Financial Watch:

Supply Chain Solutions Providers Introduce SAP R/3

Catalyst International, a global provider of supply chain execution solutions,and TrenStar, a global supplier of innovative mobile data computing, asset management and collaborative logistics solutions, have announced their plans to finalise a worldwide software distribution alliance whereby Catalyst will resell and integrate TrenStar's mybarcode.com SAP R/3 certified middleware product. mybarcode.com is a leading SAP R/3 enhancement solution designed to extend the warehousing and logistics capabilities of SAP's WM and MM modules. The announcement was made at SAP's SAPPHIRE '02 conference in Orlando.

TrenStar's mybarcode.com provides robust warehousing functionality coupled with flexible mobile data computing capabilities including RFID integration. The alliance provides Catalyst the exclusive right to resell and integrate thesolution in the North American market. mybarcode.com software complements Catalyst's industry leading warehouse management solutions and provides additional functionality to SAP R/3 users in addressing their warehousing and logistics needs.

"Catalyst's strategy is to offer -- as a single-source provider -- a suite of software and services solutions which address the growing needs of SAP R/3 users in the warehousing and logistics environments. The addition of the mybarcode.com solution reaffirms our partnership with SAP and our dedication to the SAP LES customer base. Catalyst currently is the primary support provider for SAP LES customers in the western hemisphere, and we plan to continually enhance our offerings to SAP customers," said David A. March, executive vice president, Sales & Marketing of Catalyst.

According to Jon Lowe, executive vice president, European Operations of TrenStar, "mybarcode.com has been the leading middleware product in the European market for SAP clients seeking extended barcoding/RFID integration, supply chain execution and logistics capabilities. The alliance with Catalyst will allow us to expand into the North America market while extending our European presence. Catalyst's extensive SAP WM/MM expertise combined with the mybarcode.com software offers substantial additional value to SAP LES users."

About mybarcode.com

mybarcode.com is a component-based, mobile data computing middleware solution for use with SAP R/3's WM/MM modules. mybarcode.com provides flexible integration of data collection and printing technologies while enabling mobile data communications for SAP R/3. Through its business process management capabilities, mybarcode.com also extends the reach of SAP through a portfolio of function-specific templates including automatic identification (Auto ID), data capture and printing, warehousing and logistics fleet management, security and retail point of sale applications. Based on user requirements one or more of these functional templates will be integrated. mybarcode.com also supports user-defined business processes and rules through its rapid development Business Logic Manager toolkit that is based on a certified (SAP V4.xx) seamless IDOC, RFC & BAPI integration with the SAP host. A transitional database supports extended business processes without affecting the core SAP solution or introducing a third party warehouse management or logistics system.

About TrenStar

TrenStar is a global supplier of innovative mobile data computing, asset management and collaborative logistics solutions. The company's industryleading returnable packaging systems, logistics management outsourcing services, information technology and financing optimises the supply chains of its clients and their trading communities. TrenStar is the only industry supplier offering this single-source total solution. TrenStar's flexible returnable packaging and intermediate bulk container sales and leasing programs are complemented by asset-focused logistics management outsourcing services supported by 4PL management systems, resource optimisation software tools and proven logistics expertise. TrenStar's technology solutions include a mobile asset management outsourcing software solutions suite integrating leading edge barcode and RFID technologies. TrenStar shares with its customers the risk and reward of mobile asset management through its visionary Per Use Fee pricing and delivery business model, the most efficient turn-based leasing model in the industry. TrenStar serves clients across a broad spectrum of horizontal and vertical markets including food and beverage, chemical, automotive, transportation services, logistics and retail. Clients include Kraft, J.M. Smucker, Degussa, Givaudan, General Mills, Scottish Courage Limited, T K Maxx, Becton Dickinson,British Steel, The Edrington Group, Lynx and others. TrenStar is headquartered in Denver, Colo. with international offices in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia. For more information call 303-220-5166 or visit www.trenstar.com.

About Catalyst

Catalyst International, helps companies integrate their supply chains to optimise their business performance. For more than 20 years, the company has enabled global Fortune 500 customers to greatly minimise the risks of installing, integrating and operating WMS software in complex, high-volume warehouse facilities. Catalyst software offers the broadest functionality in the industry and is easy to install, modify, upgrade and maintain. Its broad array of services includes distribution strategy consulting, pre- and post-implementation audits, a 24/7 customer services centre and facilities management. Catalyst has provided successful SCE solutions in 10 countries formore than 100 customers, including Panasonic, Reebok International, The Home Depot and Subaru. It is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis. and has offices or representatives in London, UK, Italy, Mexico and South America. For more information, call 800-236-4600 or visit www.catalystwms.com.

Crystal Decisions and SAP Announce OEM Agreement

SAP and Crystal Decisions signed a strategic OEM and Reseller agreement to integrate Crystal Decisions' reporting technologies within SAP BW, the data warehouse component of mySAP Business Intelligence (mySAPBI), and other SAP solutions. An expanded version of Crystal Decisions' reporting technologies, Crystal Enterprise-Enhanced SAP Edition, is also available as a single offering by both SAP and Crystal Decisions.

"This represents a significant milestone as four years of joint research and development have culminated into the availability of a complete reporting solution for SAP customers," said Janet Wood, vice president of Business Development for Crystal Decisions. "Customers will find the deep integration of Crystal Decisions reporting technologies within mySAP BI to be a valuable and complementary component to SAP's offering. We are confident that mySAP BI, including Crystal Decisions' technologies, will meet the reporting needs of SAP customers."

By combining Crystal Enterprise with the analytic reporting capabilities of the Business Explorer front-end to mySAP BI, SAP offers the most complete reporting solution available in the marketplace today.

The agreement between SAP and Crystal Decisions provides SAP customers with enhanced capability to accommodate even the most sophisticated presentationquality reporting or layout requirements and allows users to easily create, schedule or view Web-based or printed reports. The tightly integrated solution enables organizations to easily distribute and share secure, interactive reports inside and outside the company using multiple SAP BI and non-SAP BI data sources.

Crystal Enterprise-SAP Edition and Crystal Enterprise-Enhanced SAP Edition were developed jointly with SAP for exceptional and secure access to SAP BI data, complementing the existing analytic reporting capabilities of mySAP BI. Crystal Enterprise-SAP Edition is a part of SAB BW 3.0b and allows users to access a set of pre-defined Crystal Reports to deliver and schedule standard business content to all SAP BW users in an organization. Crystal EnterpriseEnhanced SAP Edition is sold separately and is recommended for SAP BW users needing to create new reports or modify existing reports, and users who want to include non-BI data into their SAP BI reports.

For More Information, phone 800-877-2340 (North America) or 604-681-3435 (International), or visit the Crystal Decisions Web site at www.crystaldecisions.com/sap.

About Crystal Decisions

Crystal Decisions, a privately held company, is one of the leading information management software companies with more than 11 million licenses shipped. Since 1984, Crystal Decisions has powered winning organizations with one of the fastest ways for employees, partners and customers to access the information they need to make the best decisions and ultimately, reduce costs and increase productivity. The Crystal brand is among the most trusted names in enterprise reporting and more than 285 Independent Software Vendors have standardized on Crystal Decisions solutions. Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., Crystal Decisions has more than 20 offices worldwide.

CPM Marketing Group Develops Healthcare Prospect Source

CPM has expanded its proven segmentation technology to help pharmaceutical and medical device companies find their best customers with a more powerful combination of comprehensive customer information and predictive market segmentation. "Pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers are looking for more market knowledge to enable them to better communicate with the individuals who are best suited for their products," said John Hallick, CPM president and CEO. "With this information, which complies with federal privacy regulations, these companies can move beyond mass marketing to do more specific product targeting and more consistent communication with important customers."

CPM can select these lists, based on company goals and specifications, by scoring its comprehensive nationwide database of 260 million U.S. individuals and 112 million households, via its proprietary CHUI segmentation system. CHUI stands for Consumer Healthcare Utilization Index. The index provides a relative ranking, a number between 0-999 to indicate an individual's propensity to use specific healthcare services. The higher the score, the greater the likelihood the individual would need the product or service in the category selected. CHUI offers more than 200 scores in three key medical areas: medical diagnostic codes (MDC); the top identified diseases and procedures of the 21st century and ICD-9 codes; and diagnostic related groups (DRGs).

CHUI scores can be applied to the nationwide database by region and specialty, allowing device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies to obtain very specific lists based on desired score ranges for specific products and services. For example, if a diabetes test kit manufacturer wants to provide information to individuals in a specified market area with the highest propensity of having or developing the disease, it can get such a list based on the best CHUI category and the highest score ranges for that region. These may include CHUI 1, MDC 07: Diseases and Disorders of the Hepatobiliary System and Pancreas; or CHUI 2, category 1: Diabetes: Insulin and Non-Insulin Dependent.

If a pharmaceutical company wants to better promote its new medicine for hypertension, it could develop a list based on CHUI 2, category 4: Hypertension. Likewise if the company was looking for those with heart problems it might develop a list based on CHUI 1, MDC 05: Diseases and Disorders of the Circulatory System or CHUI 3, DRG group 1: Cardiovascular Medicine.

CHUI was built with advanced technology and mathematics using actual behavior from 20 million healthcare encounters. Approximately five million individual level, publicly available demographic variables were added. Since it was built with blinded data, CHUI is compliant with HIPAA and other privacy regulations because it doesn't use individually identifiable health information.

Still the more targeted lists available from CHUI will allow device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies to narrow mass marketing efforts via geographic region and by developing specific direct mail messages. Companies can track the responses to build their own databases, from which they can continue to develop innovative sales and marketing techniques to capture and maintain greater market share.

CPM invites companies that want to prove the value of this methodology to participate in a trial program that fits their specific needs.

About CPM Marketing Group

CPM Marketing Group Inc, based in East Peoria, IL, is a pioneer in the development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, including information warehousing technology, delivery systems, and portals. Since its inception in 1981, CPM has achieved international recognition for solving healthcare, financial, and telecommunications business problems with this technology.

CPM's CRM integrated solutions allow healthcare organizations to maximize their customer relationships through market analysis, strategic planning and targeted personal communications. The foundation is an accessible, customercentric web warehouse that includes comprehensive individual and household data. CPM's suite of software tools provide easy and secure access to the data for individual snapshots of patients and health consumers on a "segment of one" basis. For more information, call 800-332-2631 or visit www.cpm.com.

Decision Systems Signs Partnership Agreement with PolyVista

Decision Systems is a consulting and technology company specializing in business intelligence, OLAP, data mining, data warehousing and analytical applications. Decision Systems clients are information-intensive businesses, in a cross-section of industry segments including:

• Financial Services
• Health Care
• Retail
• Manufacturing
• Automotive
• Food & Beverage
• Advertising

PolyVista develops automated, high performance analytical solutions for the Knowledge Discovery market.

We are very excited to offer the PolyVista Discovery Software to our current and future clients. Its ability to deliver seamless data mining and visualization in combination with Microsoft's Analysis Services (OLAP) clearly migrates OLAP users to a level of analytical capability never before realized by general knowledge workers stated Reid Karabush, president, Decision Systems. In our opinion, PolyVista's ability to deliver discovery and data mining through OLAP offers significant competitive advantages to those organizations looking to leverage next-generation solutions across a user base lacking statistical expertise.

Bob Ford, vice president of technical services at PolyVista, is also enthusiastic about the partnership. Decision Systems provides excellent subject matter expertise that PolyVista can leverage to custom tailor solutions for specific industries and clients. We look forward to working with them and will also be soliciting their valuable feedback to further develop our technology.

About Decision Systems

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Northbrook, IL., Decision Systems is a consulting and technology company specializing in business intelligence, OLAP, data mining, data warehousing and analytical applications and is recognized nationwide as experts in these fields. Decision Systems clients are located thought North America and represent a cross-section of industry segments. To find out more, visit their Web site at www.decisionsystems.com.

About PolyVista

PolyVista is headquartered in Houston, TX. PolyVista's Analytic technology has been in development for over five years. PolyVista offers the first data mining technology specifically for OLAP, using Microsoft's Analysis Services as its engine. Because PolyVista runs on OLAP, the algorithms are fully integrated with ad-hoc query and visualization, and the technology is simple and fast enough for the average knowledge worker to use. PolyVista's clients include numerous Fortune 1000 companies in diverse industries such as marketing, manufacturing, telecommunications and services. For more information on PolyVista, please visit www.polyvista.com.

Fair, Isaac and LWW Sign Multi-Year Agreement

Fair, Isaac and Company, announced that Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a global publisher of medical, nursing and health professions information resources, has signed a new, multi-year agreement to utilize the Fair, Isaac MarketSmart Decision System solution. The Philadelphia-based publisher will use the MarketSmart interactive, multi-channel marketing system to develop integrated customer relationship management and marketing strategies for its medical and recently acquired nursing divisions.

The agreement represents an expansion of a two-year relationship between the leader in decision technology and LWW, during which Fair, Isaac MarketSmart Decision System has helped LWW create powerful, customer-centric marketing campaigns for its medical division. The new initiative will support LWW's efforts to gain in-depth understanding of its customers' needs and develop more targeted marketing strategies for its combined medical and nursing portfolio of nine million customers and prospects.

"This is an important step in LWW's overall strategy to provide individuals in the medical and nursing professional community with product offerings that are tailored to their individual needs," said Frank Roldan, Senior Director of Internet Database Marketing at LWW. "Fair, Isaac's MarketSmart has already helped us make better use of our customer data in our medical division, driving improved performance in our marketing campaigns. We see MarketSmart as an important asset in consolidating our medical and nursing portfolios and in integrating marketing efforts to maximize our customer relationships."

Fair, Isaac will provide LWW with a highly secure, state-of-the-art data warehouse that will help the company easily integrate customer data from its medical and nursing divisions across all channels and touchpoints -- including product, usage and promotion history -- into one complete view. The MarketSmart customer-centric analytic models and decision engines optimize strategies based on response rates, profitability and other empirical information, enabling LWW to build stronger customer relationships through improved, real-time customer-specific marketing actions.

"LWW's decision to move their entire customer portfolio to the MarketSmart platform is another strong endorsement of our customized CRM solutions," said Doug Clare, vice president of Global Retail Solutions at Fair, Isaac. "LWW will draw substantial value from this flexible and powerful CRM tool that combines all the technology and consulting expertise required to integrate the complex data from their medical and nursing customer segments."

The MarketSmart solution ties the most critical aspects of CRM together -- including data warehousing, analytics, multi-channel marketing, campaign management, data mining and decision technology -- to deliver customer-centric, channel-optimized marketing campaigns that can be executed in hours instead of days. More than 20 companies in various industries are currently using MarketSmart Decision System to make better, more consistent data-driven decisions.

About Fair, Isaac

Fair, Isaac is the preeminent provider of creative analytics that unlock valuefor people, businesses and industries. The company's predictive and decision models, information management, software and related consulting services power more than 14 billion decisions a year. Founded in 1956, Fair, Isaac helps thousands of companies in over 60 countries acquire customers more efficiently retain customers and drive customer value, reduce risk and credit losses, lower operating expenses and enter new markets more profitably. Most leading banks and credit card issuers rely on Fair, Isaac's analytic solutions, as do insurers, retailers, telecommunications providers and other customer-centric companies. Through the Web site, www.myfico.com. consumers use the company's FICOscores, the standard measure of credit risk, to manage their financial health. Headquartered in San Rafael, California, Fair, Isaac is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2001, reported net income of $46 million on revenues of $329 million.

For more information, visit www.fairisaac.com.

About LWW

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is a leading international publisher of professional health information for physicians, nurses, specialized clinicians and students. LWW provides essential information for healthcare professionals in print and electronic formats, including textbooks, journals, CD-ROM, and via Intranets and the Internet. LWW Medical is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA; LWW Education is headquartered in Baltimore, MD.