First Consulting Group and Clear Technology Announce Partnership to Improve Health Plans Operational Performance

First Consulting Group, Inc. (FCG) (NASDAQ:FCGI), and Clear Technology, Inc. announced a teaming agreement that proposes significant operational improvements to the health plan industry. One of the first results of the new partnership is a breakthrough business process management (BPM) service offering called FirstOps, a solution that is designed to deliver significant reductions in administrative costs and improvements in quality, consistency and performance.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

First Consulting Group and Clear Technology Announce Partnership to Improve Health Plans Operational Performance

FirstOps to provide industrys first complete

business process management solution

Long Beach, Calif (PRWEB) October 10 2003)-First Consulting Group, Inc. (FCG) (NASDAQ:FCGI), and Clear Technology, Inc. announced a teaming agreement that proposes significant operational improvements to the health plan industry. One of the first results of the new partnership is a breakthrough business process management (BPM) service offering called FirstOps, a solution that is designed to deliver significant reductions in administrative costs and improvements in quality, consistency and performance.

FirstOps has been developed by FCGs operational experts using its health plan operations best practices, proven implementation framework and newly developed methodology, FirstOps Rapid Methodology (FORM).

FirstOps deploys Clears industry-leading BPM technology, Tranzax®, the industrys first BPM platform designed specifically to capture and replicate the business processing behavior (context-sensitive work) of a companys best employees. FirstOps engagements are designed to ensure business process improvements, while guaranteeing rapid implementation, along with near-term ROI.

FirstOps provides a solution to health plans most pressing business needs. This solution enables us to assist our clients to make substantial productivity improvements to their operations while reducing administrative costs and improving service," said Stephen ODell, vice president and managing director of FCGs Health Plan group. Our clients are burdened by the inability to automate context-sensitive work -- it truly is endemic within the industry. FirstOps, powered by the Tranzax engine, provides the context-sensitive processing these enterprises need to dramatically improve productivity and reduce cost.

We believe that business process automation of context-sensitive work is a critical component of bringing health plan organizations to 'operational competence as they become a Next-Generation Health Plan," added ODell.

We are very excited about the opportunities that the FirstOps offering provides to the health plan industry," said John Kendall, founder and CEO of Clear Technology. As an industry under tremendous cost pressures, automating processes to improve provider management, claims, medical review and even member/provider services can deliver significant competitive gains. Where Tranzax has been deployed in other service enterprises, weve seen dramatic results in cycle time reductions and throughput increases."

About Tranzax

Tranzax is the industrys first Business Process Management (BPM) platform capable of automating context-sensitive work by replicating the activities of an organizations best employees. While other technologies can only automate processes where work follows a predefined activity pathway (flow-based processing), Tranzax can also automate context-sensitive work, where the pathway must be discovered during execution one step at a time. Tranzax represents a breakthrough for service industries where context-sensitive work is pervasive and high-cost: automating it unleashes unprecedented enterprise value.

About Clear Technology, Inc.

Founded in 1998, Clear Technology, Inc. is a leading vendor of BPM software. Clears flagship product, Tranzax, is a BPM platform that rapidly increases business flexibility and customer satisfaction, while reducing operating costs for service industry organizations. Privately held Clear Technology is headquartered in Westminster, Colorado, with sales offices throughout the U.S. and in the United Kingdom. For more information, visit us at www.clear-technology.com.

About First Consulting Group

FCG is a leading provider of outsourcing, consulting and systems integration for healthcare, pharmaceutical, and other life sciences organizations throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Through combinations of onsite, off-site and offshore outsourced services, FCG provides low-cost, high-quality offerings to improve its clients performance. The firms consulting services increase clients operations effectiveness, resulting in reduced costs, improved customer service, enhanced quality of patient care, and more rapid introduction of new pharmaceutical compounds. For more information about FirstOps, visit www.fcg.com/health-plans/FirstOps.asp. For more information about FCGs award-winning executive briefing and articles on the Next-Generation Health Plan, visit http://www.fcg.com/health-plans/executive-briefing.asp. For more information about FCG, visit www.fcg.com or call 800/345-0957.

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For more information contact:

Robin Leventhal

Marketing Director

First Consulting Group

970-530-2554

rleventhal@fcg.com

Michelle Dyson

Public Relations Manager

Clear Technology, Inc.

303-583-4143

michelle.dyson@clear-technology.com

Patti Hazlett

Public Relations Manager

STRATECOM

720-406-7906

patti.hazlett@stratecom.com