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DST Partners with Business Objects

DST’s AWD® business intelligence solution to leverage the Business Objects BI Platform.

April 7, 2003

KANSAS CITY, MO. (April 7, 2003) –DST Systems, Inc. (DST) today announced a technology alliance with Business Objects, the world’s leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, to enrich DST's AWD (Automated Work Distributor™) solution. The integrated BI tool will provide customers with consolidated views of all business activities and operations across their business to improve decision-making.

AWD, offered through DST Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of DST Systems, Inc., provides business process management (BPM), workflow, and imaging solutions, primarily to the financial services, healthcare, and video/broadband industries.

The AWD BI solution utilizes the Business Objects BI platform to deliver a browser-based, “digital dashboard.” Using the BI dashboard, executives and knowledge workers (transaction processors) can monitor, manage and improve key business activities across their organizations. This personalized, intuitive BI interface provides powerful, interactive insight that supports both tactical and strategic decision-making. By combining “real-time” and historical data, organizations can measure employee and operational performance against company objectives and benchmarks.

“AWD’s integration with industry-leading business intelligence software from Business Objects allows managers and executives to be more proactive in addressing a variety of business issues – balancing the diverse needs of various business areas,” AWD product manager Rick Welch said. “The combined solution also supports AWD’s ability to push work to individuals or groups of knowledge workers based on predefined business rules, such as skill and security levels, certification or workloads. Business rules help drive the workload; business intelligence with real-time monitoring helps balance the workload.”

AWD’s advanced BI solution also supports the concept of a Zero Latency Enterprise. This prevents delay between assessing and fixing a performance issue. The integration also allows audit and security compliance standards to be applied and monitored along with the business processes and provides data feeds to other applications using best-of-breed adapters to data warehousing and analytic partners.

“In today’s economic environment, executives are increasingly looking for ways to leverage their vast amounts of data to improve profitability and productivity,” said Mark Tice, group vice president of worldwide channel sales at Business Objects. “The combination of our best-of-breed BI software with the AWD solution, provides joint customers with a powerful tool to track, understand, and manage their business activities to make better informed decisions and more easily respond to rapidly changing business conditions.”

Partnering with Business Objects advances AWD as a comprehensive business process management solution. In addition to providing real-time reporting and analysis tools, AWD streamlines processes and enables companies across a variety of industries to provide world-class customer service. AWD’s customers include financial services, healthcare, insurance, and video/broadband companies worldwide. AWD’s advanced BI monitoring and reporting package is projected to be available in the second half of 2003.

About DST Systems, Inc.
DST Systems, Inc. provides sophisticated information processing and computer software services and products that help clients improve productivity, increase efficiencies, and provide higher levels of customer service. DST Systems is organized domestically and internationally into three operating segments: Financial Services, Customer Management, and Output Solutions. DST Systems operates one of the most advanced data centers in the world, which provides information-processing services to support the products within each operating segment. These products are further enhanced through the integration of DST Systems’ advanced technology and e-commerce solutions.

About DST Technologies, Inc.
DST Technologies, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of DST Systems, Inc. Through sophisticated information processing and computer software services and products, DST Technologies helps clients improve productivity, increase efficiencies, and provide higher levels of customer service. For clients in a variety of industries, including mutual funds, brokerage healthcare, insurance, and video/broadband, Automated Work Distributor (AWD) has helped reduce the cost of operations while increasing the speed and accuracy of business processing and customer service through business process management technology.

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