Blacksmith Applications Introduces Powerful New Mobile Reporting Tool for Foodservice Sales Professionals

Lawrence, MA (February 27, 2006) – Blacksmith Applications, Inc., the leading provider of contract, trade, and deduction management solutions for the foodservice and consumer goods industry, announced today the release of GAUGE^SM, its powerful new offline sales reporting application for foodservice sales professionals. Challenged with an increasingly complex business environment, foodservice sales professionals have traditionally struggled to balance their life 'on the road' with the demands of analyzing reports and digesting market trends. With the introduction of GAUGE^SM, Blacksmith Applications is delivering the power of a robust sales analysis and reporting platform in a mobile and highly responsive tool.

"With more than 3,000 current sales managers and brokers using our enterprise software solutions, we have been able to identify, develop, and deliver against the core requirements for these folks relative to reporting and analysis", said Karen Ehrlich, Senior Product Manager for the Blacksmith initiative. "What is most critical to these folks is being able to do their work anywhere at any time - without having to find a wireless hot spot or deal with cumbersome hotel network connections. With GAUGE^SM, we not only provide a powerful tool that enables market, customer, and broker specific analysis, but we deliver it with an offline and highly-responsive tool. The feedback we received from the marketplace indicates that the existing ordinary tools that have been available are just too slow. To address that gap, we took extra steps to make sure that the tool is as responsive as other desktop applications, such as Excel."

GAUGE^SM replaces the paper and e-mailed reports that many companies use for sales reporting today. IT departments have few resources available to customize reports based on sales reps' needs, and with GAUGE^SM, users can run their own queries against the 'data cubes' they have downloaded. GAUGE^SM, which has been in market test for the past six months, is now available in full commercial release. Blacksmith executives promise that GAUGE^SM is only the first in a series of analytical and decision-enabling solutions specifically focused on the needs of the foodservice sales professional.

"GAUGE^SM is an ideal example of the tools and new solutions in our product pipeline," said Tina Wefer, who is charged with guiding Blacksmith's long-term product offerings. "It provides a relevant and intuitive solution for an issue that plagues sales organizations across the industry - providing visibility and analytics to their highly mobile and time-constrained sales force with a tool that is intuitive enough to use with minimal training and responsive enough for a high adoption rate and repeat usage. The ordinary tools in the marketplace have over-engineered their solutions, and, as a result, they are too slow or too complex to meet the demanding time constraints of the users. The industry will begin to see more functionality from us that expands beyond our current program creation, profitability evaluation, and billback and deduction processing, and into more insightful analysis that help our customers understand how their tactical trade execution aligns with their trade strategy, the relationship between price/promotion and volume integrity, and determine when to take price increases as their costs fluctuate."

Blacksmith's GAUGE^SM reporting application centralizes all field sales reporting for direct sales forces, brokers, national accounts, and sales management. By utilizing standardized and customizable report templates, it allows users to quickly and easily access and download sales volume and financial performance data for distributor trade deals, operator programs, and national account and regional chain account contracts. GAUGE^SM enables users to view sales information across customer, company, and product hierarchies for a wide range of time-based and volume-based metrics.

About Blacksmith Applications
Blacksmith Applications is the leading provider of contract, trade, and deduction management solutions for the foodservice industry. The company's solutions enable foodservice manufacturers to more effectively and profitably manage national account contracts, operator deals, distributor trade programs, and deductions. Blacksmith helps eliminate expensive, inefficient processes and reduce contract and deduction management costs, complexities, and overspending. The results are increased speed to market, improved visibility into customer and product performance, and controlled trade spending - all enabling increased revenue, more strategic and profitable decision making, the appropriate deployment of resources at all levels of sales and marketing, and greater overall profitability. Blacksmith provides solutions for companies such as ConAgra Foods, H.J. Heinz, Flowers Foods, Pactiv Corporation, and McCain Foods. Blacksmith Applications is headquartered in Lawrence, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.blacksmithapps.com or call 1-866-572-9299.