Descartes Improves Contract Management For Ocean Carriers; Hyundai And Yang Ming Expand Use Of Descartes Solutions.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

WATERLOO, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2001

The Descartes Systems Group Inc., (Nasdaq:DSGX), (TSE:DSG), a leading provider of logistics management technology, announced today the enhancement of Descartes' Ocean Rate Builder product to streamline the process of producing service contracts for containerized shipments. This enhanced solution can speed the end-to-end RFP (request for proposal)-to-signature process by 30 to 50 per cent.

The production of ocean service contracts is a time-consuming and complex process, often involving many departments, hundred-page documents and a multitude of revisions throughout the negotiation process. Descartes is unique in offering a flexible solution for global contract management that combines a rate database and rate retrieval tools to better serve a carrier's global ocean contracting needs. Descartes' Ocean Rate Builder product provides a centralized system from which all departments, from pricing through to finance, operations, and sales and marketing, can create, revise, store and distribute service contracts, all from a Web-based front end. This centralized approach incorporates spreadsheet and word processing capabilities to eliminate the clutter of multiple contract documents created with software that is not designed to manage service contracts, and ensures accuracy and efficiency throughout the production process.

The centralized database also supports diverse management reporting across all of an ocean carrier's service contracts. Since the Ocean Shipping Reform Act (OSRA) of 1998, which increased competition between ocean carriers, these reporting capabilities have become essential to carriers to manage and monitor their service agreements and ensure high levels of customer satisfaction. The Descartes solution for contract management makes it easy for these carriers to identify service contracts that have specialized terms, such as credit, container free time, transit time commitments and service contract expiration dates. Carriers can also report on the productivity of their pricing departments in processing bids and determine how successful they are at winning new contracts.

Hyundai Merchant Marine and Yang Ming Line began testing the contract management capabilities of Descartes' Ocean Rate Builder solution this month, with an interest in using it to manage service contracts for all of their North American ocean export cargo. Both Companies are top 10 ocean carriers in the global containerized export industry -- an industry that exports billions of dollars worth of cargo annually representing 10% of GNP (gross national product) in the United States.

"Handling service contracts is one of the most time-consuming aspects of our business. It is also one of the most important aspects of our business because it is so strongly tied to customer service," said Lamont Petersen, AVP at Hyundai. "With Descartes' contract management solution, we can go to a single source by way of a Web browser to access and manage our service contract information and rapidly respond to customer information and service requests."

"Increasingly, ocean carriers are realizing the benefits of improving their contract management processes. With Descartes' enhanced Ocean Rate Builder solution, carriers can create more efficient workflow across their organizations to improve customer responsiveness and ultimately win new business," said Jim Watkins of Descartes Ocean.

Contract management is a capability of Descartes' Ocean Rate Builder product, which is part of Descartes' complete Carrier Contract and Shipment Management solution. Version 1.2 of Ocean Rate Builder will be generally available in the first quarter of 2002.

About Hyundai Merchant Marine

Hyundai Merchant Marine, founded in 1976, has grown to become one of the world's largest multi-modal marine transportation companies, commanding over 122 ships as of January 2000. Its fleet includes full container carriers, LNG carriers, oil tankers, pure car carriers, bulk carriers, cruise ships and others. HMM employs 5,692 personnel-1,932 domestic, 2,460 shipboard and 1,300 overseas. The organization has 22 overseas subsidiaries and 56 offices and branches. Visit http://www.hmm21.com.

About Yang Ming Line

Yang Ming Marine Transport Corporation (Yang Ming Line) was established on December 29, 1972. Yang Ming Line's operating fleet currently comprises 43 vessels with a total tonnage of 1.7 million DWT. Of these ships, 14 are fully owned by Yang Ming Line. The fleet includes full-container ships, huge bulk carriers, ore/coal carriers and supertankers. Ranking among the world's leading containerized marine service companies, Yang Ming Line's fleet is young in the world. Having been accredited with ISO-9002/ISM CODE, Yang Ming Line is now continuing to improve the efficiency of its operations through joint shipping operations with other shipping companies such as K-Line of Japan, Hanjin and KMTC of South Korea, CMA of France, and CNC of Taiwan. Visit http://www.yml.com.tw.

About Descartes

Descartes Systems Group (Nasdaq:DSGX) (TSE:DSG) is a leading provider of network-based collaborative logistics management technology. Descartes offers more than 30 network-based applications and services and a worldwide supply chain infrastructure built to facilitate highly efficient trading partner collaboration.

The Descartes Global Logistics Services Network connects thousands of companies globally from a range of industries, including automotive, chemical, consumer packaged goods, financial services, healthcare, high tech, postal, retail, telecommunications, and transportation and logistics.

Established in 1981, Descartes is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada with offices and distributors located throughout the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.

For more information about Descartes, visit www.descartes.com.

All registered and unregistered trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.

This release contains statements that may relate to product functionality, potential benefits derived therefrom, performance of Descartes' DeliveryNet solutions, and other matters that may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The Company's actual results may differ from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements as a result of factors discussed in the section entitled, "Risk Factors" in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Ontario Securities Commission and other securities commissions across Canada.