OnLink Announces Strategic Alliance With CSC; B2B eCommerce Sites to Benefit from Enhanced Customer Guidance

Business Wire, June 19, 2000

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 2000

OnLink, a leading provider of eCommerce sales and marketing applications, today announced a strategic implementation alliance with Computer Sciences Corporation (NYSE:CSC). Under the terms of the alliance, CSC will implement OnLink's Commerce Suite, a family of software applications that provides interactive guidance to aid customer decision-making on business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce sites. With OnLink applications, businesses can gather product requirements, provide consultative guidance, and recommend optimum solutions to their customers via the Web.

CSC is an innovator in B2B eCommerce, helping customers implement solutions at every stage of the transaction -- from front office design, through customer relationship management, procurement and supply chain, to back-end integration. By combining OnLink's sales and marketing applications with CSC's expertise in rapidly designing and building global eBusiness solutions, companies will be able to improve online sales and service interactions with customers, while leveraging their existing IT investments. OnLink and CSC already are working successfully together to implement OnLink's interactive guidance applications at FORTUNE 500 companies, such as GE Industrial Systems and GE Supply.

"Customers want the empowerment of self-service over the Internet with the same support and guidance that they would expect from a personalized sale," said Buck French, OnLink co-founder and CEO. "OnLink's eCommerce applications provide online customers the flexibility to assemble solutions that fit their needs and give them swift, reliable advice and feedback. CSC's global implementation capabilities and vertical industry expertise, coupled with their B2B eBusiness approach, made them a terrific fit to broaden our implementation and systems integration reach."

"CSC sees great potential for clients by integrating the OnLink Commerce Suite with a broad range of customer support systems," said Ron Kays, vice president in CSC's Consulting Group. "Interactive guidance in the sales process offers significant value to customers by helping them find what they want faster."

This alliance between CSC and OnLink includes joint sales, marketing and business development initiatives to better support the deployment of joint clients' eBusiness integration strategies.

The OnLink Commerce Suite

The OnLink Commerce Suite, comprised of OnLink Sales(TM), Surveyor(TM), Composer(TM) and Gateway(TM), provides interactive guidance to aid customer decision-making and dramatically improves the online buying experience. OnLink Sales acts as a virtual buyer's assistant by gathering buyers' needs and recommending a complete and valid solution. OnLink Surveyor works behind the scenes, capturing detailed events in the customer decision-making process for improved selling effectiveness. OnLink Composer is a data modeling workbench that allows non-technical personnel to take charge of presenting and updating sales and marketing information used by OnLink Sales. OnLink Gateway simplifies data integration between external databases and OnLink Sales, which streamlines application maintenance and helps ensure product and service information is always current.

About CSC

Computer Sciences Corporation, one of the world's leading consulting and information technology (IT) services firms, helps clients in industry and government achieve strategic and operational objectives through the use of technology. Having guided clients through every major wave of change in IT for more than 40 years, CSC today is well positioned to develop and apply IT strategies and technologies, particularly in the e-business area, based on its full range of capabilities in management and IT consulting; systems design and integration; applications software; Web and application hosting; and IT and business process outsourcing.

Since its formation in 1959, CSC has been known for its flexibility and customer-centric culture. Through numerous agreements with hardware and software firms, the company develops and manages solutions specifically tailored to each client's needs. With almost 60,000 employees and more than 800 locations worldwide, CSC had revenues of $9.4 billion for the 12 months ended March 31, 2000. It is headquartered in El Segundo, Calif. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.csc.com.

About OnLink

OnLink is a leading provider of eCommerce sales and marketing applications that dramatically improve the online buying experience. Built from the buyer's perspective, the OnLink Commerce Suite transforms eCommerce interactions by automating the customer decision process -- gathering customer requirements, providing consultative guidance and recommending valid solutions. OnLink empowers buyers to make informed choices that lead to greater satisfaction, while sellers can capture and learn from customer shopping behavior to increase marketing effectiveness.