Comshare Retail introduces Arthur Allocation; retailers will benefit from more targeted distributions.

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 30, 1996--Comshare Retail, a division of Comshare, Inc. (CSRE: NASDAQ -- NM) and the retail industry's leading provider of decision support applications, today introduced its powerful new Arthur(TM) Allocation software for the retail environment at RisCON 96, a retail information systems conference and exhibition sponsored by the National Retail Federation.

Arthur Allocation is an application that enables retailers to optimize the distribution of merchandise to every store resulting in fewer markdowns, lower inventory costs, increased profits, and enhanced customer satisfaction.

"For years our Arthur Planning application has helped retailers effectively address the critical merchandise planning process," explains Stuart Tattum, whole product director for Arthur Allocation. "Now, with the introduction of Arthur Allocation, retailers can easily put their plans into action, better matching styles, colors, and sizes to the unique characteristics of individual customers and stores."

With Arthur Allocation retailers are able to consider the unique characteristics of individual markets, stores, and customers when deciding what and how much merchandise to allocate to each of their stores. The end result is more targeted distributions, optimizing each store's merchandise mix resulting in fewer markdowns, lower inventory costs, increased profits, and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Current allocation processes suffer from several major limitations -- an inability to determine individual store "personalities," an inability to allocate multiple products at the same time, a failure to consider what has been planned when making allocations, and a lack of flexibility in determining the need basis of stores. Arthur Allocation addresses the major shortcomings of current allocation systems making it easier for retailers to effectively "target every customer."

First of all, it allows retailers to cater to unique customer needs by assigning attributes to identify an individual store's "personality." Store attributes can include -- but are not limited to -- demographics, climate, store grade, competition, store location, square footage, and size profile. Arthur Allocation allows retailers to define any store attribute that they feel will help them more accurately characterize individual stores and markets. In the end, retailers are able to get closer to their customers.

"The flexibility provided in defining store characteristics will allow us to really focus on store groupings, see similarities and differences, and distribute merchandise accordingly," states Brad Eckhart, vice president of planning and allocation for Warner Bros. Studio Stores.

Another powerful feature of Arthur Allocation is its ability to allocate multiple styles in a single distribution. Retailers can take products from any merchandise classification and allocate them together. Given this ability, retailers can better match merchandise groupings such as "shops within a shop," coordinated sets, or specially themed merchandise.

"Our old allocation system did a good job handling simple, straightforward allocations," explains Steve Davis, project manager for merchandising systems at Ross Stores, "but with Arthur we can now do much more. The ability to allocate more than one product at the same time is one example of Arthur's advanced capabilities. Being able to do this means we will be able to do a better job coordinating the distributions of related merchandise and that is a real advantage."

Arthur Allocation also has the ability to consider merchandise plans when determining store allocations. When deciding what information will be used in allocation decisions retailers can use the performance or plan data provided by their transaction management system or use plan data from Arthur Planning or other sources. Need can even be constructed from a combination of both performance and plan data.

"Ross has used Arthur Planning for over five years," adds Davis. "So the ability to factor store-level merchandise plans into our allocation decisions was important. Arthur Allocation can do this which means we can take what we have planned and put it into action."

Finally, Arthur Allocation allows retailers to quickly and easily develop their own unique store need calculations using a "drop and drag" interface. There is no need to submit requests to MIS whenever a new need calculation is required.

"Like all Arthur applications, Arthur Allocation provides a powerful calculation engine and unmatched functionality," explains Comshare's Tattum. "But at the same time, the application is extremely flexible, easy to change, and easy to use. Arthur Allocation is not going to place limits on how a retailer determines store need or the resulting distributions. It really does become a retailer's personal allocation system."

Other Arthur Allocation highlights include:

- support for five merchandise levels below style, such as color,

size, width, or collar size

- ability to handle both bulk merchandise and merchandise in packs

- flexibility in overriding the natural merchandise curve with

style, color, and size "templating"

- the ability to set minimum and maximum total allocation

quantities, as well as the minimum and maximum number of styles,

colors, sizes, and packs

Arthur Allocation restores a retailer's intimacy with their customers, products and stores. They are no longer forced to view their business "on average." Instead, they can recognize differences between customers and markets and adjust their merchandise distributions as needed.

Arthur Allocation takes advantage of the latest 32 bit technology by using Win95 or Windows NT. It is an open system that utilizes Oracle's relational database.

"We see the underlying architecture of Arthur Allocation as a big plus," concludes Eckhart of Warner Bros. Studio Stores. "Windows provides flexibility and ease of use and with Oracle we get an industry standard database, which means we can develop a data warehouse and use it with other applications."

About Comshare Retail

For aggressive retail organizations with long-term vision who must have detailed planning, allocation and reporting/tracking capabilities, Comshare Retail provides Arthur. Arthur is a family of supply chain focused applications that brings together the power of technology and the value of "built-in" retail knowledge. This mix helps retailers deliver profitable and appealing merchandise offerings. Unlike any other software company in the world, Comshare Retail is committed to providing "Whole Product" solutions incorporating applications, implementation, training and support -- keeping retailers using Arthur one step ahead of their competition.

The Arthur family of retail decision support applications are installed and in use by many of North America's top retail companies. Over 30 of the "Top 100 Specialty Retailers" listed in Stores magazine's 1996 rankings have chosen Arthur to support their planning and tracking needs.

About Comshare

Comshare, The Decision Support Company, develops, markets and supports complete decision support applications designed to improve business analysis, planning, reporting and decision making. Comshare decision support applications result in better decisions, improved profits, and enhanced competitiveness for its more than 3,000 customers in over 40 countries worldwide.

For more information about Comshare Retail products and services, call 1-800-479-RETAIL or see our home page on the worldwide web at http://www.comshare.com.

Comshare and Comshare Retail are registered trademarks; Arthur is a trademark of Comshare, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

CONTACT: Comshare Retail, Inc.

Nancy Mullin, 302/479-5454

or

Comshare, Inc.

Dan Jankowski, 313/769-8742