Acta and SupplyPoint Speed the Supply Chain With Rapid Access to Back-Office Data; Acta Liberates SAP Data -- Enhances SupplyPoint's Scalability for B2B eCommerce.

Business Writers & High-Tech Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 29, 2000

Acta Technology, Inc. and SupplyPoint.com announced today that they are partnering to deliver a scalable supply-chain management solution.

SupplyPoint, a leading vendor of eCommerce applications for linking businesses with their customers and trading partners, will power its supply-chain management solution -- SupplyVantage(TM) -- by incorporating and reselling Acta's e2e(TM) (enterprise-to-eCommerce) technology.

The joint solution is designed to facilitate the fulfillment process in the manufacturing and distribution industry by providing customers, suppliers and enterprise managers with fast, scalable access to data from back-office enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

The partnership, which allows SupplyPoint to rapidly extend the value of SupplyVantage to SAP users (NYSE:SAP), also demonstrates the ease with which Acta's technology can be integrated with applications from front-office vendors.

SupplyVantage uses a standard Web browser to link a manufacturing company with its customers and suppliers giving them the ability to track the fulfillment process around the clock. It is designed to be easy to use and quickly installed.

"By integrating Acta's e2e technology with Supply Point's innovative supply chain application, we are the first to offer a comprehensive packaged business-to-business (B2B) solution that allows enterprises to give their customers, suppliers and staff a single, comprehensive view over the Web of the complete fulfillment process," said Irwin Gross, SupplyPoint chairman.

"With such a shared view, we expect that enterprises will have more satisfied customers, far fewer disruptions in operations, parts shortages, bottlenecks and late orders."

The new solution, which leverages Acta's eCaches -- easy-to-implement, packaged databases -- provides rapid and cost-effective access to supply chain information in SAP as well as other ERP systems making it available over the Web to B2B customers and trading partners.

This information includes order status, the availability of inventory to complete specific orders, shipping status, year-to-date purchases, open invoices and related early-payment incentives.

"Acta eCaches give SupplyVantage capabilities we could not achieve by partnering with a vendor that offered direct access to the back-office system," added Gross. "Acta's eCaches make critical information available 24X7whether or not the ERP system is running. These data marts protect the back-office system from requests by many online users allowing our solution to be highly scalable.

"Best of all, because Acta eCaches are pre-packaged modules, they have saved us considerable time and expense in coming to market with this innovative solution."

B2B eCommerce -- Information Drives Buying Decisions; Speed and Scalability Required

"Enterprises are finding that developing strong B2B customer relationships requires providing much more in-depth information than is required in the business-to-consumer (B2C) world," said Acta president and CEO Carol Mills Baldwin.

"In addition to simple B2C like requests such as the availability and price of a single item, B2B customers are increasingly demanding to see complete detailed online reports such as historical on-time shipping records and year-to-date order history volumes with associated discounts.

"Suppliers who play a vital role in the fulfillment process are also increasingly requesting immediate access to this in-depth information in order to strengthen their business relationships."

The joint solution leverages Acta's industry-leading expertise in accessing and moving data from SAP, a system that was designed for transactions, not for the data-analysis needs that a growing number of companies have today.

"When a company makes repeated direct request for data from the back office, it risks slowing down the system--and, by extension, the entire business," said Mills Baldwin.

A Single View of Enterprise Data -- both Inside and Outside the Firewall

Acta offers a single architecture for accessing and managing back-office data for both eCommerce and internal analytic applications. Supply Point will incorporate Acta RapidMarts(TM) as well Acta eCaches into SupplyVantage.

RapidMarts, a suite of easy-to implement data marts for analysis in areas such as sales, costs, accounting, and inventory, will make SAP data accessible to analytic applications within the enterprise as part of the SupplyVantage solution.

"The problem that Acta eCaches is solving for eCommerce is the same problem we have been solving for internal analytic applications with RapidMarts. We are liberating ERP data for business across the enterprise use while protecting the systems in which the data live," said Mills Baldwin.

Faster Time to Market for Manufacturing and Distribution Industry eCommerce

Focusing on the manufacturing and distribution industries, SupplyPoint expects to gain a competitive advantage with Acta. It plans to help these industries more quickly implement their B2B eCommerce strategies.

Michael P. Burwen, president of Palo Alto Management Group -- a consultancy that specializes in identifying trends and market opportunities for business intelligence -- has witnessed a great need for supply-chain solutions that empower enterprises with greater and faster access to back-office data via the Web.

"With the integration of Acta's SAP-data retrieval capabilities, manufacturing and distribution companies currently running SAP should take a close look," said Burwen. "We estimate that users will spend nearly $6 billion for supply chain management alone by the Year 2003, not to mention the skyrocketing B2B eCommerce market. Although a handful of companies have developed applications with SupplyVantage's functionality in-house at significant cost, we have not seen anything comparable from an off-the-shelf solution provider."

About SupplyPoint.com

SupplyPoint.com, a leader in eBusiness solutions for the manufacturing and distribution marketplace, is a fast growing Silicon Valley startup with a simple, practical and highly innovative approach to business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce and supply-chain management. Its flagship product, SupplyVantage, can be installed in weeks, not months -- delivering significant value almost immediately.

Companies looking for a fast track to eBusiness by linking customers, partners, suppliers, sales/marketing, operations throughout the extended enterprise now have a packaged solution that is flexible and cost effective.

SupplyVantage is a real breakthrough that brings sanity to the "e-Madness" in the marketplace, offering a powerful set of pre-configured and flex adapters coupled with proprietary synchronization software which can integrate disparate ERP, CRM, data warehouse/data marts; shop-floor control and other applications; and support for industry standard platforms for eBusiness (JAVA, JSP, Corba, XML, etc.)

SupplyPoint.com has a growing list of customers in the manufacturing and distribution arena in many vertical markets ranging from high-tech, to contract manufacturing, to specialty distribution operations. High-Tech companies such as Echelon Corp. in Palo Alto are gaining significant competitive advantage with the help of SupplyVantage.

SupplyPoint.com is partnering with leading companies in the eBusiness solutions space to offer a total solution to the customer.

SupplyPoint.com is headquartered at 2680 North First St., Suite 280, San Jose, CA 95134, U.S.A. Sales and partnership inquiries should be directed to SupplyPoint.com's toll free phone number 877/367-8268 or by e-mail to [e-mail]. For more information, visit the company's Web site http://www.supplypoint.com.

About Acta Technology, Inc.

Acta Technology, Inc., the leader in enterprise data caching, provides Internet data infrastructure for eCommerce and business intelligence. The Acta e2e (enterprise-to-eCommerce) product suite helps companies to liberate their information assets from back-office systems for more profitable and enduring business relationships with customers and trading partners.

For internal business intelligence, Acta sells RapidMarts, a set of pre-configured data warehouses for business analysis in areas such as sales, costs, accounting, human resources and inventory.

Acta is an active member of the SAP Complementary Software Program (CSP) and PeopleSoft (Nasdaq:PSFT) Global Alliance Program. ActaWorks has been certified by PeopleSoft, and the Acta SAP BW interface has been certified by SAP. Acta's customers include Chevron (NYSE:CHV), Guinness, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Monsanto (NYSE:MTC), Shell Chemical Co., and other Global 1000 companies.

Acta is headquartered at 1001 Elwell Ct., Palo Alto, CA 94303, and has international offices in London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Amersfoort (the Netherlands). Sales and partnership inquiries should be directed to Acta's toll-free phone number 888/613-3282. For more information, visit the company's Web site at http://www.acta.com.

Note to Editors: Acta, ActaWorks, e2e, eCache, and RapidMarts are trademarks of Acta Technology, Inc. All other product and company names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.