STAPLES TO JOIN A3 SOLUTIONS TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY BOARD

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — March 19, 2002 — A3 Solutions, Inc., a pioneer in spreadsheet-centric software technology, announced that its long-standing customer Staples, Inc. has joined its Technology Advisory Board (TAB) and that the $11 billion retailer of office supplies is committed to help grow a next generation planning application with spreadsheet, OLAP, and Web technologies. As part of its decision to participate in TAB, Staples is extending usage of its current planning solution, A3 Profit Center XP™ running on Hyperion Essbase.

"At Staples, our planning application is vital to how we view and run our business," said Dick Howell, director of financial systems at Staples. "It's the key for maintaining corporate-wide visibility into store level performance. With A3 Profit CenterT and Hyperion Essbase, corporate-level planners at Staples consider the timing of store openings and remodels - region by region. Our 200 users appreciate the spreadsheet interface of the A3 Solutions technology. For Staples, a spreadsheet interface is a requirement for planning technology."

When Staples initially deployed A3 Solutions technology in 1996, the retailer had fewer than 600 stores. Today, Staples has over 50,000 employees serving customers through more than 1,300 office superstores worldwide. To manage its rapid growth, the company chose flexible technology - tools that would scale with the organization. To scale its planning operations, Staples leveraged A3 Profit Center running on Hyperion Essbase. Looking ahead, Staples is looking for the next generation of A3 Solutions products to bring the combined power of spreadsheets and OLAP to more users.

"In its market, Staples is a terrific competitor," said Rob Lautt, chief executive officer and president at A3 Solutions. "Naturally, A3 Solutions is pleased that Staples recognizes how the combined power of spreadsheets and OLAP impacts their competitiveness. The Staples team will be valued contributors to our Technology Advisory Board."

A3 Solutions recently established the TAB to guide and validate the company's strategy in developing the next generation of its Modeling and Planning Platform. Spreadsheet-based, A3 Solutions products combine the power and familiarity of desktop modeling with the analytic power of OLAP (Online Analytic Processing) technology and the scalability of the Web. A3 Solutions created its TAB as an invitation-only forum that will be composed of planning executives from world-class organizations. The TAB is a cross-section of A3 Solutions customers from a number of industries, including financial services, telecommunications and retail.

"The purpose of planning is to win, not lose or tie. The most successful planning applications are those that increase the visibility of competitive performance to the broadest number of users," said Lautt. "Maintaining such visibility requires software that can be easily configured to address an ever-changing business environment. For planning technology to help an organization win market share, the software must make sense to those that plan the business."

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.