Companies See Increased Productivity Through the Convergence of Enterprise Applications and Desktop Tools

Market Wire, October, 2007

The integration of desktop tools with enterprise applications is a two-way street that brings personal productivity, which in turn translates to improved corporate productivity. Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks company (NYSE: HHS), recently conducted a benchmark report titled "Two Worlds Converge: Enterprise Applications Meet the Desktop" and discovered that Best-in-Class (BIC) companies see a 20% increase in gross margin and 21.3% increase in revenue year-over-year, with a ratio of revenue growth to staff growth of 2.2. This compares with less than 1% increase in gross margin, 1.6% increase in revenue and a ratio of revenue to staff growth of .7 for Laggard organizations.

Driven by pressure to grow profitably with minimal investment in staff growth, Best-in-Class companies distinguish themselves as follows:

--  100% of executives (C-Level and VPs) in Best-in-Class companies have
    direct access to data in enterprise applications

--  Best-in-Class companies are 3.6-times more likely than Laggards to be
    able to complete process flows without switching between applications (both
    desktop and enterprise)

--  Best-in-Class are 3-times more likely to coordinate business processes
    between departments with fully automated workflows
    

Converging enterprise applications -- like ERP -- and desktop tools such as those found in Microsoft's Office Suite make data needed for decision-making more easily accessible. This is most effective when enterprise applications become a natural extension of the desktop tool. Ultimately, from the end user's perspective, the goal is to improve personal productivity, in the hope that this will translate to corporate productivity. From the enterprise application vendor's point of view, it's about getting more workers in a company as ERP users. The convergence of these goals is synergistic.

"The key to wider adoption of enterprise applications throughout the enterprise is to make them easily accessible, intuitive to navigate and perhaps even transparent to the users that they are using applications such as ERP," says Cindy Jutras, Vice President and Group Director, Aberdeen Group. Jutras adds, "By providing easy access, easy analysis in a familiar setting, while keeping users captive within the secure ERP environment, we get the best of both worlds."

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the following underwriters: Exact Software, Microsoft, and Tectura. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4316 .

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

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© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
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Boston, Massachusetts 02110-3112
Telephone: (617) 723-7890
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 www.aberdeen.com 

Media Contact: Cindy Jutras Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5247 cindy.jutras@aberdeen.com