APAC Purchases ShowCase STRATEGY; Nation's largest paving company will use business intelligence solution to monitor operations and control costs.

Business Editors

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 7, 2002

In one of its most significant sales this year, ShowCase, a division of SPSS Inc. (NASDAQ: SPSS), today announced that APAC, Inc., the nation's largest asphalt and concrete paving company and a major supplier of construction materials, has purchased the ShowCase(R) STRATEGY(TM) suite for business intelligence.

Atlanta-based APAC is a diversified group of companies that conducts business through 40 divisions operating in 14 states. APAC will use STRATEGY to monitor costs associated with the company's plant operations and construction projects.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Ashland Inc., (NYSE:ASH) APAC earned $2.6 billion in revenues in fiscal 2001. The company handles a variety of construction projects, many of them of substantial size, such as the $236 million contract with the Virginia Department of Transportation for the completion of Route 288 around the city of Richmond, which is scheduled for completion in 2003.

"Approximately 60 percent of our revenues come from public sector projects, which means that, once a bid is accepted, our revenues are fixed. As a result, cost control directly affects our profits," said John Connolly, APAC controller. "ShowCase STRATEGY will enable us to build a foundation for business process changes, information sharing and expansion into different applications. With these tools at our fingertips, we can become a more agile organization -- one in which our employees have quick and easy access to the information they need in order to make financially sound business decisions."

Like many companies, APAC had implemented an ERP solution in an attempt to streamline its operations, but still lacked the ability to access data from an integrated, cross-functional perspective. As a result, APAC turned to ShowCase in search of a solution that would provide accurate information to company executives, enabling them to make timely decisions related to job progress and plant operations. ShowCase, with consulting help from Stratature, a specialized applications company, is providing APAC with a solution to replace the company's existing executive information system, providing balance sheet reports to match existing P&L reports. ShowCase will also add a "job analysis" application, based on the prototype developed for APAC as part of ShowCase's "proof of concept" phase of the sales process.

APAC has purchased ShowCase Warehouse Builder(TM), which supports the extraction, transformation and loading of operational data into structured data marts; Enterprise Reporting(TM), which enables electronic publishing and distribution of reports; 13 concurrent user licenses of ShowCase Report Writer(TM), and 40 concurrent user licenses of Analyzer(TM), Analyzer for the Web(TM) and Essbase(R) for iSeries, ShowCase's online analytical processing (OLAP) solution.

"We are very pleased that APAC has selected ShowCase STRATEGY as a means to manage costs and support sound decision-making," said Patrick Dauga, ShowCase president. "Our advanced business intelligence solutions will enable APAC to maximize their resources, their effectiveness and their profitability."

Partnering with Stratature

The deal has also resulted in the creation of a formal partnership between ShowCase and Stratature. Based in Atlanta, Stratature assists organizations in envisioning, designing and implementing planning and forecasting systems. The company specializes in helping organizations implement analytical applications for decision support, performance measurement and process improvement initiatives.

"Our relationship with Stratature represents yet another consulting partnership that will enable ShowCase to effectively deliver even more complex business intelligence solutions to U.S.-based clients," said Dauga.

About ShowCase

ShowCase, a division of SPSS, provides a complete spectrum of business intelligence (BI) solutions, from historical reporting, to measurement and analysis, to predictive analytics. These solutions support a wide range of business initiatives, such as analytical CRM, sales/marketing analysis, and supply chain analytics. ShowCase also offers a suite of analytical software for CFOs that includes financial management and reporting, activity-based costing (ABC), balanced business scorecards, key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards, and forecasting. ShowCase utilizes Essbase(R) OLAP technology. The ShowCase Web site can be found at www.spssshowcase.com.

ShowCase and SPSS are registered trademarks of SPSS Inc. All other product names are trademarks of their respective owners.