Harte-Hanks Trillium Software And Patni Computer Systems Align to Deliver Enhanced Data Quality

December 11, 2007; 09:06 AM

BILLERICA, MA, USA -- Trillium Software®, a business of Harte-Hanks, Inc. (NYSE:HHS), and a leading enabler of Total Data Quality solutions, today announced that it has entered a relationship with Patni Computer Systems (NYSE: PTI), a leading global Information Technology (IT) consulting and services provider, to help provide organizations with an assessment of their data quality needs.  Additionally, the two organizations already have implemented a successful solution at a leading underwriter that has been serving the title insurance needs of both residential and commercial customers for more than 20 years.

Under terms of the agreement, Patni will utilize Trillium Software’s TS Discovery and TS Insight solutions as part of a data investigation, analysis and reporting process to deliver a comprehensive data quality assessment offering.  As part of its global delivery model and a "Six Sigma" quality approach to furthering its customers' business initiatives, Patni consultants can now use Trillium Software’s solutions for identifying, capturing and monitoring problems that are inherent in enterprise data, and offer its enterprise customers a data quality dashboard containing advanced reporting, trending and scorecards.

At the Patni customer site, a real estate services firm with more than 5000 members, TS Discovery is being used to profile enterprise data, prior to building data extraction, transformation and loading processes for migrating mainframe source data to a target SQL Server 2005 RDBMS.  

Based on Patni’s assessment of this organization’s needs, the objective of the TS Discovery implementation was to:
-- Identify inconsistencies and anomalies within the source data that would interfere with a smooth ETL [extract-transfer-load data] transformation process, thereby reducing the number of iterations during the actual ETL migration process.
-- Eliminate assumptions made by both business and information technology professionals regarding the content and structure of the data prior to the building of a data model for the target database.
-- Provide a collaborative environment for both business and IT professionals to make informed decisions regarding the validity, integrity and usefulness of the source data.
-- Identify unknown relationships between and among customers, agents, distributors and third parties across multiple databases.

“As data quality continues to become more of an enterprise issue, organizations are looking for a set of best practices to help them ‘jump start’ initiatives,” said Umesh Karpe, head of delivery, business intelligence practice, for Patni. “The combination of Patni’s widely recognized Six Sigma-based DQ assessment and cleansing services and Trillium Software’s industry-leading products provide the one-stop, end-to-end data quality solutions that companies are seeking.”
“As one of the leading IT services consultants in the world, Patni brings a wealth of experience and proven methodologies to the development and maintenance of enterprise applications,” said Len Dubois, vice president, marketing, Harte-Hanks Trillium Software. “We see a great synergy in working with Patni team members given their expertise in data management and our best-of-breed products and knowledge of the data quality market.”

About Patni

Patni Computer Systems Limited (BSE: PATNI COMPUT, NSE: PATNI, NYSE: PTI) is a global provider of IT Services and business solutions, servicing Global 2000 clients. Patni caters to its clients through its industry-focused practices, including insurance, financial services, manufacturing, life sciences, telecommunications and media & entertainment, and its technology-focused practices.  

With an employee strength of over 14,000, multiple global delivery centers spread across 12 cities worldwide, and 21 international offices across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Patni has registered revenues of US $579 million for the year 2006.  Patni’s service offerings include application development and maintenance, enterprise application solutions, business and technology consulting, product engineering services, infrastructure management services, business process outsourcing, quality assurance and engineering services.

Committed to quality, Patni adds value to its clients’ businesses through well-established and structured methodologies, tools and techniques. Patni is an ISO 9001: 2000-certified and SEI-CMMI Level 5 organization, assessed enterprise wide at P-CMM Level 3. In keeping with its focus on continuous process improvements, Patni adopts Six Sigma practices as an integral part of its quality and process frameworks. For more information on Patni, visit www.patni.com

About Harte-Hanks

Harte-Hanks is a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company that provides marketing services and shopper advertising opportunities to local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers.  Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing improves return on its clients' marketing investment by increasing their prospect and customer value – a process of "customer optimization" –organized around five strategic considerations:  Information (data collection/management) — Opportunity (data access/utilization) — Insight (data analysis/interpretation) — Engagement (knowledge application) — Interaction (program execution).  Expert in integrating this process, Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing is highly skilled at tailoring solutions for each of the vertical markets it serves.  Visit the Harte-Hanks Web site at http://www.harte-hanks.com or call (800) 456-9748.

Harte-Hanks Trillium Software enables organisations to achieve Total Data Quality by providing a full complement of technologies and services providing global data profiling, data cleansing, enhancement, and data linking for e-business, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, data warehouse, and other enterprise applications. For more information about Trillium Software and its offerings, call (978) 436-8900 in the USA and in the United Kingdom call +44 (0) 118 940 7666 or visit Trillium Software online at http://www.trilliumsoftware.com .