October 27, 2003

i4cast Introduces Bid/Quote Analysis Feature

 To Cost Management Suite

Bid/Quote Analysis to Increase Order Profitability

Houston, Texas, October 27, 2003 – i4cast™, the leader in Total Cost Management software, today announced enhancements to its cost management solution with the addition of a Bid/Quote analysis tool that allows organizations to determine best cost information which will aid in delivering more accurate and profitable quotes to the customer.

“Today there is a high level of complexity in formulating profitable quotes and proposals that meet customers’ bundling and delivery requirements,” said Dan Hickman, Manager of Product Development at i4cast. “Very often, a sales bundle will contain disparate products from multiple parts of an organization or even from manufacturing partners, making consolidated, accurate cost information difficult to obtain.”

Targeted for the global enterprise, the i4cast integrated Bid/Quote Management functionality provides a facility to create sales bundles, independent of manufacturing source, that take into account varying costs over the delivery term. Utilizing varying cost and bill-of-material data from within the i4cast suite, the Bid/Quote functionality makes it possible to easily model profitability of sales bundles that include current and planned products as well as provide insight into historical costs of end-of-life products. Organizations with these abilities can easily develop proposals arranged to maximize profit by leveraging the delivery schedule and their very latest cost information to their advantage.

Anticipated benefits include:

• Facility to model a sales bundle comprised of products from multiple manufacturing sites/partners, including visibility into the detailed product structure and cost data.

• Model product cost and price based on various potential delivery schedules to optimize profitability based on required quantities and timing.

• Best cost and vendor viability reporting provide support for research of inactive products contained in the sales bundle, allowing the enterprise to determine the feasibility and profitability of the proposal.

• Centralized management of sales bundles information provides detailed cost data to support bid documentation, proposal analysis, and the ability to leverage historical quotes for new proposal development.

The Bid/Quote analysis enhancement will give visibility into the total cost of a sales quote to yield greater profitability and allow organizations to make informed bid decisions.

About i4cast

i4cast™ is a leading Total Cost Management solution focused on delivering real-time, accurate cost for the enterprise-wide financial supply chain.  i4cast™ has developed an Internet-based Total Cost Management solution encompassing global cost & profitability modeling, contract & commodity cost management and supplier performance, development and collaboration.  i4cast™ decision support tools allow clients to have the very best costing information to build and manage greater product profitability, reduce cost of goods sold, enhance costing collaboration and improve time to market capabilities.