Contacts:

United States: Paul D. LaBelle

Trillium Software, A Division of Harte-Hanks

 (978) 439-3928

paul_labelle@trilliumsoftware.com

Europe’s Largest Independent Mobile Phone Retailer Exemplifies Integrated Data Profiling and Quality Solutions in Action

LONDON, UK, March 29, 2004 – Trillium Software®, a division of Harte-Hanks, Inc. (NYSE:HHS) and a leader in global data profiling and quality solutions, today announced that the Trillium Software System® Version 7 and Discovery (formerly ‘Avellino Discovery’)* are now in use at The Carphone Warehouse in the United Kingdom.  By April 2005, The Carphone Warehouse plans to implement the software across its operations in Europe. 

With millions of customers across the UK and the rest of Europe, The Carphone Warehouse employs the two integrated software solutions within a customer relationship management (CRM) initiative.  The software enables the retailer to manage the quality of its customer data and to link efficiently and accurately individual electronic customer records from across its diverse operations to provide single customer views.  Driven by rapid growth and increasing channels to market, The Carphone Warehouse has launched the initiative to ensure the quality of customer service, assist sales opportunities and enable more effective call centre operations and marketing campaigns.

Discovery, an automated data profiling product, was acquired by Harte-Hanks, Inc., when Harte-Hanks recently purchased Avellino Technologies Ltd.  Integrated with the Trillium Software System, Discovery highlights data quality trouble spots, such as information that might be missing or incorrect. The Trillium Software System then standardizes the many diverse forms customer records may take, enabling consistent representations. It also enriches the data where possible, such as with geographical, corporate and third-party information, which enables more complete customer recognition and linking. Future plans for the software offerings include new data being entered online and managed for quality in real-time, helping to ensure accurate data entry during busy periods, for example at point of sale in stores.

"We expect Trillium Software to enable us to launch CRM initiatives that will deliver enhanced customer service, intelligence on sales opportunities, stronger marketing campaigns and operational efficiencies," said Rob Kent, CRM programme manager at The Carphone Warehouse.  "We expect to re-coupe total project costs in around 12 months. Without Trillium Software, our CRM initiative would not have been possible."

Andreas Bitterer, vice president of META Group, commented, "The typical large investments for enterprise application initiatives, such as ERP [enterprise resource planning] or CRM, regularly fail to yield the expected results because of a lack of attention to data quality issues and corresponding low user adoption rates. CIOs [chief information officers] are increasingly recognizing the importance of data profiling and cleansing across the organization, and we expect this market to grow to $500M over the next two to three years."

The Carphone Warehouse selected Trillium Software’s solution over five other vendors. "In combination with Discovery, Trillium Software System 7 provides the best of breed solution for our needs," Kent said. "It has the essential ability to locate and link records from across systems and encapsulates extensive data quality expertise and process straight out of the box. It copes well with very large volumes of data and is easy to use. It comes from a company with good references and whose people we have found very supportive. Trillium Software also covers all of our countries of operation."

UK business operations of the Carphone Warehouse began to benefit from the solution in January 2004. Discovery is available both as a stand-alone product, or integrated with the Trillium Software System to provide a complete data quality management suite.

About the Trillium Software System
The Trillium Software System is total global data profiling and quality software that creates a stronger data foundation for successful CRM, BI, ERP, and other business-critical processes.

About Discovery

Discovery automates the profiling and analysis of data to be integrated and migrated to new systems and business applications, and provides a detailed description of the data content, structure, rules and quality. Because it does not rely on data definition rules, metadata or out-of-date documentation, it is far more accurate than manual methods and eliminates the assumptions that can lead to project failure.  Discovery enables organisations to accurately plan their data integration and migration projects, reduce risks associated with data quality problems, reduce cost and increase productivity of data analysis by as much as 90 percent over manual methods.

About The Carphone Warehouse

The Carphone Warehouse Group PLC was set up in 1989 by Charles Dunstone. Today it is Europe’s leading independent mobile communications retailer, with 1,140 stores across the Group, generating annual turnover of £1,841.5 million (year ended 29 March 2003), offering customers impartial and expert advice, the widest choice of the latest product and unbeatable service. The company operates across 11 markets and employs over 8,000 people working across its Retail & Distribution, Insurance, After-sales and Telecoms businesses.  Its UK mobile market share is over 22 perent.

 

About Trillium Software and Harte-Hanks
The Trillium Software® division of Harte-Hanks provides businesses with a global, enterprise-wide Information Asset Management solution that profiles, standardizes, enhances and links global data in e-business, CRM, ERP, SCM, data warehouse and enterprise applications. Continual adoption of the Trillium Software System® by many of the world's largest and most technologically advanced companies has positioned Trillium Software at the top of the data quality and Information Asset Management marketplace. For more information about the Trillium Software System, call (978) 436-8900, or visit Trillium Software online at http://www.trilliumsoftware.com.

 Harte-Hanks Inc., San Antonio, TX, USA, is a worldwide, direct and targeted marketing company that provides direct marketing services and shopper advertising opportunities to a wide range of local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers. Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing improves the return on its clients' marketing investment with a range of services organized around five solution points: Construct and update the database -- Access the data -- Analyze the data -- Apply the knowledge -- Execute the programs.  Call (800) 456-9748 or visit the Harte-Hanks Web site at http://www.harte-hanks.com.

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*[Editor's Note: Avellino Technologies Ltd., was acquired by Harte-Hanks, Inc., on 27 February 2004. Avellino’s operations are being combined with those of the Trillium Software division of Harte-Hanks. For more information on this acquisition see: www.trilliumsoftware.com ]