Generali France Assurances Selects Business Objects Analytic Applications

Business Wire, March 19, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 2002

Europe's Leading Life Insurance Company Will Use BusinessObjects

Customer Intelligence to Boost Sales and Marketing Initiatives

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that Generali France Assurances (GFA), a leading French insurance company, has chosen Business Objects Analytic Applications to improve the effectiveness and success of its sales and marketing departments. More than one thousand group employees, including GFA's marketing teams and its business partners, will have access to three modules in BusinessObjects(TM) Customer Intelligence application -- Sales Analytics, Customer Analytics, and Campaign Analytics -- that will be fully deployed in an Oracle/Unix and Sun Solaris environment. This application is based on a sales transaction with Business Objects that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2001.

BusinessObjects Sales Analytics enables organizations to understand and optimize their sales force, revenue, and pipeline performance over time. BusinessObjects Customer Analytics helps businesses understand and optimize the value of their customers throughout the customer lifecycle. Campaign Analytics enables organizations to analyze and maximize marketing campaign performance.

"With BusinessObjects Analytics we now have a dynamic view of our sales and customer information, and a pro-active capability to respond to alerts. This is because it is an open solution that combines and integrates easily with our CRM tools, our call center, and our campaign management applications," explains Francois Garreau, marketing and communication manager at GFA. "For example, when a customer who has several contracts sheds all but one contract, an email will be sent automatically to alert the insurance agent in charge of the customer's account. Similarly, when a customer has been with us for 9 years, cross-selling initiatives can be triggered automatically via our call center. This enables GFA to automate our processes considerably, and implement complete multi-channel monitoring with our partners, agencies, reception, pre-sale, sales and services teams, and through our extranet."

With BusinessObjects Customer Intelligence, GFA's marketing department will fully automate its initiatives, based on predefined analytics that monitor key customer segments over a period of time. These dynamic analyses will enable GFA to quickly launch more effective sales and marketing campaigns for the company's commercial network of 800 insurance agents and 2,000 brokers.

About Generali France Assurances

Founded in 1831, Groupe Generali is Europe's leading life insurance company, recording continuous growth in both life and property-casualty insurance, two highly competitive market segments. Groupe Generali has operations in 60 countries, with 176 companies including 113 in insurance, 55 holdings and 7 in property. Its workforce of 65,000 serves 30 million customers. In France, Generali has over 5 million customers. It has 11 insurance and assistance companies, the most important being Generali France Assurances (GFA), La federation Continentale, GPA Assurances and Europ Assistance. Generali France Assurances (GFA), with its network of 800 insurance agents and 2,000 brokers, workforce of 1,800 and 2.6 million insured customers, accounts for 15% of Groupe Generali's French business.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions. Business intelligence lets organizations access, analyze, and share information internally with employees and externally with customers, suppliers, and partners. Business intelligence helps organizations improve operational efficiency, build profitable customer relationships, and develop differentiated product offerings.

The company's products include BusinessObjects 2000, the industry's leading integrated business intelligence toolset and platform, and BusinessObjects Analytics, an integrated suite of enterprise analytic applications.

Business Objects pioneered the modern BI industry in 1990 by inventing a patented "semantic layer" that insulates users from the complexity of databases. In 1995, the company was first to focus on enterprise-scale BI deployments and today supports customers with more than 20,000 users. The company moved aggressively to the Internet in 1997 by pioneering the market for BI extranets, a market that it continues to lead today. In 2000, the company delivered the industry's first interactive wireless BI solution. Today, Business Objects continues to innovate, creating and delivering a unique vision for enterprise analytic applications.

Business Objects has more than 15,000 customers in over 80 countries. The company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbols NASDAQ: BOBJ and Euronext Paris: code Euroclear France 12074, and included in the SBF 120 and IT CAC 50 French stock market indexes. Business Objects can be reached at 408/953-6000 and www.businessobjects.com.