Active Decisions Releases Active Decisions 7 Guided Selling Lifecycle Platform.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 26, 2002

New Software and Hosted Solutions Deliver Increased Sales and

Reduced Expenses Through Long Term Customer Relationships

Active Decisions Inc., the world's leading provider of Guided Selling Lifecycle Solutions used by more than 40 million people via call centers, branches, kiosks and Web sites, today announced the launch of Active Decisions 7(TM). Active Decisions 7 is an interactive guided selling solution that helps businesses increase sales and reduce expenses through long-term customer relationships. Reflecting Active Decisions proven domain, industry, and technology expertise, Active Decisions 7 engages the customer like a company's top salesperson, and provides both superior recommendations and user experience, translating into deeper, more profitable customer relationships and a rapid return on investment.

"Active Decisions 7 is one of the few CRM applications I have seen that could deployed in just a few weeks and deliver a significant ROI," said Ken Wirt, Palm Vice President/ Senior VP of Marketing. "We expect our investment in Active Decisions 7 to generate returns in one year of more than ten times what we spent."

About Active Decisions 7

Active Decisions 7 is a highly powerful and flexible system that can simulate virtually any guided selling situation. It is powered by the Active Enterprise Platform(TM) and controlled by the Active Application Manager(TM), a state-of-the-art system that enables business managers to quickly develop and deploy customized applications. Active Decisions 7 delivers a customer experience superior to any other guided selling technology and is enriched by extensive customer interaction, research, and modeling. This unique technology is based on conjoint analysis research, originally undertaken at Stanford, MIT and Santa Clara University, and sophisticated algorithms developed by Active Decisions.

Benefits and Features

Active Decisions 7 delivers increased sales revenue for businesses by offering superior recommendations based on a customer's preferences and providing detailed information on why the customers are choosing the product or service. The key to the system is that it first identifies what the customer is looking for and then provides the best solution possible. Most importantly, Active Decisions 7 always makes a recommendation, never thwarting a sale opportunity by returning a "no results" answer to the customer. It features an unparalleled natural language generator, presenting results to the end user in plain, fluid and engaging English. Active Decisions 7 also offers unique cross selling capabilities, which allow for relevant and complementary products to be presented to the customer during the sales process. Such as offering batteries with a digital camera search result, cross selling increases the chance for additional revenue while simultaneously improving user experience. Finally, Active's preference information management system enables companies to follow up with their customers to continuously improve, expand, and enhance (ie, sell more) products and services.

Active's Suite of Guided Assistants can be deployed across a variety of channels in nearly any vertical with products and services and prospects and customers. Whether deployed on a web site for self-service, or across call centers, field offices, stores, or branches to raise the effectiveness of staff, the suite of guided assistants provide a consistent interface to attract and close customers with reduced expenses. Active Decisions 7 integrates seamlessly with a client's products, services, pricing, and corporate look and feel and can be easily integrated with any existing CRM solutions.

"Active Decisions 7 represents the next generation in guided-selling solutions, incorporating the latest technological and strategic advances and providing benefits both for our customers and their customers," said Jeff Dunn, president and CEO of Active Decisions. "Not only do our customers get up and running in weeks, but also they see rapid return on investment within weeks.

With the launch of Active Decisions 7, Active Decisions has become the first guided selling technology to offer customers the choice of hosted or software applications. The hosted option provides businesses very little distraction to their resources, and applications can be up and running within four weeks; while the software option gives businesses greater control and security. Both applications are a sound choice for companies looking for a quick and demonstrable return on their CRM investments. Applications are offered at a very reasonable price point and customers can recoup their investment quickly, often in a matter of weeks, while seeing a substantial increase in revenue. Some of the businesses which will be migrating to Active Decisions 7 include: FirstBank of Colorado, Nestle Purina, Sony Electronics, Consumer's Union, T Rowe Price, and etronics.

About Active Decisions

Active Decisions Inc., the world's leading provider of Guided Selling Lifecycle Solutions used by more than 40 million people via call centers, branches, kiosks and Web sites, helps businesses increase revenues and reduce expenses by building long-term customer relationships. Active Decisions solutions allow companies to build close, personalized, long-term relationships with clients, by first understanding each customer's unique preferences and then offering products and services based on their needs. Solutions can be deployed across multiple channels in the enterprise, empowering call center, branch office and store staffs to successfully generate new and add-on business, and facilitating customer engagement in efficient self-service buying on web sites. More than 80 Fortune 500 companies use Active Decisions technology to generate revenues and to make critical business decisions. Active Decisions customers include Amazon, CNET, Consumer's Union, eBay, FirstBank of Colorado, goodguys.com, Hewlett Packard, Lycos, Nestle Purina, Palm, Sony Electronics, T Rowe Price, and Yahoo! Shopping. Founded in 1997, Active Decisions is based in San Mateo, Calif. and on the Web at www.ActiveDecisions.com.