Lawson Signs Major ERP Contract with North Central Texas Council of Governments.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Local Government Association Will Host Business Applications for its Members, Enabling Them to Operate More Effectively While Saving Taxpayer Dollars; Answerthink to Partner with Lawson for Project, Offering Integrated Hackett Best Practices

Lawson Software (Nasdaq:LWSN) today said the North Central Texas Council of Governments licensed its Financials, Procurement, Human Resources, Reporting, and Budgeting and Planning suites. NCTCOG signed the multi-million software and implementation services contract in Lawson's second quarter of fiscal year 2005, ended Nov. 30, 2004. For the project, Lawson has partnered with Answerthink, Inc. (Nasdaq: ANSR), enabling the implementation to integrate certified best practices from the knowledge base of The Hackett Group, an Answerthink company.

Faced with limited budgets and a costly upgrade for their legacy systems, three NCTCOG member cities - Arlington, Carrollton and Grand Prairie - decided to buy and share the same business software. They approached NCTCOG in the summer of 2003 to purchase and host the new applications on their behalf and participated in the vendor selection process.

The three cities selected Lawson and will be the first NCTCOG members to use the applications to enhance customer service and provide greater value to their organizations by streamlining and integrating business processes and improving data access. The hosted software will initially enable them to operate more efficiently while minimizing the costs and risk associated with a major software implementation.

"Less time spent on administrative tasks means more time for direct interaction with our customers," said Tim Barbee, chief information officer for the city of Arlington. "Working with other cities to address our technology needs in a shared services model directly supports that goal - all for less than the cost of upgrading our existing legacy business systems."

Based in Arlington, Texas, NCTCOG is a voluntary association of government agencies that helps its members plan for common needs, cooperate for mutual benefit and coordinate regional development. The NCTCOG region covers a 16-county metropolitan area surrounding Dallas and Fort Worth.

"It would cost the three participating cities at least 50 percent more to buy and install tier 1 business software such as Lawson's on their own - a price many could not afford," said Richard Price, director of Research and Information Services, NCTCOG. "By participating in one implementation project rather than three, and by sharing NCTCOG and city staff resources, the cities were able to achieve substantial cost savings. By hosting the Lawson applications for them, NCTCOG offers further cost-efficiencies for participating members by providing disaster recovery services and high-availability systems within current city operating budget limits."

"The ultimate vision of the Shared Services Center is that the benefits will be extended as the service is offered to other entities," said Arlington's Barbee. "Adding customers to the Center benefits everyone. The original cities gain additional economies of scale as new customers are added. And as new customers buy into the Center, they gain some of the same benefits of the original customers, including reduced implementation and ongoing costs via shared operation and maintenance costs."

Another benefit of the shared service model, according to NCTCOG's Price, is the knowledge sharing that occurs as members bring their best people together to address common business issues. Price believes the synergy created by this group problem-resolution process will ultimately lead to long-term cost savings for NCTCOG members based on better planning, adoption of best practices and streamlined processes. The evaluation and adoption of best practices was crucial to the selection process, Price added.

Lawson Consulting Services will provide project management as well as implementation and training services for NCTCOG, which wanted a single, experienced partner to help rapidly deploy the software while reducing project risk. NCTCOG and the Lawson team will begin implementing the Lawson applications this month with the goal of being live on all five suites by January 2006. Lawson and the NCTCOG have partnered with Answerthink to leverage its Best Practices Implementation (BPI) approach and tools to directly correlate Hackett-certified best practices to configuration decisions in the implementation. The combined project team will use a centralized "war room" in Grand Prairie to manage the process, communicate changes to the cities' employees and oversee training.

NCTCOG's contract also includes Lawson's e-Recruiting and Employee and Manager Self-Service applications, which will allow NCTCOG members to accelerate applicant pre-screening and give employees online access to their own HR information. In addition to improving employee service, the applications will reduce HR staff time spent on transaction processing and allow staff to focus on more strategic activities, such as negotiating benefit plans and evaluating employee compensation.

NCTCOG plans to integrate the Lawson applications with new imaging and check printing software it will implement during the next 12 months. NCTCOG also will integrate a new time entry system for the city of Arlington as well as existing time entry systems at the cities of Carrollton and Grand Prairie.

"We're seeing regional affiliations, consortium buying and centralized data centers gain momentum throughout the government sector," said Ken Munson, director of Industry Marketing, Government & Education, Lawson Software. "Our reputation for on-time, on-budget delivery, low total cost of ownership and open architecture make Lawson an ideal partner for local governments as they adopt shared services models to improve their efficiency and effectiveness within constrained budgets."

Lawson serves more than 100 government and education clients, including three of the nation's top 6 "digital states" listed in the Center for Digital Government's 2004 Digital States Survey. School districts, cities, counties, state governments, publicly owned utilities, municipal districts and membership organizations use Lawson's software, which gives them more time to focus on value-creating activities. These organizations depend on Lawson's solutions to help meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders - students, constituents, members, employees, vendors and the community - while maximizing limited budgets.

About Lawson Software

Lawson Software provides business application software and consulting services that put time on the side of services organizations in the healthcare, retail, government and education, banking and insurance and other markets. Lawson's software suites include enterprise performance management, distribution, financials, human resources, procurement, retail operations and service process optimization. Headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., Lawson has offices and affiliates serving North and South America, Europe, and Africa.

About Answerthink

Answerthink, Inc. (www.answerthink.com) is a strategic business and technology consulting firm that enables companies to achieve world-class business performance. By leveraging the comprehensive database of The Hackett Group, the world's leading repository of enterprise best practice metrics and business process knowledge, Answerthink's business and technology solutions help clients significantly improve performance and maximize returns on technology investments. Answerthink's capabilities include benchmarking, business transformation, business applications, business intelligence, and offshore application development and support. Founded in 1997, Answerthink has offices throughout the United States and in Europe and India.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that contain risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements contain statements of intent, belief or current expectations of Lawson Software, Inc., and its management. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the potential results discussed in the forward-looking statements. The company's ability to enhance operating effectiveness and profitability requires that the company obtain cost savings from expense control measures that have not yet been fully determined. The company is not obligated to update forward-looking statements based on circumstances or events that occur in the future. In addition to factors discussed above, risks and uncertainties that may cause such differences include but are not limited to: uncertainties in the software industry; global military conflicts; terrorist attacks in the United States, and any future events in response to these developments; changes in conditions in the company's targeted service industries; increased competition and other risk factors listed in the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and as included in other documents the company files from time to time with the Commission.