Innovative Systems Trains Sights on Strategic Alliances; Hires New Director of Partnerships and Strategic Alliances

Business Wire, July 9, 2001

Business/Technology Editors

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 9, 2001

Innovative Systems, Inc. (Innovative), a top provider of customer data quality software and services, today announced that Daniel McElroy has joined the company as director of partnerships and strategic alliances. He will support Innovative's intensified efforts to broaden its market reach in North America by establishing strategic alliances with other leading firms that offer complementary products and services.

McElroy's immediate objectives are to reinforce relationships with existing partners and to establish new alliances with key providers of enterprise information systems, such as eBusiness, customer relationship management (CRM), data warehousing and enterprise resource planning (ERP). McElroy's ultimate goal is to develop OEM arrangements that will allow Innovative's advanced data quality tools to be tightly integrated with select vendors' software packages. He also will pursue partnership agreements with systems integrators and resellers, as well as marketing referral relationships with small and medium-sized software firms.

Innovative Systems' strategic alliances benefit both participating providers and existing Innovative customers. Partners get fast, easy augmentation of their own products with Innovative's proven data quality capabilities, backed by over 30 years' experience. The result: a reliable and comprehensive data quality implementation, without using time and resources to develop internal tools. Current Innovative customers gain value, because the data quality software they've invested in is compliant with partners' products. In addition, their experience with Innovative Systems tools allows accelerated completion of new projects that involve partners' products.

"Our focus on strategic alliances is indicative of a much larger trend," said Bob Colonna, Innovative's President and CEO. "Due to consolidation in the software industry over the last several years, the big five consultants and top 10 software vendors are responsible for the vast majority of strategic implementations at Global 2000 companies, many of which we count among our customers. By developing alliances with these two main groups, Dan will help the company gain access to more large-scale IT projects as the data quality provider of choice."

Since joining Innovative Systems in May 2001, McElroy has initiated relationships with potential top-tier partners. Additionally, he has been finalizing Innovative's participation in several software vendors' alliance programs. These agreements will be announced in the next few weeks.

"As a leader in data quality software and customer-centric databases, Innovative is ideally poised to offer partners the benefits of its superior customer data management capabilities," said McElroy. "I am pleased to be a part of the Innovative team and excited about introducing our outstanding products and services to new partners."

McElroy brings with him more than 10 years' experience in the high-tech industry. His extensive knowledge and unique skill set are well suited to building relationships with complex information technology companies. McElroy holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

About Innovative Systems, Inc. (Innovative)

Innovative helps organizations to clean, understand and use customer data. The company assists clients with the migration, consolidation and storage of customer-centric data to create a unified view of any customer across the enterprise.

For more than 30 years, enterprise-class companies have relied on Innovative's data integrity and customer-linking software, systems integration, database solutions and third-party reviews of customer data. Innovative maintains headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with European operations based in London. Representative offices are located in Argentina, Mexico and South Africa. The Innovative Systems Web site is located at www.innovativesystems.net.