ScanSource Receives Innovative Entries, Names Winners of Great Solution City Solution Search Contest.

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- ScanSource, Inc., (NASDAQ: SCSC), a leading international value-added distributor of specialty technology products, has selected the winners for its Great Solution City Solution Search contest. Through this contest ScanSource was searching for resellers' most innovative, business-building hardware and software solutions that meet the business challenges of customers in specific areas, such as healthcare, retail or education. Winning resellers were chosen in each of ten vertical markets and will divide a $10,000 cash award. A team of judges from Business Solutions Magazine and Vertical Systems Reseller chose the finalists, and CRN Editor-in-Chief, Michael Vizard, and VARBusiness Editorial Director, Robert DeMarzo, selected the final winners.

The contest was held in conjunction with the ScanSource Solution City educational initiative, the company's corporate-wide program designed to educate resellers on vertical market sales strategies and make it easier for them to enter new markets. Any ScanSource, Catalyst Telecom or Paracon reseller was eligible for the contest. The verticals included in the solution search were retail, hospitality, government, education, financial services, distribution, manufacturing, food, field mobile and healthcare. Winning solution providers and their detailed solutions, along with dozens of other innovative solution entries, can be found at www.solutioncity.com.

"We received more than 135 entries and were very impressed with the creativity and problem-solving nature of many of the solutions," said Bobby McLain, vice president of marketing, ScanSource, Inc. "Through this contest we were able to uncover original solutions whereby resellers were able to meet the unique needs of their customers. We hope that this contest will foster more solution selling among resellers, and that these solutions will encourage other resellers who may be looking to solve a business need for their customer to develop unique partnerships and learn new technologies."

The following resellers were chosen as the winners for each vertical market:

Healthcare - It is estimated that each day saved by a pharmaceutical company in bringing a new drug to market is worth $1,000,000. Southern Graphics and Systems created a solution that eliminated the need to repeatedly key-in information during Pharmaceutical Phase 1 clinical trial processes by creating a custom software and real-time wireless hardware application. The application, which included Symbol Pocket PC terminals and Datamax thermal printers, has rendered obsolete keying mistakes that were found in the traditional paper-based system, as well as turned the collecting and reporting of key medical data into a "real-time" process. This transition from paper to electronic ultimately reduced the time required to potentially bring new drugs to market, as data-entry mistakes decreased and productivity, efficiency, and information delivery increased.

Food - The value of automation in the food industry is enormous. The industry is highly regulated and operates on thin margins. The perishable nature of the products makes having access to timely and accurate information a necessity to stay competitive. Aspen Systems, Inc. developed a Data Capture solution based on industry-leading vendors including Datamax, Intermec, Symbol, and Microsoft specifically for improving supply chain logistics in the food industry. These powerful technologies are used by Aspen's Food Processing and Distribution customers to more efficiently control perishable inventory and enhance product recall, thus improving quality control of food products and reducing the liability risk inherent in a highly regulated environment. The solution can improve production efficiencies as much as 50%. Aspen Systems and ScanSource have been able to leverage these data capture technologies to provide an effective business solution designed to improve quality control of food and reduce the time and labor associated with the tracking of recalled products to almost zero.

Education - What began as a request to help a middle school with its paging system problems turned into an opportunity to address a wide range of communications shortcomings and help the school plan for future needs. 3Point Technologies, a multi-technology service provider, delivered a new communications system to a local middle school, significantly improving its communications, security, and emergency response capabilities. By installing an Avaya Partner ACS phone system, as well as a six-button speakerphone in every classroom, teachers are now able to call directly to the office, and the principal can initiate an "all-call" or a page from any point in the building. Teachers no longer have to be pulled out of class to take phone calls and, because teachers can call directly to other classrooms, students no longer have to leave class to run errands within the school. Additionally, the office can handle calls to and from multiple classrooms at once, previously impossible with their traditional intercom system. The Avaya Partner system allows selective restrictions to be placed on individual extensions, thereby eliminating the ability for anyone inside the school to abuse the system.

Retail - When a community retailer realized that many of his customers were having trouble coming to his stores, he decided to bring the stores to them. Jozsef Gitta Business Systems (JG Inc.) created a mobile store for a local company, enabling them to take their products directly to nearby senior citizen and assisted-living facilities. While maintaining the ability to control inventory and profits in a dynamic, mobile environment, the company needed to keep close track of inventory, which was constantly changing, as well as monitor which locations were profitable. With the help of IBM SurePOS 500 systems, Metrologic scanners, and Counterpoint Software from Synchronics, the system synchronization procedure was completely automated, allowing employees to conduct business out of the "Dollar Caravan" mobile store at the remote locations and update their inventory and databases upon their return.

Field Mobile - Many major airlines supplement their revenues by carrying Unites States Postal Service (USPS) cargo. When new mandates for speed and accuracy were handed down from the USPS, many air carriers where in serious need of a flexible, quick and compliant solution. AccuCode, Inc., built a software solution that, when combined with Symbol scanners and wireless infrastructure, provides airlines with leading-edge technology that enables them to meet the USPS's requirements for improving its tracking and package delivery systems. The solution includes the ability to scan all mail handling units at tender, on-load, transfer and destination, and transmit that information back to the USPS in a timely manner via EDI. The solution is highly scalable due to the anticipated need for future enhancements, and was built, deployed and tested within a 90-day window.

Manufacturing - RTC Technologies was chosen the winner in the manufacturing vertical for its SCRAP TRAKKER(R) system, designed specifically to help corrugated box manufacturers reduce the costs of identifying and tracking waste data. For many manufacturers, reducing waste during the manufacturing process is critical to improving profits. Permanent waste reduction starts with timely, accurate waste reporting. Managers need to know how much scrap is created by location and type to effectively address the cause and improve the conditions that generate the waste. The SCRAP TRAKKER system combines data collection and administrative software with a hardware package utilizing Symbol scanners and touch sensitive screens. RTC Technologies provided the system to TimBar Packaging & Display's nine plants nationwide. Three months following the installation of SCRAP TRAKKER at the first facility, TimBar reported a waste reduction of $10,000 per month. Prior to SCRAP TRAKKER, TimBar's plants tracked waste data manually, order by order. This manual process caused inaccuracies and did not provide the information needed to determine what caused the waste.

Hospitality - A Hospitality Service company was losing money on beer sales and facing dissatisfied fans at local sports stadiums and arenas. Vendors were no longer able to serve in the stands because fans needed to go through an ID verification process that required them to leave their seats, go to an age verification line, have their ID checked, and then wait in line inside for a beverage. ScanLynx Technologies developed a software application that runs on Symbol scanners, allowing the vendor to sell beer in the stands by swiping the fans' driver's licenses and verifying their ages. The vendor sees a green screen for an OK, yellow for a re-swipe and red for an invalid ID or underage drinker, while the fans never leave their seats. The information is stored and downloaded to a database in case a legal or government entity wants to audit the records. This solution enabled the company to continue selling beer in the stands, which allowed for instant revenue growth.

Financial - Designed to answer the need that banking and financial institutions face in responding to demanding client service requirements, Centurion, Inc., developed NEXT TELLER, a bank-by-phone telephony solution using Intel(R) Dialogic(R) hardware. Featuring easy-to-use voice-prompted menus, this Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system enables customers to easily and quickly access their accounts and initiate transactions from any touch tone telephone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. NEXT TELLER processes transactions in an average of three minutes versus the average 10 to 15 minutes for person-to-person transactions. By offloading many traditional banking services typically done by a live staff, this highly scalable and expandable solution enables banking staff to now focus their attention on offering their clients more personalized and complex banking services.

Distribution - CMAC, Inc. developed a solution to enable a leading boat manufacturer to standardize its raw materials receiving process. With Intermec, Printronics, Symbol and Zebra products, CMAC was able to develop a system that prints carton shipping labels and a Master Bill of Lading embedded with PDF 417 bar codes. The label software product from CMAC, 2D Shipmate, encapsulates all shipment information in the 2D bar codes on the BOL allowing an entire shipment to be processed in two simple scans. The standardized labeling and receiving process has increased throughput handling capacity by more than 300% and reduced receipt confirmation procedures from days to hours. This new solution has also improved warehouse operational efficiency and significantly reduced costs.

Government - Voice4Net created a solution for county governments to eliminate the manual process of tracking random drug testing schedules and notifications for probationers, as well as automating the tracking of community service hours and court fee payment processing. Instead of having to record a new voice mail message every day to inform offenders of their random drug testing schedules, the Voice4net solution allows the community supervision department to use a browser-based calendar to schedule the entire month and to record their messages only once. The recorded messages are then managed by an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system when the probationers call in daily to determine if they need to report that day for a random drug test. Through biometric voice authentication, probation officers can have the IVR system keep tabs on curfew and location verification, thus helping them to increase their case load of the more serious offenders and offload the lesser offenders to the IVR system.

For more information on these solutions, visit www.solutioncity.com. For information on ScanSource visit www.scansource.com.

About ScanSource, Inc.

ScanSource, Inc. is a leading international distributor of specialty technology products, including automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) and point-of-sale (POS) products through its ScanSource sales unit; Avaya communications products through its Catalyst Telecom sales unit; communications products from Intel and NEC through its Paracon sales unit; and electronic security products through its ScanSource Security Distribution unit.

The Company serves the North America marketplace and has an international segment, which sells AIDC and POS products in Latin America and Europe. Founded in 1992, the Company markets products from more than 90 technology manufacturers to over 15,000 value-added technology resellers and is committed to empowering them with tools and services designed to help them grow. For more information, call the toll-free sales telephone number at 800.944.2432 or visit www.scansource.com.