Breakthrough Application Suite Drives Millions in Revenue
and Takes Customer Service to the Highest Level

CAMBRIDGE, MA (October 27, 2003) - Blue Agave Software, Inc. (www.blueagavesoft.com) today launched a new generation of applications that is already helping manufacturers improve operating performance, enhance service levels, and drive increased revenue and profitability based on up-to-the-minute insight into how their business is running.

Blue Agave's Active Performance Management™ (APM) suite achieves a long-sought vision of manufacturers: the presentation of precise information about business performance, guided resolution of potential operating problems in real-time, and root-cause analysis that enables continuous improvement.

For the first time, consumer goods and electronics manufacturers have rapid access to the critical information that will help them pinpoint and respond to sudden shifts in demand and supply that today result in late orders, lost revenue and higher costs. This new problem-detection and -resolution capability can save manufacturers billions of dollars by leveraging point-of-sale, demand, and supply-related activity. Blue Agave's value is its correlation of information across disparate systems to proactively identify potential problems, and to provide recommendations in time to have an impact on today's business results.

Blue Agave's first release of the APM suite addresses consumer goods and consumer electronics manufacturers' major challenge: meeting retailers' ever-tightening requirements for higher fill rates, near-perfect on-time delivery, and lower overall costs.

The Hartz Mountain Corporation, the leading provider of quality pet products, uses the first release of APM to avoid sudden short shipments of orders for its customers, thereby maximizing revenue for both customers and Hartz.

"Customers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Kroger are clearly leading the way in requiring suppliers to ensure near-100 percent fill rates, which we strive to achieve, regardless of how much demand suddenly peaks or drops," said Bill Martin, corporate vice president and COO at Hartz Mountain. "Blue Agave makes sure that we stay ahead of the curve in a fast-moving business that shifts by the hour; the proof is that we've captured additional revenue and are able to meet today's demand for outstanding customer service."

"APM enables manufacturers and retailers to realize the true value of point-of-sale activity," said Martin. "Blue Agave will significantly increase our forward visibility, providing us with critical information at the store level, including actual takeaway, promotional lift and execution issues in time for us to take action. The real dollar savings and additional revenue impact for manufacturers and their customers are substantial."

Active Performance Management: Three Core Applications
APM's three core applications - ActiveResponse, ActiveInsight and ActiveContinuous Improvement - provide an end-to-end framework for identifying and resolving demand and supply issues, monitoring key aspects of the business against plan, and providing the root-cause analysis needed to successfully drive ongoing improvement.

"Savvy manufacturers are ready to move beyond the basic building blocks of supply chain applications — to run their business in real-time, leveraging information in a way that provides near-perfect response to demand and supply changes, at an actionable level of detail," said Joe Chappell, co-founder, president, and CEO of Blue Agave. "The data is available — it's just that up until now, no one could properly take advantage of it. We're seeing an emerging trend of innovative manufacturers like Hartz dramatically improving their responsiveness - and capturing millions of dollars in extra revenue as a result."

ActiveResponse, available today, proactively identifies breakdowns — revenue at risk, orders at risk, stock-outs, excess inventory and material shortages — and directs actionable recommendations to shift production, inventory, logistics or delivery rapidly and cost-effectively.

ActiveResponse correlates data on a "right time" basis from all relevant information sources — transaction, planning and execution systems, including both internal and external systems and data — evaluating activity to identify, validate and resolve "exceptions" in key business processes. These processes are defined by a powerful rules-based system, which triggers immediate calls to action when exceptions are identified. It routes exceptions to the appropriate analyst, planner or manager. Key contextual information is presented in the application's intuitive user interface. Prioritization, notification and delivery of exceptions are determined by parameters configured by the business user.

APM is a server-based application that can run on either Microsoft or Unix/Linux platforms, leveraging data from ERP, APS and SCM applications, including Oracle, SAP, Manugistics, PeopleSoft and i2, as well as legacy manufacturing, customer and supply management applications. Each module can be deployed and delivering benefits in as little as eight to ten weeks.

Blue Agave's approach was developed based on research tapping hundreds of operations executives at leading manufacturers. The founders' experience in building Oberon Software (now a division of Vignette Corporation) a leading enterprise application integration company, provided the foundation that is critical to understanding and solving real-time operational challenges. The Blue Agave team has extensive domain expertise in operations and application software, with experience at companies including Deloitte & Touche, IBM, i2, Motorola, Nortel, Oracle, Progress Software, PRTM, PwC and Texas Instruments. Blue Agave, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., is a privately held company, and can be contacted at www.blueagavesoft.com or at (617) 621-3400.

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Active Performance Management is a trademark of Blue Agave Software, Inc. All trademarks are property of their respective owners.

About Blue Agave Software

Blue Agave Software helps manufacturers raise operational performance and maximize revenue opportunities by improving response to sudden and often unexpected shifts in supply, demand and logistics. Its Active Performance Management suite delivers millions of dollars in incremental revenue and cost savings, and helps companies meet service requirements by proactively resolving the most common operating challenges, such as stock-outs, late orders, excess inventory and material shortages. The software identifies and recommends actions for operational anomalies, monitors key aspects of business performance against company targets and provides root-cause analysis to successfully drive continuous improvement. Blue Agave is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. and can be reached at www.blueagavesoft.com or (617) 621-3400.

Company Contact:
Susan Barr
(617) 621-3400 x210
sbarr@blueagavesoft.com