Accenture and Novient Form Alliance to Optimize Performance of Professional Services Organizations

ATLANTA; July 12, 2000--Novient Inc., a global provider of Internet infrastructure, and Accenture, a leading global management and technology consultancy, today announced a strategic alliance. This alliance will provide solutions that will enable Accenture to help its clients maximize their human capital assets - an essential requirement of the growing electronic economy.

Under the terms of the alliance, Accenture has named Novient as its preferred provider of Professional Services Automation (PSA) solutions. Through this alliance, Accenture will be able to offer its clients solutions that will enable entire services communities - clients, business partners, corporate alliances, and independent resource portals - to collaborate and communicate more effectively and efficiently.

Novient provides users with innovative data access to permit real-time global collaboration and access to a "living" repository of skills, consultants, and upcoming projects. Traditional PSA providers force data through a centralized "hub and spoke" database, a time-consuming process requiring database replication and constant synchronization. On the other hand, Novient’s Internet infrastructure allows users to access data on the servers where the information resides.

"While evaluating professional services automation solutions for our own internal use, we determined that Novient offered the best solution for us and provided one of the most complete and proven PSA solutions for our global needs," said David Clinton, Managing Partner of Accenture’s Human Performance service line.

Professional services organizations - firms that employ knowledge or creative workers with billable time - are streamlining their business processes and improving management capabilities to optimize their operations and profitability. Novient’s PSA solution allows resource managers and other Internet and Intranet users to access the right skills for the right job at the right rate. Accenture will leverage this innovative PSA solution for its clients, their partners and customers to maximize their people assets.

Ted Kempf, Senior Analyst at GartnerGroup DataQuest said, "This relationship is the first of its kind with a global consultancy and directly reflects the increasing market penetration that professional automation administration solutions are achieving. I expect to see an increase in these types of alliances over the next 12 to 18 months."

Novient President and Chief Operating Officer Halsey Wise said, "The choice of Novient as Accenture’s preferred global PSA partner is a landmark event for Novient. The alliance between Novient and Accenture further expands Novient’s global reach, making Novient’s Internet infrastructure, iServerNet, and Novient’s PSA solutions, eServices, one of the world’s most widely used and recognized professional services automation solutions."

About Novient Inc.

Founded in 1995, Novient Inc. is a global provider of Internet infrastructure for the services industry. Its services automation solutions are in use by leading services organizations and their communities worldwide. Using its patent-pending Internet infrastructure, Novient provides clients with their own internal services portal and the ability to establish an external collaborative B2B services exchange with their partners and customers. Novient delivers an advanced Professional Services Automation (PSA) solution that is designed to optimize the business results clients receive from their services organization.

Novient’s solution enables professional services companies, embedded service organizations, and systems integrators to automate and optimize management of their intellectual capital, engagements, alliances, and customers. The company’s comprehensive suite of PSA solutions is used by approximately 120,000 consultants in 48 countries. Novient’s global customers include Accenture, Compaq, SAP-AG Worldwide and its partner network, MYND (formerly Policy Management Systems Corp.), Hewlett Packard Corp., Siemens Business Services, Hyperion Solutions Corp., and Harbinger Corp.

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Jeff Osborne

+1 (404) 720 3614

josborne@novient.com

Roxanne Taylor

+1 (917) 452 5106

roxanne.taylor@accenture.com