Executive Overview

Supply Chain Event Management for Wholesale Distribution

Significant change is occurring in the world of wholesale distribution. Threats of disintermediation, the impact of eBusiness, industry trends toward smaller, more frequent orders, increasing customer service demands and the sheer velocity of business today are all dramatically impacting how distributors run and manage their business. Collectively, these changes are causing fundamental shifts in the way distribution operations are run.

Wholesale distributors who can deal with these changes will be the survivors. But surviving in the world of eBusiness takes a different mindset. Traditional approaches to managing a wholesale distribution operation do not lend themselves to the realities of today's integrated supply chain. The pace at which business occurs, the volume of business transactions and the need to collaborate with trading partners all require fresh and innovative approaches to managing the complexities of wholesale distribution.

This White Paper explores new capabilities a wholesale distributor can utilize to help manage the business processes that support these new realities. Termed "Supply Chain Event Management" by AMR Research (The AMR Report On Supply Chain Management, November, 2000), these capabilities allow an organization to monitor and manage its supply chain on a more micro level. Supply Chain Event Management helps organizations focus on business velocity through the supply chain and the need for real-time event management and exception information.

The value of this approach is recognized through more efficient and timely work flows in the organization, more focused decision-making and increased collaboration with supply chain trading partners. For the wholesale distributor, this provides new levels of visibility into the supply chain operations of trading partners and the means to help evolve into a more flexible and responsive organization. As middlemen in the supply chain wholesale distributors need to evolve a new business model to survive. Supply Chain Event Management offers new opportunities to re-define approaches used to manage the organization as a way to facilitate that survival.

Introduction

Managing Wholesale Distribution - It's not what it used to be

Threats of disintermediation require distributors to look for new ways to add value to their role in the supply chain. eBusiness is stimulating both new competition and new markets as it eliminates traditional barriers of time and distance. Changes in order patterns are requiring warehouse operations to migrate from full pallet, loose case picking and shipping, to small parcel picking and packing operations. Increased customer service demands are dictating new approaches to order management that require commitments to inventory availability and delivery dates. And the speed at which business events occur has accelerated to the point where it's extremely difficult to manage day-to-day operations without substantial increases in administrative staff.

As the middleman in the supply chain, wholesale distributors need to balance these competing priorities with their desire to contain costs while maintaining high margins. Simultaneously, there is increased pressure on distributors to look beyond their own four walls and find ways to embellish their role in the supply chain by providing value-added services to customers and suppliers. This new spirit of collaboration that is driving customer-supplier relationships is placing unique demands on a distributor's ability to interact with their trading partners.

As the name implies, collaboration is being directed toward the sharing of key information between trading partners. The overall intent is to enable greater supply chain efficiencies by streamlining the business transaction process that occurs between trading partners, to help reduce the cost of doing business, and improve the speed at which partners work together for their collective supply chain efforts. As a result the distributor can realize the benefits of reduced inventories and has fewer obsolete items. The distributor can also minimize the "bull whip" effect of inventory cycles and better manage product life cycles.

In this type of environment, trading partners make a commitment to share key information, in real-time. They also make a commitment to update their partners as soon as changes occur in the reliability of that information. This requires a different approach in working with trading partners. It's no longer adequate for wholesale distributors to only have an internal focus on events impacting their business. These events can now affect their trading partners as well. Consequently, a wholesale distributor now has to worry about managing business processes that transcend organizations.

The end result of all these changes is a dramatically different distribution environment that has to be managed. Orders are entered directly by customers, the warehouse operation has to respond to more frequent order patterns, the speed at which business transactions occur has increased significantly, and trading partners are increasing their demands for more timely and up-to-date information.

For wholesale distributors, this impacts their whole organization and the way their staff performs their jobs. They no longer have the luxury of time when it comes to dealing with day-to-day business events and the abnormalities that arise. They also have to react to ongoing changes in the business as wholesale distributors refine their business model to offer new services and value to their trading partners. All this requires a new level of flexibility and responsiveness. Decisions need to be made faster and the flow of work through the organization has to be efficient and focused on the proper priorities.

Consider the Costs

As wholesale distributors think about managing this type of environment they need to consider the costs to their business. When work practices and business processes were confined to their own internal organizations the cost of doing business was reflected in the number of people involved and the amount of time it took to complete a task. Now with collaboration they have to contend with a whole new set of business processes. In the past when a document was mailed or faxed to a trading partner, an invoice for example, the distributor relied on the partner's own internal work practices to process that invoice and mail payment back. For all practical purposes, once the invoice was mailed, control of the business process was relinquished to the trading partner. The distributor really didn't care what the partner did in their own organization to process the invoice as long as they received payment in a timely manner.

With collaboration events occur that require more ongoing interaction with trading partners. As a result new work practices need to be implemented to manage that process, and new systems have to be implemented to support those efforts. Invariably each trading partner has some unique requirements to contend with in this process.

Suddenly the cost of doing business with these trading partners has increased exponentially as new systems and procedures are implemented to deal with the increased complexity of doing business. As figure 1 illustrates, the cost of doing business has a tendency to rise in correlation with increases in the number of trading partners and as the complexity of the distributor's supply chain escalates. This complexity typically requires additional administrative staff to help process the increase in business transactions that result from this situation.

If a distributor isn't careful, the increased cost of managing additional trading partners and their related collaboration requirements can mitigate the benefits they receive from collaboration.

Supply Chain Collaboration Requires New Management Techniques

Constant change and the ability of an organization to respond to continuing change results in companies re-considering their management approach to this type of environment. It requires a paradigm shift in the techniques used to manage the flow of work and business processes that occur. It's no longer sufficient to ignore the external implications of events occurring in the supply chain, because those events and their exceptions can impact the trading partners a distributor does business with. This paradigm shift requires a new mind-set on how to manage the business events that are both internal and external to the organization. The following questions can help a distributor consider the implications this can have on their organization:

• How does the organization detect the occurrence of a certain event?
• How does the organization know if an exception occurs related to that event?
• If an exception does occur, how are subsequent actions determined?
• How do exceptions get prioritized so resources focus on the most important ones?
• How does the flow of activities required to take place as a result of an event get controlled?
• When an event does occur how does a contact person get determined and what happens if they're not available? How can notification get re-directed to another staff member?
• What method is used to inform someone of a problem so they can respond in a timely manner?
• And how can this information be presented in a meaningful and intuitive way?

As these questions imply, there are numerous issues an organization has to contend with, to effectively manage their business. Traditional management approaches rely on a combination of procedures and communication to make this happen, but in today's supply chain environment is it enough?

Implementing Traditional Business Applications Doesn't Always Address Information Flow

Many organizations have spent considerable time and money implementing world-class information systems to help them manage their business. This has helped improve the timeliness and accuracy of data but it doesn't address the need to improve and manage the flow of information and associated decision-making. Many companies adopt best-of-breed business system implementations, and face huge dilemmas controlling the flow of work that transcends multiple business applications and job functions. Often these new information systems can negatively impact the flow of information in an organization. The systems may ignore how people perform their job and this impacts the ability for all levels of an organization to act on this information, to make informed decisions. And the focus of most system implementations is internal to the company not on the ability to collaborate with trading partners, with little attention paid to external information flows and how they are processed and managed.

The other challenge facing organizations today is how to integrate the data obtained from numerous, disparate sources and convert it into useful information. Most organizations have data residing in best-of-breed or point solutions, legacy systems, and PC based spreadsheets or similar applications. In addition, the Internet has also become a source of information that organizations want to integrate into their overall information architecture. And collaboration requires the integration of information from outside the organization. The ability to tie all this together requires a well thought out system strategy on how to integrate and present information in a meaningful way. And, with so much information available, how does an organization focus on what's important?

In the world of distribution, these challenges complicate an already difficult situation. Wholesale distributors are already caught in the middle as they try to balance customer service commitments with a desire to reduce inventories and run an efficient warehouse operation. They're processing more orders and have less time to fill them. To complicate matters they're trying to do this without adding headcount. Maybe it's time to consider new ways of managing the process, so the focus is on critical issues.

A Wholesale Distribution Example

Wholesale distributors rely on their suppliers for inventory. Like everyone else, they try to balance customer service commitments with a desire to reduce the amount of inventory they carry so the capital they have invested in inventory can be re-deployed for other purposes. As distributors migrate to more of a just-in-time delivery approach with suppliers, they start taking and committing to customer orders based on those expected supplier deliveries.

One day a supplier calls and indicates that they had to change the ship date on an order and it won't arrive by the original promise date. The distributor can't fulfill their order commitments with existing inventory. Who in the organization needs to get notified of this and how soon? A buyer in purchasing so they can contact the supplier? Customer service so they can notify the customer that their order will be delayed or back ordered? The warehouse supervisor so they can adjust their pick plans and labor resources. How fast does this have to occur? What if the salesperson that services one of the accounts impacted by the delay is preparing to make an in-person visit? How do they get contacted to notify them of the problem prior to their walking in the customer's door? The speed and approach at which the distributor reacts to a situation like this can dramatically impact the customer service they're trying to provide and help manage the customer's expectations.

So how does a distributor manage this type of environment? What can they do to insure that the flow of work processes is efficient and that the right individuals are focusing on the right tasks? How do they recognize the significance of certain events and insure that the right people are notified when an event occurs that requires their attention? What approach do they utilize to inform them of the problem, and what happens if they are unavailable? Compounding this everyday management dilemma is the desire to monitor the performance of the business metrics and the business trends they reflect but which ones should the organization concentrate on and how does it insure that their focus is properly directed?

Welcome to the world of Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM)!

Supply Chain Event Management

Supply Chain Event Management Can Help

Finally, the capabilities now exist to help manage these types of situations. As the accompanying text box highlights, Supply Chain Event Management software becomes increasingly important as supply chain complexity increases. So how can Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM) help?

SCEM is where significant business events are recognized in real-time. Where the actions necessary to react to those events are triggered as soon as the event occurs. Where workflows are adjusted based on business rules and notification to key employees is instantaneous. Where information via the Internet becomes an integral part of the business intelligence used to manage your business.

As companies start realizing the benefits of their numerous business system implementations, they can now focus on improving the work practices and the management environment necessary to effectively run their business. They can create an environment that allows them to proactively manage events across the supply chain, instead of constantly struggling to react to them.

SCEM Requires New Capabilities

Supply Chain Event Management is comprised of a number of different capabilities and technologies. Using these capabilities a distributor can re-define the approach they use to manage their business and create an SCEM environment. These capabilities include:

• Event management software that detects the occurrence of an event and triggers subsequent actions.
• Workflow management software that controls the flow of work through the organization.
• Business rule management software to define business rule policies that monitor events and initiate subsequent workflow activities when exceptions occur.
• and and Control capabilities that allow management to visually monitor their business.
• Personalized intelligent portals that allow the customized delivery of information in real-time.

SCEM Capabilities Defined

Event Management Software - Event management software is used to monitor the actual specified events that occur in an organization. Once an event has occurred the event management software determines what actions have to be taken next and passes control to that process. That may include the trigger of a workflow process or an "alert" notification to someone.

Using Event Management software, the organization no longer has to rely on manual detection and notification that something significant has occurred. Critical business events can be defined and Event Management software can monitor their occurrence. The business policy that's established for each event then controls any subsequent action(s). This helps the organization focus on the exceptions that occur in the business, exceptions that typically require the most attention and a resolution. It also expedites awareness of something abnormal.

The speed and volume of business today already makes it difficult to adequately monitor what's occurring in a business. This gets more complicated with today's emphasis on supplier and customer collaboration. Now a distributor has to worry about events occurring in their trading partners organizations as well as their own. With the cooperation of trading partners, software "Agents" can be installed on the trading partners business applications. These can be configured to detect business events occurring in their organization that impact their business relationship with the distributor. These software "Agents" can detect pre-defined business events that occur at the partner's site and pro-actively send alerts to the distributor's organization. Using this technology distributors no longer have to rely on manual procedures at the trading partner to detect and alert the distributor to a problem. The end result is the distributor gets near real-time notification of problems, allowing more time for corrective action.

As an example take a sales order that is shipped incomplete. The fact that the order was not shipped in its entirety is an event that occurred. Using event management, a distributor could detect this occurs and trigger appropriate action(s). This may include notifying customer service or sending a proactive alert to the customer informing them of the situation.

Workflow - Workflow is software that allows an organization to automate a business process. With a workflow product, the sequence of events that occur in both normal and abnormal processes can be defined, started and controlled, and used to trigger subsequent action or escalate issues if they aren't dealt with in an appropriate timeframe. Workflow can be used to enhance communications across organizations by redefining and redirecting the flow of work as it occurs.

Essentially Workflow is used to automate the flow of work as it moves from person to person. This can even include individuals who are external to the organization allowing the management of processes that extend beyond a company's own four walls. Priorities for tasks can be established, and mechanisms to detect uncompleted tasks can be built in and used to redirect workflow, based on time parameters or escalation policies. This provides an automated way to manage a workflow and trigger subsequent actions or notifications if tasks aren't completed in a pre-determined amount of time. As a workflow progresses through its life cycle, task priorities and any information required to complete the task travel with it. The end result is less manual intervention to complete a task, improving the speed at which work flows though an organization, automating the decision making process associated with work and taking time out of the overall process. This allows individuals to concentrate on more critical tasks and the exceptions occurring in the business that need their attention.

Consider the flow of work related to the setup of a new customer. In many organizations this consists of a multi-step process. One person may be responsible for the basic setup and when that's completed, forwards the paperwork to accounts receivable for a credit check and the establishment of the customer's credit limit. If the customer is utilizing EDI, then an additional step may be required by a third person to properly configure the customer information regarding their EDI parameters. Using workflow, this sequence of events can be automated and managed at each step along the way. Once the first person competed the initial setup, then workflow can automatically route the setup activities to A/R so the credit checking process and setup can be completed. The EDI setup and any other steps can also be included in the flow. Each of these steps can be managed by workflow. In addition, if the appropriate person is unavailable, then alternate flows can be invoked. Workflow provides complete control over defining the process and the steps that take place.

Business Rule Management - This software helps capture the business knowledge and policies used to run a business. This knowledge and policy is converted into business rules which form the foundation of a knowledge based system that gets created. Rules can be defined to interrogate certain criteria and, based on the result, trigger subsequent actions. Those actions might be a workflow process or an alert to someone.

Most business processes are driven by a set of rules. These rules have been written into procedure manuals and are learned though on-the-job experience. As administrative staff processes work, they apply these rules to help determine what steps to trigger next based on the rules they follow. Business rule software can be used to automate these business decisions. This could include directing work to a different person in the organization vs. the normal flow, alerting someone to a problem or putting a task on hold until a resolution to a problem has been determined. The end result is the elimination of much of the manual intervention that occurs in today's workflows, and improved speed at which work progresses through the organization.

In the sales order shipping example just given, business rules would be checked to determine if the order was shipped complete or not. If the order is complete, then no special action has to take place. If the order were shipped incomplete, then the business rules would determine the next course of action(s) to trigger.

Command and Control - An essential element of any well-run business is the ability for management to focus on critical issues. Management needs visibility of significant events that occur across the enterprise and insight on the key metrics needed to monitor the organization's health. These are the capabilities that Command and Control provides. For management it's a window into their organization that ties everything together. This allows management to manage by exception. And to ignore day-to-day activities running smoothly but be alerted when something significant occurs that does require their attention.

Command and Control correlates data from disparate systems, information from internal and external sources and selected business events. The result is concise, actionable intelligence regarding the business that allows management to properly focus their attention on critical issues. This includes visualization of key performance indicators and the ability to drilling down into lower levels of detail to help analyze why a particular KPI is highlighting a problem. The KPI information can be presented graphically or in a report format. Command and Control can also incorporate business events and rules that help executive management focus on the most important events in their business. When exceptions do occur, Command and Control provides warnings to management, in the form of alerts and action messages, allowing corrective action to be taken before disaster strikes.

In the sales order shipment example, what if the customer being impacted by the incomplete shipment is one of the company's key accounts? Executive management may need notification of this situation because of service level commitments that were made to the customer. With Command and Control, an alert can be delivered to management's desktop informing them of the incomplete shipment. This may trigger an inquiry on the key performance indicators for customer shipments and drill down into service levels for that customer. As an alternative, if the customer service KPI for that customer fell below a certain level, then management could get a proactive alert to make them aware of the situation. Regardless of approach, Command and Control delivers key information to executives and provides insight on extenuating factors.

Personalized Intelligent Portals - The last important element of a Supply Chain Event Management environment is the ability for decision makers in an organization to get information delivered to them when they need it, regardless of location and in a format that is intuitive and visually meaningful.

Personalized Intelligent Portals are used to customize the information being delivered to an individual. What's important to the corporate level executive may not be appropriate for an operationally focused manager. With a Personalized Intelligent Portal, this customized information content can be extended to include information that's external to the organization. This may include information obtained via the Internet or from trading partners. Regardless of source, individuals now have access to all the information that's important to their role in the organization.

After the relevant information has been identified the next challenge is to actually deliver it. Since real-time access to information is critical to most decision makers, the use of wireless technology as a delivery method has become increasingly important. The Personalized Intelligence Portal can utilize pagers, personal digital assistants or web-enabled cell phones as delivery vehicles. This insures that the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the organization, is without limits. The capabilities and technology now exist to facilitate constant communication with key personnel as an extension of an SCEM environment.

Re-Visiting the Wholesale Distribution Example

Now think about the wholesale distribution example described in the beginning of this white paper. In that example a distributor gets notified of a late shipment from their supplier. In an SCEM environment events start to occur as soon as the supplier changes the ship date on the order. The following examples illustrate how a well-architected SCEM environment can help manage the business processes that result from this event.

In this example, changing the ship date on the order is the business event. With permission from the supplier, the distributor has installed a software "agent" on the supplier's system. The agent is configured to detect any changes in the status of the distributor's orders booked with the supplier. Once the agent detects a change, it triggers a workflow to check certain critical information. The workflow in this scenario invokes business rules that determine the changed ship date will cause the order to miss its scheduled arrival date at the distributor. This triggers an e-mail "alert" to be sent to the administrator working in the distributor's purchasing department.

When the purchasing administrator at the distributor receives the e-mail, they trigger a workflow to identify all orders awaiting shipment that require the product(s) that will ship late. Business rules determine that one order will ship late as a result. The business rules also identify that the customer associated with the order is one of the company's premier customers, and so the CEO requires notification. The administrator also triggers "alerts" to be sent to internal staff informing them of the problem. The buyer gets a message on their Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). Customer service and the warehouse supervisor are alerted via a banner message on their workstation(s) and the CEO's Command & Control workstation receives a warning message. The salesperson receives an automated voice mail on their cell phone.

When the buyer receives their alert, they contact the supplier to verify the cause of the problem and obtain an updated ship date. As a result the buyer updates the status of the order's PO to reflect a revised expected arrival date for that receipt. This update triggers an 'alert" to customer service informing them of the expected arrival date for the product.

Meanwhile, the warehouse supervisor can review the order pool getting staged for warehouse picking and depending on the order(s) and customer(s), determine what action they want to take. This could include shipping those orders without the impacted product or delaying the shipment because that's the only product on the order.

Customer service is now aware of the problem and are waiting on the buyer to update the arrival date of the receipts in question. Once this is completed and they receive their update alert, they can change the orders in question to reflect a revised ship date, and send an e-mail message to the customer informing them that their order(s) will miss its ship date. The e-mail notifies the customer of an updated ship date and gives contact information for the distributor in case the customer wants to call and discuss their order.

Meanwhile, the salesperson receives a voice mail message on their cell phone indicating a problem shipping this order. With their cell phone they perform an inquiry to get an updated ship date. This prompts them to contact the customer to follow-up on the problem and discuss any potential impact of the delayed order.

The CEO, after receiving an alert on their workstation, views their Command and Control screen to check relevant KPIs. The KPI for "Potential Inventory Shortages" lets the CEO understand and evaluate the impact of the delay on booked orders that are due to ship.

A number of benefits are realized when utilizing SCEM capabilities to help manage this type of situation. The problem was detected as soon as it occurred. This triggered real-time communications to inform the distributor there was a problem. The distributor's workflows and alerts expedited internal awareness to key decision makers and staff, regardless of location. And lastly, collaboration occurred throughout the supply chain as supplier, distributor and customer shared information about the problem and its resolution.

Creating an SCEM Environment - Things to Consider

So what's involved in architecting an SCEM environment? The first step is to acquire the capabilities described above. Each of the various components like event management or business rule management may be embedded in one or more software products. Make sure business practitioners are involved in product evaluation and selection. This helps insure that a real-world perspective is obtained on what the organization is trying to accomplish. This also gets the business people involved up-front which helps validate their buy-in on what the organization is trying to accomplish and the solution that's selected.

Next, identify a project that can be completed in a short timeframe. Deploying new technology and management techniques like those described above is often met with skepticism. A low-risk, "Proof of Concept" type project can provide the perfect example of how these capabilities can benefit an organization. Start with a small project and continue to enhance its value by automating more steps or getting more sophisticated with the business alerts or the workflow process.

Be sensitive to the impact on how people do their jobs, the flow of work, and the fact that multiple departments may be involved. Actively engage the business practitioners by involving them in the project from the beginning. Articulate the value to them and the organization of what the project's trying to accomplish. Train them on the capabilities and solicit their input. Once they've become convinced of the project's value and can demonstrate a quick success, they will become the biggest advocates for continued application of the capabilities in other parts of the organization.

The important point is to deliver a successful project that provides momentum for additional, more complicated applications of these capabilities. And remember, it's the collective application of these capabilities that allows the creation of the type of environment described above. Start small, be successful, and build on that success.

Getting Value from Supply Chain Event Management

Once a supply chain event management environment has been architected the organization should start to expect value from the investment and this can occur in a number of ways.

First, the flow of work through the organization should improve in efficiency and speed. Since administrative staff no longer has to deal with every business transaction, they should gain additional time to focus on problems or exceptions to the business. This may also help avoid staff increases. Typically when business volumes grow organizations are forced to hire additional staff to help process the resulting increased transaction volumes. An SCEM environment can make existing staff more efficient which helps avoid hiring additional resources.

Second, the decision making process in the organization should speed up. An SCEM environment lets the decision makers in the organization concentrate on the important issues, the exceptions in the business. Their awareness of issues is no longer dependent on paper based processes and ineffective methods of communication. As a result they're made aware of important issues sooner and can focus their attention on those issues.

Third, the organization can adapt to change faster. As the middleman, wholesale distributors are continually looking for new ways to add value to their role in the supply chain. This may require that they offer new services or change the way they do business to accommodate trading partners requirements. With SCEM the organization can rapidly adjust to these changes and minimize their impact. Workflow, business rules and alerts can all be re-configured to accommodate this change.

Fourth, the relationship with trading partners and the efficiency of the distributor's supply chain should improve. Efforts to collaborate with trading partners will benefit from increased communications. Problem notification occurs sooner and corrective actions can help manage or avoid difficult supply chain issues. This results in greater trust between partners and leads to further levels of collaboration.

Lastly, as the organization starts to recognize the value of an SCEM environment, other ideas and applications for its use will surface. The role of SCEM in the organization will continue to expand and produce even greater efficiencies, as the organization gets comfortable with its use and benefits.

Conclusion

Supply Chain Event Management - A New Paradigm

As illustrated above traditional approaches used to manage a distribution environment do not match the reality of today's business climate. Competition, the speed at which business occurs, the need to turn data into business intelligence and a desire to concentrate on the important events driving business all demand new and innovative approaches to managing. While new tools and technology are now available to help, the end result will only come with the right commitment. And that commitment requires a new paradigm on monitoring and managing the events and processes that influence the business.

Agility, responsiveness and flexibility are three words used to describe successful supply chain organizations. They reflect an organization's ability to respond to change and to do it quickly. Wholesale Distributors are typically caught in the middle as they try to react to business events that are somewhat out of their control. While implementing an SCEM environment will not, by itself, enable a distributor's success it can help create an environment that lets them focus on the important events driving their business and respond to them on a timely basis. Wholesale distributors now have an opportunity to manage change in an effective and responsive way regardless of their role in the supply chain.

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Rod Gifford is the logistics Product Manager at interBiz, the eBusiness applications division of Computer Associates. Rod has over twenty-eight years of experience in the design, development, implementation and marketing of supply chain systems. He has worked at a number of Fortune 500 companies and has significant experience in the Food & Beverage Industries. Rod has a B.A. degree from the University of Puget Sound.

About interBiz
interBiz the eBusiness applications division of Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA), helps enhance profit from new opportunities in the eBusiness world. interBiz integrates CA's proven technologies with core competencies in: Supply Chain Management, Financial Management, Human Resources, Banking, and eCommerce. For more information about interBiz, e-mail interBiz@ca.com or visit interBiz on the Internet at www.interbiz.com.

About Computer Associates
Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA) delivers The Software That Manages eBusiness. CA's world-class solutions address all aspects of eBusiness process management, information management, and infrastructure management in six focus areas: enterprise management, security, storage, eBusiness transformation and integration, portal and knowledge management, and predictive analysis and visualization. Founded in 1976, CA serves organizations in more than 100 countries, including 99 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. For more information, please visit http://ca.com.

®2001 Computer Associates International, Inc. One Computer Associates Plaza, Islandia, N.Y. 11749. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

Rod Gifford