CAS Listed as a Visionary in Latest Report on Consumer Goods CRM.

Business Editors

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2002

Consumer Products Industry Magic Quadrant Highlights Market

Presence, Client Base, and Capabilities

CAS leads the competition in vision and execution of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for the Consumer Products industry.

A research note(a) issued in March by Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner, Inc., a leading research and advisory firm, evaluated CAS among several vendors offering industry-specific Sales Force Automation (SFA) solutions, including well-known Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendors.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant report assesses vendors based on each company's completeness of vision and ability to execute on that vision. Due to fragmentation within the consumer products industry, and varying breadth of functionality among the featured vendors, the report also included a new coding system designed to help Gartner clients better understand the scope of each vendor's offering. The new designations include field sales suite (S), trade promotions management (T), field sales effectiveness (E), and retail execution and monitoring (R).

According to the report, "visionaries are those that have at least 85 percent of the functionality requirements for leadership and also the great ideas for tomorrow, but are not executing consistently, are executing against a new platform (e.g., a new Web-based platform) or are not executing well in all areas. They understand business requirements and demonstrate innovation in product offerings within the industry, but must execute better to become leaders. The future leaders in this space will probably move up from the Visionaries quadrant, since it is often easier to improve execution than to develop a vision in the absence of such."(a)

"Industry analysts, as well as the industry itself, recognize the capabilities of CAS. While other companies claim resources and a deep knowledge of the consumer products marketplace, we can substantiate our claims," said Jeff Cronon, COO of CAS. "We are leading because CAS offers effective solutions, global resources, and a team focused only on consumer goods."

The consumer products industry turns to CAS for increased sales and marketing effectiveness, greater efficiency, and simplification of existing business processes. Customers see value in both the ability to address today's critical business issues and the opportunity to establish a competitive advantage for tomorrow.

(a) Source: Consumer Goods Industry SFA 1H02 Magic Quadrant, March 2002 Gartner Research Note

Note: Gartner's permission to quote its Magic Quadrant research should not be deemed to be an endorsement of any company or product depicted in the quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is Gartner's opinion and is an analytical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It measures vendors against Gartner-defined criteria for a marketplace. The positioning of vendors within a Magic Quadrant is based on the complex interplay of many factors. Gartner does not advise enterprises to select only those firms in the Leaders segment. In some situations, firms in the Visionary, Challenger, or Niche Player segments may be the right match for an enterprise's requirements. Well-informed vendor selection decisions should rely on more than a Magic Quadrant. Gartner research is intended to be one of many information sources and the reader should not rely solely on the Magic Quadrant for decision-making. Gartner expressly disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied of fitness of this research for a particular purpose.

About CAS

CAS is a global provider of enterprise sales and marketing applications for the consumer products industry, including solutions for customer relationship management and trade management. CAS creates value for consumer product companies by increasing sales and marketing effectiveness, resulting in increased revenue, decreased costs, and enhanced employee and partner operations. CAS employs sophisticated Internet technologies, giving customers the ability to fully integrate sales and marketing activities and extend business processes to brokers, distributors, retailers, and other third parties for true business collaboration. CAS addresses a wide spectrum of sales and marketing challenges unique to the consumer products industry, including critical activities such as annual planning, allocation of funds, trade promotion management and execution, deduction processing, and post-event analysis. For more information, please visit www.cas.com or contact CAS at 770-399-8000.