Sears Honors Business Intelligence Vendor with Awards

Applied Intelligence Solutions receives Partner in Progress Award, Innovation Supplier of the Year for its AllocationXpert software and services

Applied Intelligence Solutions receives Partner in Progress Award, Innovation Supplier of the Year for its AllocationXpert software and services

Boulder, CO — April 21, 2005 — Retailer Sears has given Applied Intelligence Solutions LLC (AIS), a business intelligence solutions firm, three awards for its AllocationXpert software and related services.

AIS said it received the Sears Partner in Progress Award, given to the top 1 percent of Sears vendors. AIS was also honored with the Innovation Supplier of the Year Award from both the Merchandise Planning and Allocation team and from Sears Corporate, signifying its contributions to the retail company.

Jim Dixon, president and CEO, and Pavel Zelinsky, senior vice president of New Concept Development, were honored on April 12 at an event hosted by Sears Holdings Corp. Vice Chairman and CEO, Alan Lacy, at the company's headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Ill.

Started more than 20 years ago, the Partners in Progress program is an annual event to recognize suppliers that make significant contributions to the growth of Sears businesses and the creation of new ways to better serve Sears customers. The winners were selected from nominations submitted by Sears' employees who purchase goods and services for the company. More than 10,000 sources competed for the awards in 2004.

"AIS was an easy choice for the partner and innovation awards — we have not seen anything else in the industry as cutting-edge as AIS' AllocationXpert software for allocation," commented Mike Peterson, vice president, Apparel Planning and Placement at Sears. "AllocationXpert's ability to learn from top merchandise allocators and replicate the best decisions for all users is ground-breaking. With this new approach, we quickly realized the profit opportunity AIS could bring to our business."

Peterson went on to say that AIS went beyond his company's expectations with its Professional Services Team, which met Sears' challenge to complete a rollout to all users in less than 30 days. The rapid implementation allowed Sears to capitalize on the intelligence of its top performing allocators during its busiest selling season to achieve full return on investment within the first three months, according to Peterson.

"We recognize that Sears extends these awards to a small percentage of their vendor community and are extremely honored to receive such distinguished awards," said Dixon. "We are proud of the partnership we have formed with Sears. The dedication from the Sears team played a key role in this successful implementation. We are confident this partnership will continue to produce benefits for both companies in the future."

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