GRAPEVINE, Texas, Nov. 9, 2004 -- Business Objects the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today honored six companies that are using business intelligence to drive high performance throughout their organizations and improve company profitability. With Business Objects solutions, these award winning companies and their employees have access to information so they can make smarter decisions to boost the bottom line. This year's winners of the Business Objects 2004 Customer Excellence Award -- Aetna Inc., The Dow Chemical Company, FedEx Express, Land O'Lakes, SKY Italia, and Sogei -- all use Business Objects solutions to speed the flow of information throughout their organizations, from the shipping clerk to the CEO, to create a true "Information Democracy".

"The most competitive and successful companies today practice what I call 'Information Democracy' in which everyone from the board room to the shop floor has the right and responsibility to access information that will help them do their jobs faster, better, and with a greater benefit to their companies," said Bernard Liautaud, CEO of Business Objects. "The six customers we are honoring today demonstrate how creating a culture of information democracy contributes directly to improved performance. These companies have gone far beyond simple access and delivery of information -- they are using Business Objects to enable employees at all levels of the organization to make the right decisions in a more timely manner, and that means increased profitability across the board. Business Objects has more than 29,000 customers today, and I am proud to say that business intelligence has played a critical role helping not only our award winners, but companies around the world, improve enterprise performance."

Following is a brief description of this year's winners:

Aetna Inc.

Business Objects reporting, analysis, and delivery tools are the enterprise standard at Aetna Inc., one of the nation's leading providers of health care, dental, pharmacy, group life, disability and long-term care benefits. By choosing these tools, the Hartford, Conn.-based company has achieved greater cost savings, more control of information, and the ability to provide web delivery of Crystal Reports(R) to more than 5,000 users, while supporting over 1,500 reports to aid in data analysis. As the need for reporting at Aetna has continued to grow, Business Objects tools have reliably assisted the company in meeting its goals.

The Dow Chemical Company

A customer for more than 10 years, Business Objects is an enterprise standard at Dow. Dow has deployed Business Objects globally across 51 countries, six continents, and to more than 8,000 employees. Business Objects solutions are used to support daily operations, helping to manage production, inventory, and shipment tracking. Business intelligence also allows company executives to monitor corporate goals, key performance indicators and metrics, and the company's expansion of Six Sigma. In addition, Business Objects solutions help power an extranet known as myaccount@dow, which gives thousands of Dow customers the ability to conduct transactions, view customized business information, and share data with the company.

FedEx Express

FedEx Express uses BusinessObjects(TM) Dashboard Manager and BusinessObjects Performance Manager to power dashboards across the sales and marketing, IT, and operations departments. Business Objects is used to pull information from 20 different data sources, allowing company executives and managers access to the latest information on customer activity, including sales performance by account executive and revenue generated per account. Sales management can keep a constant check on the performances of their team by comparing actual sales versus targets. With Business Objects solutions, FedEx Express has aligned reports from all functional departments, increased performance analysis, helped management improve decision making and reduce response time when action is required.

Land O'Lakes

Land O'Lakes, a national, farmer-owned food and agricultural cooperative, has deployed Business Objects as its enterprise business intelligence (BI) standard to improve the performance of its sales and marketing organization. Land O'Lakes invests in trade promotion and is focused on increasing the effectiveness of promotional campaigns as a key factor in improving profitability. Land O'Lakes is implementing BusinessObjects Product and Service Intelligence, BusinessObjects Customer Intelligence, and BusinessObjects Performance Manager.

SKY Italia

SKY Italia is the leader in the Italian Satellite television market. The company has started a project that includes the use of BusinessObjects Data Integrator to access information from Siebel and other applications, and is using BusinessObjects Campaign Analytics to assess the profitability and success of promotional marketing campaigns. Sky Italia relies on Business Objects solutions as its corporate business intelligence front-end, which allows users to easily analyze both customer and product data to make faster decisions and fine-tune marketing activities. For example, Business Objects solutions are used to monitor and analyze call center activity.

Sogei- Societa Generale d'Informatica

Sogei was founded in 1976 with the mission to set up a modern tax system, and is today a 100% State-owned company with more than 1,400 employees, operating as the Italian Tax Administration's technological partner. Sogei recently extended its mission by implementing the TS System, known as the public health expenditure monitoring system, which is a new solution that enables the monitoring of public health expenditures related to prescription drugs and specialist examinations provided by the National Health Service. The TS System helps distribute health cards to all citizens, has introduced a new Prescription Form, and has a dedicated an electronic filing network to forward data to a centralized information hub.

Sogei uses Business Objects solutions for both for tax control purposes and health expenditure monitoring. In the TS System, Sogei uses Business Objects software to process statistical reports, analyze trends, and formulate simulated models to enable the Italian Government to know and manage health expenditure better, and to spend available public funds more appropriately in the National Health Service.

This year marks the 7th annual Business Objects Customer Excellence Awards, a program created to recognize successful and innovative Business Objects customers. Last year's winners were DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Jenny Craig, Inc., Morgan Stanley, Unisys, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company. Business intelligence enables organizations to track, understand, and manage enterprise performance. The company's solutions leverage the information that is stored in an array of corporate databases, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Popular uses of BI include enterprise reporting, management dashboards and scorecards, customer intelligence applications, financial reporting, and both customer and partner extranets. These solutions enable companies to gain visibility into their business, acquire and retain profitable customers, reduce costs, optimize the supply chain, increase productivity, and improve financial performance.

In December 2003, Business Objects completed the acquisition of Crystal Decisions, the leader in enterprise reporting. The combined product line includes software for reporting, query and analysis, performance management, analytic applications, and data integration. In addition, Business Objects offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects has more than 29,000 customers in over 80 countries. The company's stock is traded under the ticker symbols NASDAQ: BOBJ and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB). It is included in the SBF 120 and IT CAC 50 French stock market indexes. Business Objects can be reached at 408-953-6000 and http://www.businessobjects.com.

Business Objects, the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, WebIntelligence, Crystal Enterprise, and Crystal Reports are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects S.A. or its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries.

Business Objects
Sherry Lowe, 408-953-6038
sherry.lowe@businessobjects.com
or
Eastwick Communications
Katie Zack, 650-480-4041
katie@eastwick.com