Cartesis Launches the Open Profitability Initiative; New Partnerships with Acorn Systems, Decimal Technologies and Prodacapo Strengthen Cartesis' Position as Performance Management Leader

Business Wire, April 24, 2006

NORWALK, Conn. -- Cartesis, the world leading specialist in finance and performance management, today launched the Cartesis Open Profitability Initiative (OPI). The OPI is a new global partnership program created to deliver Cartesis customers with best-of-breed profitability optimization solutions. Reducing costs and improving productivity and profitability are important to all organizations, especially when this insight can be integrated into larger performance management solutions. The founding members of the Cartesis OPI are Acorn Systems, Decimal Technologies and Prodacapo.

"Accurate cost and profitability information is the critical foundation for any strategic management and decision-making solution such as performance management and planning, budgeting & forecasting," says Chris Fraga, CSO of Acorn Systems. "By teaming up, Cartesis and Acorn Systems can offer customers more valuable and strategic solutions based on one version of the truth, scaled to the enterprise."

Profitability optimization is widely recognized as an important business performance management (BPM) function. Cartesis today announced Cartesis 10 (http://www.cartesis.com/cartesis10_PR), its new BPM suite that includes Cartesis Finance, Cartesis Planning and Cartesis Analytics. The Cartesis Open Profitability Initiative rounds out Cartesis' overall offering, giving customers a short list of easily accessible, pre-approved options when looking for profitability optimization products. Most importantly, Cartesis customers know that profitability drivers identified by OPI member products can be leveraged by all applications in the Cartesis 10 suite.

"Profitability optimization - including customer, product and channel profitability - is a high priority for our customers," says Crispin Read, CMO at Cartesis. "Cartesis Planning delivers world class driver-based planning capabilities. We are delighted to partner with independent profitability specialists to offer our customers a complete solution to both identify drivers for cost and profit and operationalize their optimization."

The following vendors are founding members of the Cartesis OPI:

Acorn Systems - www.acornsys.com

Acorn Systems provides continuous enterprise-wide visibility into business performance enabling profit improvement at a low total cost of ownership. Acorn Systems delivers a solution that is verifiably accurate, auditable and actionable. Acorn Systems' solution is flexible and dynamic and provides a sustainable, scalable platform for Corporate Performance Management.

Decimal Technologies - www.decimal.ca

Decimal Technologies Inc. (Decimal) provides strategic cost and profitability management solutions enabling management-based information to its customers. Drawing on more than 15 years of experience and assisted by an outstanding team, our solutions constitute a unique toolset for improved strategic decision making, thereby increasing management's ability to boost profitability, manage cost strategically and improve corporate performance. Decimal's unique value proposition resides in its ability to understand both the financial and operational reality of its customers while supporting them with state-of-the-art technology-based solutions.

Prodacapo - www.prodacapo.com

Prodacapo is a specialist in enterprise-wide Corporate Performance Management software solutions. The Prodacapo solution for Activity Based Costing/ Management provides organizations with an accurate and transparent view of their costs and profitability per customer, product, channel, order and activity - as well as what drives those costs. This helps organizations make better strategic and operational decisions to improve profitability and reduce costs. The Prodacapo software suite also includes solutions for Business Planning, Balanced Scorecard and Business Process Management.

"Having insight into the true costs and profitability of customers, products and channels is vital for any organization that wants to improve profitability and performance," says Fredrik Wastenson, CEO Prodacapo. "We are excited to partner with Cartesis, together we can offer customers a comprehensive solution for improved performance management."

About Cartesis

Cartesis is the world's leading specialist in finance and performance management software with more than 1,300 corporate customers, 600 employees and 200 consultants worldwide. Created in 1990, Cartesis provides insight, control and confidence by unifying information, people and processes at demanding multinationals like Air France KLM, Cargill, Danone, Diageo, Nissan, Societe Generale and Standard Life. Over 24% of Fortune Global 100 companies rely on Cartesis' deep financial expertise and standard-based technology for compliance, financial consolidation, management reporting, planning, budgeting, forecasting, intercompany reconciliation; all unified in a single data-model that can be leveraged by internal and external users. Cartesis' partners include Microsoft, Accenture, Bearing Point, E&Y, KPMG and PwC. Cartesis has customers in 44 different countries and offices in Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Norwalk (CT), Paris, Tokyo, Toronto and Utrecht. For more information, go to www.cartesis.com.