Agility Assists Top Performers in Achieving 99% Forecast Accuracy

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Visibility and Flexibility Are Necessary Components in Planning and Budgeting

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - March 16, 2010) - In 2010, with a renewed focus on corporateperformance, organizations that hope to achieve leading status must bearmed with tools that provide visibility and flexibility to strike abalance between caution and driving changes to create a competitiveadvantage as the market improves, according to "

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spid="30410182&cid=6282&camp1"">

Financial Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting: Will the Economy Emerge?Will You?" a new study recently published by

Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company(NYSE:

HHS

).

"Finance executives are using the aftermath of the financial crisis to getbudgeting and planning in their companies better aligned with the newrealities," said Nasreen Quibria, senior analyst at Aberdeen Group."Companies are realizing the limitations of static annual plans and theshortcomings of limited horizons. To enable more agile processes, leadingcompanies are moving beyond spreadsheets and leveraging financial planningand budgeting, and consolidation and reporting tools to perform scenarioanalysis and forecast performance more frequently -- quarterly and evenmonthly -- to ensure that financial planning is continuous and dynamic."

Now in its third year, Aberdeen's annual survey on financial planning,budgeting, and forecasting benchmarked over 170 companies, finding severalnotable differences in the pressures and actions impacting these processesyear over year. Commenting on the trends, Cindy Jutras, vice president andresearch fellow said, "While budget accuracy was of paramount importance in2008, the demand for accuracy plummeted last year and actual performanceagainst accuracy declined along with it. This perception continues in2010, although accuracy rebounded. The budget itself has been transformedinto more of a 'stake in the ground' while the precision of the dynamicallychanging forecast has emerged as the dominant business driver."

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part to thefollowing underwriters: Clarity Systems, Host Analytics, Infor, Prophix,and SAP. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit:

http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30410182&cid=6282&camp2

Visit

Research.Aberdeen.com

foradditional access to complimentary

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Finance andERP Research.

About

Aberdeen

Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to AberdeenTM for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information – Opportunity – Insight – Engagement – Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeenhttp://www.aberdeen.comor call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go tohttp://www.harte-hanks.com.

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