NCR and Experian Announce Alliance; Firms To Market Leading-Edge, Highly Scalable CRM/data Warehousing Solutions.

Business/High-Tech Editors

ORANGE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 2000

Data warehousing leader NCR Corporation and Experian, a leading information solutions company, today announced that they have signed a joint marketing agreement. Initially focusing on the telecommunications industry, the two companies will help businesses improve the accuracy of their customer-centric Teradata Warehouses and expand their multi-channel customer communications.

"NCR and Experian are well positioned to bridge the gap between the theoretical framework and the business reality of establishing one-to-one relationships between companies and their most valuable asset -- their customers," said Joanna Kuo, Experian's executive vice president of product development and management. "Our shared vision will enable our joint customers to manage their messages to individual customers at all touchpoints including the Internet, call center, face-to-face, as well as traditional and electronic mail, while respecting customer privacy."

As part of these integrated CRM solutions, Experian will provide capabilities to identify and link individuals using Experian's proprietary PIN technology, the industry's first permanent and unique consumer identification tool. The PIN enables businesses to consistently identify individuals over time, regardless of changes to name, address or telephone number.

"Historically corporations have used name and address, perhaps with an account number, billing telephone number or social security number, to recognize individuals and manage customer databases," said Helen McMillan, vice president of technology for Experian. "Names and addresses are very poor data elements for building search and match algorithms or for maintaining data integrity and hygiene on customer databases. Our industry leading PIN technology delivers the most reliable and accurate consumer identifier on the market."

Customer databases that use Experian's PIN technology will be able to leverage the nearly 80 million updates that are made daily to Experian's national consumer databases using 10,000 of the most reliable and verified sources in United States.

NCR will leverage this technology in its data warehousing and CRM solutions built upon the company's industry leading Teradata database and Relationship Optimizer. NCR Relationship Optimizer enables a business to respond to changes in customer behavior with targeted communications, and then record, analyze and serve each individual consumer's unique needs. As a result, based on consumers' privacy preferences, businesses are able to target hundreds, thousands, or millions of consumers with individual offerings at the right time and through consumers' preferred channels.

"The key to a successful CRM solution is having a single, integrated, and accurate customer-centric data repository," said Peter Heffring, President of NCR CRM Solutions Division. "Together, NCR and Experian technology will enable our clients to create a more comprehensive understanding of each customer. This "single version of the truth" will enable these clients to execute their CRM initiatives and respect each customer's privacy consistently across all of their channels which is a tremendous competitive advantage."

About Experian

Experian is an information solutions company. It uses the power of information to help its clients target prospective customers, manage existing customer relationships and identify opportunities for profitable growth. Experian is a subsidiary of The Great Universal Stores PLC and has headquarters in Nottingham, UK and Orange, California. Its 12,000 people support clients in over 50 countries. Annual sales are in excess of $1.5 billion.

About NCR Corporation

NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) is a recognized world leader in providing Relationship Technology(TM) solutions for the retail, financial, communications, travel and transportation, and insurance markets. NCR's Relationship Technology solutions include store automation, ATMs and privacy-enabled Teradata(R) warehouses. The company's business solutions are built on the foundation of its long-established industry knowledge and consulting expertise, value-adding software, global customer support services, a complete line of consumable and media products, and world-leading hardware technology. More information about NCR and its solutions may be found at www.ncr.com.

NCR Teradata and NCR are registered trademarks of NCR Corporation. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.