CHICAGO & MIAMI BEACH, Fla., Feb. 28, 2005 -- Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), the leading global provider of enterprise market information solutions for the CPG, Retail, and Healthcare industries today announced the latest addition to its Consumer-driven Enterprise Management Software Solutions, IRI Retail Performance Management(TM). The announcement was made at IRI's Reinventing CPG and Retail Summit 2005, taking place February 27 - March 1, 2005, at the Fontainebleau Hilton Resort and Towers in Miami Beach, Fla.

Retail Performance Management is a new suite of software solutions that provides CPG manufacturers with visibility into daily sales of their products on a store-by-store basis. Coupled with IRI's alerting, analysis, and Business Performance Management (BPM) tools, this breakthrough approach enables manufacturers to quickly boost profitable revenue by minimizing lost sales due to out-of-stocks and poor retail compliance with planned promotions. It also enables manufacturers to immediately identify distribution voids on new products by store, ensuring maximum speed to shelf during the critical distribution roll out periods across multiple markets and channels.

IRI's Retail Performance Management suite is the first in a series of new business solutions to be introduced based on IRI's MarketKnowledge(TM) Platform, a revolutionary new capability that provides integrated, daily, point-of-sale data on-demand, by named retailer, enabling manufacturers and retailers to dramatically improve revenue performance and retail execution. IRI's MarketKnowledge Platform currently offers daily data from seven leading retailers: Albertson's, A&P, Brookshire Grocery Company, Giant Eagle, Fred's, Food Lion, and Walgreens.

"IRI is on a course to increase the value of its solutions to the CPG and Retail industry by orders of magnitude," said Bill Nowacki, President of IRI's Business Performance Solutions Group. "Retail Performance Management is one of a series of breakthrough solutions designed to drive increased growth and profitability for our clients."

The solution enables manufacturers to access Web-based dashboards, reports, and receive exception-based alerts using IRI's BPM decision support software. These allow companies to quickly identify problematic products, stores, and regions and determine possible root-causes and estimate the impact of potential fixes. As a result, the solutions enable CPG manufacturers to fix hidden problems that may be undermining their business and improve long-term performance.

"Improved retail execution is at the core of increasing performance for CPG manufacturers, yet until now, the daily visibility and the corrective solutions have not been available," adds Nowacki. "IRI's Retail Performance Management Suite provides manufacturers with an accurate and rich information picture complemented with a set of action-oriented tools manufacturers can use to fix execution issues at retail -- where the rubber meets the road for our clients."

Store-Level, Day-To-Day Visibility to Address Unique Business Issues

IRI's Retail Performance Management suite offers several hosted services to address unique business challenges including Out-of-Stock Monitoring, Trade Compliance and Monitoring, and New Product Introduction. Each service includes 24-48 hour turnaround from daily data input, automated exception-driven alerts, user-specific custom browser-based reports and intuitive dashboards providing interactive tools for drill-down and ad-hoc analysis, and online collaboration for tracking and resolving issues.

Eliminating Out-of-Stocks

Capturing lost sales by eliminating stock outages at the shelf addresses a challenge that has been plaguing the industry for decades. IRI's Out-of-Stock Monitoring(TM) solution helps manufacturers and retailers significantly reduce out-of-stock rates through automated monitoring and exception reporting based on IRI's unique daily POS data. The solution proactively alerts users to potential out-of-stock situations, identifying specific stores and out-of-stock SKUs. It estimates the dollar value of each correction, ranks stores by opportunity, lists best and worst performing RMAs, and ranks the most problematic products. Integrating with other data such as planogram and internal shipment data enables the user to quickly determine the optimum solution to address each out-of-stock situation.

Trade Compliance and Monitoring for Improved Performance

For manufacturers looking to understand which stores are costing them the most revenue or where increased retailer collaboration is required to eliminate chronic under-compliance, IRI's Trade Compliance and Monitoring(TM) solution specifically detects potential compliance problems based on price reduction data and expected sales lifts across products, categories, and retail marketing areas (RMAs). It identifies underperforming stores and SKUs, estimates the dollar value of correcting compliance problems, and analyzes pricing effectiveness (lift per price reduction) across stores and RMAs.

New Product Launch Optimization

New product launches remain the lifeblood for the CPG industry, yet real-time visibility into the day-to-day distribution coverage of new products across retail outlets has not been previously possible. CPG manufacturers must be alerted in a timely fashion when a product launch is in trouble and what can be done immediately to correct negative performance. IRI's New Product Introduction(TM) solution specifically alerts users to potential distribution voids and highlights stores and regions where the new product has not been distributed.

More information on the IRI Retail Performance Management Solution Suite is available at www.infores.com.

About IRI's Consumer-driven Enterprise Management(TM) Software Solutions

IRI's Consumer-driven Enterprise Management Software Solutions for the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry provide companies the ability to put the insights they have about their consumers to immediate application in driving key business decisions. These solutions provide a unique framework for all phases of planning, performance analysis, and rapid decision making required to optimize brand management, trade promotion, and sales and operations management.

About Information Resources, Inc.

Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) is the leading global provider of enterprise market information solutions for the CPG, Retail and Healthcare industries. IRI is the first company to leverage the power of real-time market information, advanced analytic insights, and enterprise performance management technology to improve the profitability and operational effectiveness of the world's leading CPG, retail and healthcare companies. The Company uniquely provides a total view of the market, enabling maximum business performance throughout the enterprise. IRI's solutions make the consumer-driven, real-time enterprise possible. More information is available at www.infores.com.

John McIndoe, 312-474-3862
john.mcindoe@infores.com