CAS and UCCnet Enable Collaborative Sales Efforts in the Consumer Products Industry.

Business Editors

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 27, 2001

Customer Relationship Management Provider

Receives Concept Approval Status

UCCnet, a global foundation for industry standards-based electronic commerce, has named CAS, the leading global provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for the consumer products industry, as a Concept Approved Solution Partner.

UCCnet is projected to have more than 2,000 active member organizations by the end of 2001 that will join participating companies such as Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo Inc., Transora and Wegmans Food Markets. Leading consumer products manufacturers recognize the benefits of collaborating with all their trading partners including brokers, distributors, retailers and logistics providers. Collaborative sales efforts are crucial to eliminating costly industry issues such as trade funds overspending, ineffective promotions planning and poorly coordinated promotion execution, all of which impede sales force productivity and ultimately decrease revenues and profits.

"Whether they are initiating a private exchange, or participating in a public exchange like Transora, a number of our customers are moving forward to capture the immediate benefits that will result from collaborating with their brokers, distributors, and retailers," said Ellen Valentine, senior vice president of marketing for CAS. "UCCnet's GLOBALregistry provides the universal standard for the synchronization of item and location information, which forms the foundation for collaborative commerce."

Leveraging experience gained delivering internal collaboration for over 170 consumer products clients around the world, CAS provides solutions that quickly improve sales force productivity and positively impact the bottom line. CAS solutions automate internal collaboration among the sales, trade marketing, brand management, and e-business teams of a consumer products manufacturer as well as the externally focused collaboration with brokers, distributors and retailers. These collaborative efforts are enabled by CAS' 100% web-designed collaboration management engine and an XML-based exchange compliant architecture.

"CAS solutions have met our compliance requirements to be concept approved," said Mark Monaghan, director of solution partner relations at UCCnet. "The UCCnet Solution Partner certification process accelerates the availability of UCCnet compliant products and services to our Global Electronic Trading Community, thus extending the value of UCCnet."

About UCCnet

UCCnet is a universal foundation for industry standards-based electronic commerce. It provides foundational product registry services, enabling the synchronization of item and location information among trading partners, trade exchanges, solution partners and national catalogue providers. In addition, UCCnet facilitates interoperability among these groups by providing companies visibility to a wide range of information and resources.

UCCnet leverages the legacy of the Uniform Code Council (UCC), an organization that establishes and promotes global standards for product identification and related electronic communications. From trading partners to solution providers and business-to-business Internet marketplaces, users are able to form collaborative trading relationships based on industry standards and synchronized compliant data through UCCnet. For more information, visit www.UCCnet.org.

About CAS

CAS is the world's leading provider of Customer Relationship Management solutions exclusively designed for the Consumer Products industry. CAS is the first to offer a 100-percent Web-based solution that provides Consumer Products Manufacturers with the ability to fully integrate sales, marketing and service functions and extend business processes to distributors, wholesalers, retailers, brokers and to other partners to enable true business collaboration internally and externally.

CAS uniquely addresses the full spectrum of needs for the Consumer Products industry by providing a flexible foundation with tight integration to key backend systems from which a manufacturer can enable all key customer facing processes ranging from business and promotion planning through to retail execution, promotion payments and analysis. For more information about CAS, please visit www.cas.com or call the CAS North American headquarters at 770-399-8000.

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