LARGE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BEVERAGE COMPANY CHOOSES A3 SOLUTIONS FOR EXPENSE PLANNING

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — February 19, 2002 — A3 Solutions, Inc., a pioneer in spreadsheet-centric software technology, announced that a Northern California-based beverage company, selected A3 Solutions' A3 Profit Center XP™ and Hyperion EssbaseT to address the company's expense planning needs. Managing multiple brands in many world markets, the company sought a planning technology that could model their global business and swiftly adapt to changes. Time-to-production was a key factor in the decision, so the company also selected A3 Solutions' A3 Capital Modeling™ to accelerate the initial implementation.

With operations expanding in northern California , Europe, South America, and Australia , the planning environment within the beverage company is complicated and ever changing. Adding to the complexity, the company markets different brands in various world markets, directly and through several regional partnerships. To this end, planning was supported by Hyperion Pillar, a popular enterprise budgeting application.

As an innovator in its industry, this publicly traded beverage giant considered alternative software offerings, but chose A3 Profit Center XP and Hyperion Essbase because the solution squarely addresses the challenge of managing an expense planning system across a global enterprise.

As usual, the decision to proceed with A3 Solutions technology was a popular one with planning participants. To them, the flexible interface and powerful modeling capabilities of A3 Profit Center XP make the solution a personalized, business planning tool - not merely an interface into a financial planning system. From the desktop, business unit managers can create department-specific business rules without compromising the centrally managed planning process. For this reason, the planning process is suddenly more relevant to the business and so more meaningful to end users.

This flexible spreadsheet interface also makes sense to planning managers, who are eager to find ways of increasing end user participation without burdening the planning process itself. Planning managers also appreciate the unlimited what-if modeling capabilities of A3 Profit Center XP. This feature allows business units to generate better plans; it also affords the Planning Department greater insight when considering alternative scenarios. And once a winning scenario is selected, the technology allows for the quick and easy transfer of the scenario for use in the next forecasting cycle.

About A3 Solutions

A3 Solutions is an innovator in the Corporate Performance Management market (CPM, BPM, EPM). Leveraging its advanced analytic application technology, A3 Solutions competes successfully with market leaders by delivering more powerful budgeting, forecasting, management reporting and executive dashboard solutions that deploy more quickly and at lower total cost. Come to our website (www.a3solutions.com) and see how American Airlines, Avon, Cox Communications, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald's, Safeway, Toyota, Williams Sonoma, and Verizon use software from A3 to reduce the time and labor associated with spreadsheets, increase confidence in reporting and analysis, enjoy more timely and detailed visibility into operational performance, and make decisions more quickly and confidently. A3 Solutions' partners include leading enterprise technology providers such as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT, News), IBM (NYSE: IBM, News), and Hyperion Solutions (Nasdaq: HYSL, News). A3 Solutions is headquartered in San Francisco, California. To learn more about the company or its flagship product, A3 Modeling, visit www.a3solutions.com, send an email to sales@a3solutions.com, or call (800) 666-CUBE (2823) or 415-356-2300.