BetaSphere launches BetaSphere Conjoint Analyzer for Product Choice Modeling and Customer Tradeoff Analysis - BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer Integrates Customer Preference Analytics into Product Lifecycle Management

PALO ALTO, CALIF. -- JANUARY 9, 2003 - BetaSphere, the leading provider of customer-centric Product Lifecycle Management solutions, today announced the launch of its new BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer module as part of the BetaSphere Product Definition Server and BetaSphere RevMax Suite offering. Designed for product managers, brand managers, product planners, product teams, and market researchers in an enterprise, the BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer provides key decision support analytics to determine customer tradeoffs and analyze pricing on new product preferences. It also seamlessly integrates with the rest of the BetaSphere suite of products to enable definitions of new products that optimize key business metrics such as revenues, margins, customer satisfaction, strategy, cost, resources, timing, and cannibalization for the enterprise.

BetaSphere launches BetaSphere Conjoint Analyzer for Product Choice Modeling and Customer Tradeoff Analysis

BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer Integrates Customer Preference Analytics into Product Lifecycle Management

PALO ALTO, CALIF. -- JANUARY 9, 2003 - BetaSphere, the leading provider of customer-centric Product Lifecycle Management solutions, today announced the launch of its new BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer module as part of the BetaSphere Product Definition Server and BetaSphere RevMax Suite offering. Designed for product managers, brand managers, product planners, product teams, and market researchers in an enterprise, the BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer provides key decision support analytics to determine customer tradeoffs and analyze pricing on new product preferences. It also seamlessly integrates with the rest of the BetaSphere suite of products to enable definitions of new products that optimize key business metrics such as revenues, margins, customer satisfaction, strategy, cost, resources, timing, and cannibalization for the enterprise.

Although it is a well-known fact that obtaining early insights into customer tradeoffs, preferences, and pricing on new product features before building to it vastly increases the purchasability of a product, most enterprises lack effective tools and decision support analytics to make this happen", said Aylon Engler, BetaSphere's president and CEO. With BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer, all these problems are history. The launch of this capability is also consistent with BetaSpheres long-term strategy to be the premier provider of cutting-edge analytics to enterprises and their product managers, to enable them to build the right product at the right time."

In general, today, most leading enterprises use ad-hoc approaches to get insights into customer tradeoffs and preferences on new product features, and face obstacles in five areas:
·   Lack of cost-effective automation to gather, validate, and analyze whole product and pricing preferences of their worldwide customers and market segments
·   Limited tools to model and validate product choices with their markets, that in turn drives right definitions of the right product at the right time for the right market at the right price
·   Little or no decision support that leverages best-in-class analytics to determine tradeoffs on most expensive product features/functionality when considered jointly
·   Lack of tools to gauge sensitivity and conduct what-if scenario analysis of customers and market segments against critical metrics for products such as Price, Features, Packaging, Performance, Promotion and Distribution
·   Limited or no decision support to determine optimal market segments for success of whole products -- with optimization by revenue, profit, or unit share

Although most top market researchers unanimously agree that conjoint analysis is the #1 technique for analysis of customer preferences, feature tradeoffs, pricing, and segmentation, they also indicate that only by contracting expensive market research firms can conjoint analysis be administered effectively. And, these are often one-time studies in many companies, not ongoing, due to the high expenses involved.

Not anymore. BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer solves these obstacles head-on, and provides both process automation and decision support for choice modeling and conjoint analysis -- that is uniquely suited for collaborative enterprise or departmental needs. In addition the BetaSphere conjoint capability is tightly integrated with BetaSphere RevMax Optimizer and BetaSphere Product Definition Server -- both key applications in the BetaSphere RevMax Suite.

Key benefits and features of BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer include:

Easily recruit your key customers and prospects for conjoint analysis -- and conserve your market research dollars
·   Recruitment wizards enable invitation and organization of customers and other users

Easily organize your product data and processes into projects and collaborate on them
·   Project-based models enable organization of product data from an enterprise product portfolio
·   Collaboration model to involve all key internal and external stakeholders in the product definition process

Automate creation of choice model packages of your most expensive features for conjoint analysis
·   Cost estimation prioritizer capabilities determine most expensive features
·   Advanced proprietary solvers build and optimize choice model packages that are balanced, distance-efficient, orthogonal, and non-dominating to administer to users

Provide friendly and easy-to-use interface for users to rank and score their preferences
·   Drag & drop rich images of choice packages to rank and score
·   7-point Likert scale for purchase likelihood analysis
·   Both real-time and asynchronous deployment model for users
·   24x7 secure access via world wide web using standard browsers
·   Discussion threads and exit survey support

Make compelling fact-based decisions on user preferences, tradeoffs, segmentation, and product feasibility using advanced analytics support
·   Feature part-worth and utility analysis for users and segments
·   Market segmentation and market share analytics
·   Sensitivity analysis and what-if scenario analysis
·   BetaSphere RevMax integration to determine if prioritized user preferences are feasible to build

Exploit synergies in customer-centric product lifecycle data, processes, and analytics through seamless integration with BetaSphere RevMax Optimizer and BetaSphere Product Definition Server
·   Seamless integration of user management, projects, requirement trees, what-if scenarios, dashboards, prioritizer workflows, approvals, discussion threads, surveys, deliverables, and reporting functionality

Unlike other alternatives, our BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer comes at a fraction of the cost as studies with expensive market research firms", said Aylon Engler. Conjoint analysis users need not be physically located in the same room to respond to the study, but can be located anywhere in the world with just access to a web browser." The software is powerful and easy-to-use compared to other offerings. In addition it seamlessly integrates with customer-centric product life cycle management, revenue/margin maximization, product definition, and feedback management technologies from BetaSphere.

BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer has been designed specifically to address the decision needs of an enterprise product team during the product ideation phase of the product lifecycle. It provides the team with the critical information to make key decisions on what features to leave out in each product. BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer delivers compelling return on investment in several key areas:
·   Reduced cost for market research
·   Increased margins and share through better market segmentation
·   Reduced cost in product development by dropping high-cost/low-benefit features
·   Reduced risk in product definition through customer validation
·   Increased customer satisfaction and accelerated market acceptance of new products

BetaSphere has worked with industry leaders on hundreds of new product development initiatives in the hardware, software, wireless, e-commerce, networking, storage, transportation, and consumer device markets. Customers include Cisco Systems, DirecTV, Federal Express, Intel, Lexmark, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, McKesson, Motorola, Palm, SGI, UPS and Xerox, among many others.

About the BetaSphere RevMax Suite

Using validated needs from customers and the field organization, BetaSpheres suite of advanced analytics and decision support capabilities enable the maximization/optimization of an enterprises key business metrics in product definition, such as revenues, margins, customer satisfaction, business strategy, competitive strategy, cost, resources, timing, and cannibalization. This enables an enterprise to launch products with feature sets optimized to drive higher profits consistently and predictably.

Availability

BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer is available now.

For more information, please contact BetaSphere Sales at 1-888-238-2243 ext. 850.

About BetaSphere

BetaSphere provides enterprise software to optimize product profitability and other strategic business metrics. The BetaSphere RevMax Suite, which includes the BetaSphere Optimizers, BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer, BetaSphere Product Definition Server, and the award-winning BetaSphere Feedback Management Server, provides decision support and customer collaboration capabilities for enterprise product teams and executives. BetaSpheres offerings have revolutionized the product lifecycle management workflow solutions by adding decision support optimizers. . Over 100 market leading companies including Cisco, Federal Express, HP, Intel, Lexmark, Motorola, Palm, Sun Microsystems, UPS, and Xerox use BetaSphere solutions to develop and deliver better, more profitable products. BetaSphere was named a Top 10 CPC Vendor by Aberdeen Group in 2001 and also won the 2002 Crossroads A-List Award. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, BetaSphere is a privately held company backed by JP Morgan Partners and GE Equity. For more information, visit www.betasphere.com.

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BetaSphere® is a registered trademark, and BetaSphere RevMax Suite, BetaSphere RevMax Optimizer, BetaSphere ConJoint Analyzer, BetaSphere Feedback Management Server and BetaSphere Product Definition Server are trademarks of BetaSphere,Inc. All other products or company names are the property of their respective owners.

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For Additional Information:
Media Inquiries:
Chris Joseph
BetaSphere, Inc.
650-930-0200
cjoseph@betasphere.com