BCE Emergis and Clarus Sign Strategic Alliance to Expand their North American e-Commerce Offering.

Business Editors

ATLANTA & MONTREAL--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 14, 2001

Clarus to distribute Emergis' industry-leading e-Invoicing;

Emergis to integrate Clarus B2B e-procurement products

BCE Emergis (TSE: IFM), a leading provider of e-commerce services and exchanges announced today it has signed a five-year, multi-million dollar agreement with Clarus Corporation (NASDAQ: CLRS). Both companies will enrich their service offering by integrating key solutions to their suite of e-commerce services. Clarus will incorporate Emergis' electronic invoicing, as well as its document exchange (BDX) product into its B2B platform solution package. BCE Emergis will add Clarus' full suite of sourcing and procurement platforms to its e-commerce solution suite. Both companies will jointly market and sell to the North American mid-sized enterprise market.

"Our business goals are predicated upon successfully expanding the reach of our industry-leading e-commerce solutions into the mid-sized enterprise market in the United States," said Alan Neely, Chief Marketing Officer of BCE Emergis. "With Clarus we have a strong ally to help us drive e-Invoicing to the marketplace, and their electronic procurement product fits perfectly into our multi-vendor e-procurement platform strategy, adding a solution targeted at mid-market organizations."

"Utilizing BCE Emergis' state-of-the-art data centers in the U.S. and Canada, Clarus will be able to implement the enhanced offering quickly at a lower cost, which will result in a greater return on both our companies customers' investment," said Steve Hornyak, executive vice president and Chief Strategy Officer for Clarus. "BCE Emergis had their choice of partners for their U.S. expansion efforts, and we are pleased to have been selected an important alliance partner going forward. This alliance will speed Clarus' penetration of the Canadian market and allow us to explore providing other enhanced offerings in the future.

Through this alliance Emergis gains a new U.S. based distribution network for its value added services, starting with e-Invoicing and BDX. The agreement builds on Emergis' current offering in Canada, adding greater depth to its mid-market portfolio. With the e-Invoicing solution, Clarus customers will be able to view invoices over the Internet and use real-time tools to manage their invoicing process, respond to invoice disputes during, rather than after, the invoicing cycle and pay invoices. BDX allows organizations to exchange documents via a number of different platforms, increasing efficiency and reducing costs through the automation and flow of electronic documents.

The agreement also provides BCE Emergis with a complementary Internet purchasing solution targeted at mid-market enterprises to help fuel it's U.S. market growth plans, while also providing Clarus with access to Canada's largest e-commerce customer base. The specific products included at the outset are: Clarus eMarket(TM), a powerful web based platform designed for the rapid deployment of digital marketplaces; Clarus Auctions(TM), a highly configurable dynamic pricing framework that allows companies to easily integrate auctioning, RFQ, sourcing, collaboration, wireless activities, and direct procurement capabilities into their e-procurement platform; and, Clarus eProcurement(TM), a solution that brings ultimate control to the purchasing process and delivers a quantifiable ROI to the entire enterprise. Emergis will provide an end-to-end solution to its customers by integrating the Clarus solutions into the Emergis Enabled Marketplace that already includes many value added services such as payment, logistic and e-Invoicing.

The agreement could pave the way for another enhanced offering featuring Clarus Settlement(TM) and Emergis(TM) e-Invoicing to create the industry's most comprehensive invoicing and collection system. By combining the solutions, the companies would have the ability to offer customers a one-of-a-kind, customized application not previously available.

Atlanta-based Clarus Corporation (NASDAQ: CLRS, www.claruscorp.com), a leader in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce, provides Internet Purchasing software and services that bring the benefits of B2B e-commerce to the mainstream marketplace3/4large-to-mid-size enterprises (LME). Clarus offers a complete online procurement platform, from sourcing to procurement to settlement, delivering affordable flexible systems that can be deployed rapidly, resulting in real, measurable returns. Clarus products are built exclusively on the Microsoft.NET platform, making them easy to implement, manage, and integrate with existing and future IT infrastructures. Clarus solutions have garnered many prestigious awards, including Microsoft's 2000 Global eCommerce Solution of the Year. Clarus solutions are deployed at such customers as: Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., Cox Enterprises, MasterCard International, Union Pacific Corporation, MetLife, Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation, Parsons Brinckerhoff, and Wachovia Corporation.

BCE Emergis is a premier B2B e-commerce infrastructure provider, strategically focusing on market leadership in the transaction-intensive eHealth and financial services sectors. By layering technologically advanced e-commerce services on existing Internet-based platforms, Emergis offers its customers increasing value in their e-commerce adoption and ever-increasing levels of sophisticated services. These scalable solutions electronically transform business processes, such as buying, selling, invoicing and payment, and enable companies to succeed in the web-centric, cost-driven, and highly competitive global Internet economy. BCE Emergis' customers include leading North American banks and insurance companies. The Company's shares are included in the TSE 100 composite index.

Please visit BCE Emergis at www.emergis.com for more information on the Company.

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of BCE Emergis with respect to its performance, business and future events. Such statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results and events may vary significantly.

Clarus, Clarus eProcurement, Clarus Auctions, Clarus Settlement, and Clarus eMarket are trademarks of Clarus Corporation. Throughout this release, software and hardware products are mentioned by name. In most if not all cases, these product names are claimed as trademarks by the companies that manufacture the products. It is not our intention to claim these names or trademarks as our own.