioritize their Website investments based on expected rates of return. Coremetrics and Watchfire offer decision-makers analytical solutions for measuring the impact of website integrity on their business -- both in the aggregate and across customer segments -- thus enabling businesses to identify and prioritize the investments that are likely to yield the highest return.

"By understanding Website behavior, companies can better manage customer perception and their business' success," said Michael Weider, CEO of Watchfire. "We are very excited to be working with Coremetrics to offer companies a way to identify and analyze enterprise websites for problems that can negatively impact visitor success."

Watchfire's Website Management software and services help organizations optimize their ebusiness execution by mitigating corporate risk, enhancing Web team effectiveness and addressing the critical website issues that affect visitor success. Watchfire's comprehensive automated testing, analysis, and reporting solutions can help detect and manage issues on even the largest and most complex sites.

Coremetrics' business intelligence solutions consist of a Core Data Platform and a Web analytics service, eLuminate Commerce. Coremetrics' Core Data Platform is a data warehouse of comprehensive and accurate online customer behavior for analysis using eLuminate Commerce, custom reporting by Coremetrics, and integration with third-party applications. Coremetrics' business intelligence solutions provide analysis that allows companies to decrease customer acquisition costs, increase customer retention and improve browser-to-buyer conversion ratios.

About Coremetrics

Founded in May 1999, Coremetrics is a provider of data-driven business intelligence solutions that enable companies to improve interactions with their customers based on a complete understanding of online behavior. Coremetrics' data capture, storage and decision-support services provide a complete model of customer interaction online that is extensible for enterprise-wide use with third party customer relationship management and data mining applications. Coremetrics' customers include The Columbia House Company, Hanover Direct, Sundance Catalog Company, Walmart.com and Wilsons Leather. Coremetrics is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with research and development offices in Austin, Texas. The company is privately held with funding from Accel Partners, General Catalyst and Highland Capital Partners. To learn more about Coremetrics, visit the company's Web site at www.coremetrics.com or call 877-721-CORE.

About Watchfire

Founded in 1996, Watchfire's Website Management software and services can help organizations optimize their ebusiness execution by mitigating corporate risk, enhancing Web team effectiveness, and addressing critical Website issues that affect visitor success. Watchfire's comprehensive automated testing, analysis, and reporting solutions can help detect and manage issues on even the largest and most complex sites. Watchfire's sophisticated reports put detailed, actionable information regarding content and interaction defects, searchability, accessibility, design effectiveness, privacy compliance, corporate standards compliance, and brand equity into the hands of the people who need it, when they need it. Watchfire customers represent over half of the Fortune 500 companies and many of the largest e-commerce, government, and educational sites in North America and include Compaq Computer, Lockheed Martin, First Union Bank, Nickelodeon Online and AT&T. The company maintains dual North American headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and Lexington, Mass. Further information on Watchfire can be found online at www.watchfire.com.

Hummingbird Provides End-To-End Data Warehousing/Reporting

Hummingbird Ltd, a world-leading enterprise software company, announced that UK-based Reality, the logistics and customer service outsourcing business of British retailer GUS plc, has purchased Hummingbird's ETL (extract, transform, load) solution Genio Suite, and its business intelligence solution BI/Suite, to provide data integration and reporting tools to its employees and client users.

Reality required a solution that would provide accurate and timely business intelligence reports to its logistics depots. Additionally Reality required an ETL technology to allow for data integration and conversion between themselves and their external clients.

"Hummingbird is excited to work with Reality on this important initiative to improve the efficiency of Reality's logistical operations," said Barry Litwin, president, Hummingbird Ltd. "By deploying an integrated end-to-end solution like Genio Suite and BI/Suite, Reality will now have the flexibility and ease to achieve business success."

Hummingbird's data integration and business intelligence solutions are designed to improve productivity in the enterprise while meeting the individual requirements for users, particularly ease-of-use.

About Reality

Reality is a UK market leader in third party logistics and customer care. For retailers, manufacturers and e-tailers alike, Reality provides increased speed to market, improved customer service and the rapid development of e-commerce channels. Reality bridges the physical and virtual worlds, enabling organisations to outsource to a single supplier all the high cost infrastructure requirements of customer communications, logistics and delivery. Reality is a division of GUS plc which provides retail and business services focusing on three inter-related activities: information services through Experian, multi-channel retailing through Argos Retail Group and customer care and logistics through Reality. GUS plc also owns Burberry, the international luxury fashion brand. In the year ended 31 March 2001, GUS had sales of pnds stlg 6 billion and profits of pnds stlg 487 million.

About BI/Suite

BI/Suite is a fully integrated, scalable enterprise business intelligence solution that allows desktop and web-based users to access and analyze information stored throughout the enterprise. BI/Suite offers organizations a completely integrated, lowest cost of ownership enterprise business intelligence solution that is seamlessly enabled within Hummingbird's Enterprise Portal Suite.

About Genio Suite

Genio Suite enables IT professionals to realize data exchange from any source to any target across the spectrum of operational and decision support systems in the enterprise, including data warehouses, OLAP cubes, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and financial systems. Genio Suite automates many of the tasks that normally require time-consuming programming, allowing users to rapidly develop data transformation routines with immediate return on investment.

About Hummingbird

Hummingbird develops enterprise software solutions that provide the ability to access and act upon all business-critical information and resources, aggregated and categorized through a single user interface. Hummingbird offers these global enterprise solutions through the desktop and the Web with Hummingbird EIP (Hummingbird Enterprise Information Portal), the cornerstone product of the Company's e-Business solutions. Integrated within Hummingbird EIP are the Company's proven technologies for Host Access and Network Connectivity, data integration and business intelligence, as well as document and content management. The Company offers its solutions, along with related consulting, education, and support services, in more than 50 countries around the world. For more information, please visit: www.hummingbird.com.

All Nippon Airways Selects Unicenter Database Management

Computer Associates International Inc announced that All Nippon Airways Co, Ltd (ANA), the worlds eighth-largest airline, has selected CAs high-performance data export utility, Unicenter Fast Unload for Oracle, to boost the efficiency of its mission-critical 8TB Oracle-based data warehouse.

Unicenter Fast Unload for Oracle provides an extremely rapid, reliable, and efficient way to extract information from Oracle databases selectively outputting massive amounts of data in a fraction of the time and effort required by other methods.

This capability is essential to ensure that systems, such as ANAs, deliver rapid response times regardless of the growth of underlying databases.

ANAs database administrators use Unicenter Fast Unload for Oracle to quickly extract large quantities of selected mission-critical data for use in BRAIN a data warehouse system that integrates massive volumes of passenger and ticketing information from ANAs 14 partner airlines.

Our business requirements necessitate extremely tight time windows, making it is imperative for us to deliver updates with error-free, unfragmented data to our users without processing delays, said Mr. Makoto Asakura, section chief, All Nippon Airways System Planning Co Ltd, the ANA subsidiary responsible for developing and maintaining BRAIN. Thanks to Unicenter Fast Unload for Oracle, we can quickly and selectively extract data from numerous databases with little regard for the increasing complexity of the source systems or the growing volume of data itself.

Unicenter Fast Unload for Oracle is part of CAs Unicenter database management solution family that addresses the critical areas of performance management, database administration, and backup and recovery for mainframe and open systems.

Fast and accurate delivery of information is critical in todays global eBusiness economy, especially in a highly time-sensitive business, such as air travel, said Richard Bolesta, brand manager, database management, CA. We are pleased that Unicenter Fast Unload for Oracle is helping customers like ANA achieve high performance and error-free operations from their data warehousing systems, enabling them to focus their resources on immediate opportunities for improved service, operational efficiencies, and competitive superiority.

About Computer Associates

Computer Associates International Inc delivers the software that manages eBusiness. CAs world-class solutions address all aspects of eBusiness process management, information management, and infrastructure management in six focus areas: enterprise management, security, storage, eBusiness transformation and integration, portal and knowledge management, and predictive analysis and visualization. Founded in 1976, CA serves organizations in more than 100 countries, including 99 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. For more information, visit www.ca.com.

About All Nippon Airways System Planning Co Ltd

This company was established in 1986 by All Nippon Airways System and the All Nippon Group as a system center. Since its foundation, the company has supported All Nippon Airways business operations by building versatile systems that answer the ever-changing needs of the aviation industry. Currently, it operates as the IT strategy arm of the All Nippon Airways Group engaging in a wide range of activities that include consultation and system building and operation to provide integrated system services, which has recently been expanded to cover system solutions for clients outside the group.