Lawson and The Hackett Group Announce Exclusive Program to Help Clients Achieve World-Class Business Outcomes
May 09 2005 - 7:00AM
Business Wire
Hackett World-Class Passport Program Offers Lawson Clients the
Ability to Measure Business Process Performance Against World-Class
Companies Lawson Software (Nasdaq:LWSN) and The Hackett Group
(Nasdaq:ANSR) today announced a strategic and exclusive
relationship to enable Lawson clients to measure their business
process performance versus world-class companies. The joint Hackett
World-Class Passport(SM) program, provides Lawson clients with
access to the Hackett Book of Numbers(C) Research Series,
Hackett-Certified(SM) Practices, best practice benchmarking, access
to online metrics, and business process advisory services and will
provide a foundation for Lawson Professional Services'
outcomes-based software implementation methodology. Lawson is
identifying approximately two dozen charter members from its
current client base to participate in the program over the next
year, and intends to make this offering a part of its standard
contract with new clients. The Hackett Group, a business process
advisory firm, is a world leader in best practice research,
benchmarking, and transformation advisory services that empower
executives to achieve world-class enterprise performance. Hackett
offers analysis and insight backed by metrics derived from 3,300
benchmark studies over 13 years at more than 1,865 of the world's
leading companies, including 93 percent of the Dow Jones
Industrials. "Hackett's Book of Numbers research clearly shows that
across the board, world-class companies spend less, use fewer
staff, and generate superior results in finance, IT, procurement,
HR, and other SG&A processes," said Hackett Chief Research
Officer Richard T. Roth. "A key element of how they accomplish this
is their use of technology to enable process improvement. Without
real change in the underlying processes, companies can easily end
up using software to simply do the wrong things more quickly, and
generate little value. "Through this new program, Hackett and
Lawson will help mid-market companies jump start their performance
improvement programs, and get more value out of their Lawson
implementations," said Roth. "By performing thousands of
benchmarks, Hackett has built an empirical knowledge base that
details precisely how companies can best improve efficiency and
effectiveness across the enterprise. Lawson clients will be able to
rely on insights from our metrics, best practices repository,
custom research, our World-Class Progress Report scorecard, and
access to our business advisors as a foundation upon which they can
build real and sustainable improvement into their operations."
Lawson is aligning its products and services around the particular
needs of mid-market organizations that face the same business
complexities as larger enterprises but with more financial
restraints. The company's strategy is to deliver real business
outcomes at the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. "By
providing clients with relevant and timely access to Hackett's
offerings, we're helping our clients achieve measurable outcomes
and assess the financial and operational success of their
implementations. Through continuous benchmarking capabilities, we
will also be able to better help our clients sustain their
benefits," said Brad Callahan, executive vice president,
Professional Services, Lawson Software. "The Hackett World-Class
Passport program provides clients with world-class insights
structured in an effective manner for the mid-market company." With
its vast knowledge repository, The Hackett Group -- together with
Lawson -- will provide clients with best practice insights into how
industry leaders leverage technology, optimize business practices,
organization and governance models, business partnering strategies,
and strategic alignment to increase operational efficiency and
effectiveness. The Hackett World-Class Passport program offers
Lawson clients a range of business advisory services designed to
help them optimize their Lawson implementations and gain maximum
return on their technology investment. This includes access to
Hackett's World-Class Progress Reports, an online benchmarking
scorecard enabling companies to compare their current performance
to world-class and typical companies, track performance
improvement, and assess goal attainment. Clients also receive
Hackett's annual Enterprise Book of Numbers research, along with
custom Hackett Perspectives research papers. The program offers
quarterly topical webcasts and an annual members forum designed to
provide peer-learning opportunities. Clients can access a
repository of Hackett-Certified Practices' mapping to Lawson
applications, and also have on-demand inquiry support from Hackett
Business Advisors to address questions. According to John Guerrero,
vice president and corporate controller, JM Family Enterprises,
Inc., "We knew we wanted to install Lawson as our financial system.
We also knew that we had some processes that needed reengineering.
The Hackett Group helped us understand where we stood in comparison
to world-class companies and which processes we needed to address
prior to leveraging Lawson's software applications. It became a
very important part of our project and reengineering effort and set
clear goals for the finance organization to continuously strive
toward. Lawson, together with Hackett is clearly a winning
combination." According to Richard Price, director of research and
information services at the North Central Texas Council of
Governments, "We relied on Hackett to define best practices for our
key processes as part of future state visioning workshops and we
rely on Lawson to enable those processes through their software and
services. During the Hackett-led workshops our teams had to justify
why we should deviate from best practices rather than trying to
create all of our future processes from scratch. This methodology
was invaluable to us. It dramatically reduced the time required for
the consensus-building process among three government agencies that
were partnering on this project. It also helped us take a
process-driven approach that mapped best practices to Lawson
applications. Finally, the process-centric delivery model helped us
to redefine current organizational roles and make better use of
technology. The Hackett Passport program should be a 'home run' for
Lawson's client base." About Lawson Software Lawson Software
provides business application software and consulting services that
put time on the side of services organizations in the healthcare,
retail, government and education, banking and insurance and other
markets. Lawson's software suites include enterprise performance
management, distribution, financials, human resources, procurement,
retail operations and service process optimization. Headquartered
in St. Paul, Minn., Lawson has offices and affiliates serving North
and South America, Europe, and Africa. Lawson Software and Lawson
are registered trademarks of Lawson Software, Inc. All rights
reserved. About The Hackett Group The Hackett Group
(www.thehackettgroup.com), a business process advisory firm and an
Answerthink company, is a global leader in best practice research,
benchmarking and transformation advisory services that empower
executives to achieve world-class enterprise performance. Only The
Hackett Group empirically defines world-class performance in sales,
general and administrative (SG&A) and supply chain activities
with analysis gained through 3,300 benchmark studies over 13 years
at more than 1,865 of the world's leading companies. The foundation
of Hackett's benchmarks, transformation services, and
membership-based advisory programs is our proprietary database of
Hackett-Certified(SM) Practices, approaches which are proven to
correlate with superior performance metrics. This unparalleled
knowledge repository enables Hackett business advisors to provide
data, advice, and strategic insight with a level of integrity and
authority available nowhere else. As of this writing, Hackett
clients comprise 93 percent of the Dow Jones Industrials, 76
percent of the Fortune 100 and 90 percent of the Dow Jones Global
Titans Index. About Answerthink Answerthink, Inc.
(www.answerthink.com) is a strategic business advisory and
technology consulting firm that enables companies to achieve
world-class business performance. By leveraging the comprehensive
database of The Hackett Group, the world's leading repository of
enterprise best practice metrics and business process knowledge,
Answerthink's business and technology solutions help clients
significantly improve performance and maximize returns on
technology investments. Answerthink's capabilities include
benchmarking, business transformation, business applications,
business intelligence, and offshore application development and
support. Founded in 1997, Answerthink has offices throughout the
United States and in Europe and India. Hackett-Certified and
Hackett World-Class Passport are service marks of The Hackett
Group. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains
forward-looking statements that contain risks and uncertainties.
These forward-looking statements contain statements of intent,
belief or current expectations of Lawson Software, Inc.,
Answerthink, Inc., and their respective management teams. Such
forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and
involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to
differ materially from the potential results discussed in the
forward-looking statements. The company is not obligated to update
forward-looking statements based on circumstances or events that
occur in the future. Risks and uncertainties that may cause such
differences include but are not limited to: uncertainties in the
software industry; global military conflicts; terrorist attacks in
the United States, and any future events in response to these
developments; changes in conditions in the company's targeted
service industries; increased competition, the ability of the
programs described herein to delivery intended results and other
risk factors listed in Lawson's most recent Quarterly Report on
Form 10-Q and Answerthink's most recent filed Annual Report on Form
10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and as
included in other documents the companies file from time to time
with the Commission.
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