ROCHE UPGRADES CRM SOFTWARE

Berger Software announced today that Roche, one of the worlds leading pharmaceutical suppliers, has commenced a project to upgrade the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software used by their Australian Pharmaceutical operation.

ROCHE UPGRADES CRM SOFTWARE

Berger Software to implement Version 9 Healthcare for Roche Australia

SYDNEY -- Tuesday, 22 October 2002 -- Berger Software announced today that Roche, one of the worlds leading pharmaceutical suppliers, has commenced a project to upgrade the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software used by their Australian Pharmaceutical operation.

Since 1999 Roche has been using a custom ETMS solution, developed by Berger using the Visual Elk 7.5 platform, for their 150-strong sales force to manage their territories. Roche will now upgrade to Bergers Healthcare V9 developed using Visual Elk Version 9 from StayinFront Inc.

For Roche Pharmaceuticals Marketing Systems Manager Grahame Hutchison, this will be the third such project he has overseen for the company. Grahame wrote the original DOS based system in 1987 and managed the first Berger project.

We have had a very successful run with Elk 7.5 over almost 4 years now, averaging around 35,000 remote transactions each month. The system maintains territory geography for 14 different pharmaceutical sales teams and the critical area of data synchronisation has been faultless", says Grahame, however Elk Version 9 will enable us to react even faster to Sales and Marketing requirements and deploy to different platforms because of the Active Elk Engine architecture".

The relationship with Roche has been rewarding for both parties", according to Berger Softwares Managing Director Robert Kery, They have been very successful users of the system and we recognise that Roches discipline and constructive approach has contributed to valuable enhancements to the standard package. We are pleased to have Roches confidence in our systems reaffirmed by their decision to upgrade".

About Berger Software

Berger Software specialises in the development and support of state of the art software solutions in its selected markets in CRM, Logistics, and eCommerce. Berger brings together specialists with wide experience in the target markets and develops solutions which deliver long term value to a broad base of blue chip organisations and government departments.

In the CRM segment, Berger is an Australian implementation partner for the Visual Elk CRM application suite from StayinFront Inc. Visual Elk is a platform designed to provide leading local and international organizations with a cost effective, enterprise wide solution to manage all points of customer interaction including sales, marketing and customer support applications. The powerful and flexible system has been installed in more than 200 companies with over 30,000 users worldwide.

About Roche Products Pty Ltd

Roche Pharmaceuticals develops, manufactures and sells products across three broad areas -- pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and vitamins. The company is more than 100 years old, has more than 64,000 employees and operations in more than 150 countries. In Australia the company has around 100,000 customer records on approximately 40,000 customers, including general practitioners and pharmacists. Some of its more recent products include Tamiflu (influenza) and Xenical (obesity).