IVIS Group wins Multi-Channel Retailing Award and Special Award for Innovation

London - 15th February 2006 - IVIS Group, the multi-channel experts, today announced that it won two out of the eight Microsoft EMEA Retail Application Developer (RAD) Awards at last night’s ceremony in Düsseldorf, Germany. IVIS Group scooped both the Multi-Channel Retailing Award and the Special Award for Innovation with the implementation of its Sonetto Channel Information Management (CIM) solution at Tesco.com. The application is part of IVIS Group’s Sonetto Retail Suite.

The Multi-Channel Retailing Award category rewards solutions that enhance retailers’ ability to offer a better, more integrated customer experience across multiple channels such as stores, online, kiosks, catalogues, telephone, TV and collaborative partnerships with search engines, shopping comparison sites and affiliate marketing networks.

The Special Award for Innovation is a discretionary award given by the judges that recognises the most creative, comprehensive, integrated use of Microsoft technology and products to deliver tangible business value to retailers.

Qusai Sarraf, CEO, IVIS Group, said, "We are extremely proud to win these two awards. This endorsement from Microsoft and the RAD Award judges validates our vision of business driven PIM applications that enable true multi-channel retailing. It is a clear acknowledgement of the years of product development that have gone into our IVIS Sonetto Solutions working closely with clients including Tesco.com.”

Sonetto CIM is an application that enables a business to manage, control and publish all information across multiple channels. Sonetto CIM takes a single feed and specifically tailors the information for each channel in a multi-channel environment. It takes in product, pricing and promotional data and uses business rules to adapt the content automatically for each channel – such as online, in-store, kiosks, call centres, marketing partners, affiliates or price comparison sites. As this is connected to other product or pricing systems it has dynamic, real-time and accurate information delivered to every channel.

Sonetto CIM also gives product, category and marketing managers the agility to control the supply of large product data feeds to partners on the fly and without the need for IT support. It optimises marketing campaigns and the promotion of products to consumers through marketing channels, thereby increasing sales, optimising marketing ROI and minimising the IT costs of managing multiple partners.

The Microsoft EMEA RAD Awards are in their 6th year and have become one of the leading events on the retail technology calendar. Since its inception, the RAD Awards programme has recognised and celebrated the independent software vendors (ISVs) and retailer IT departments that make the best use of Microsoft technology to provide business value to retail organisations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

“This year’s RAD winners are focused on helping retailers achieve greater customer intimacy irrespective of channel, with a more integrated and collaborative business approach,” said Dilip Popat, managing director, EMEA Retail Industry Unit, Microsoft. “The winning companies demonstrate that a connected environment can maximise the potential of existing systems and link with those of external partners to help deliver the optimum shopping experience.”

Microsoft believes that honouring innovative software developers is good for the retail community: it stimulates creativity in delivering genuine business value, and it continues to “raise the bar” for application development. In this way, Microsoft believes that the RAD Awards programme benefits the industry as a whole.

About IVIS Group

IVIS Group helps organisations reach their customers across all of their information channels. Providing a range of services and products, IVIS Group is the multi-channel expert.

IVIS Group has worked with many companies from a range of industries each driven by their customers to create value through the better use of information.

For more information on IVIS Group and its solutions visit: www.ivisgroup.com.