TO APPROVE AN AMENDMENT TO THE COMPANYS ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION CHANGING THE NAME OF THE COMPANY TO THE HACKETT GROUP, INC.
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Our Roots are in Intellectual Property
We were formed in 1997. Our name, Answerthink, then Answerthink Consulting Group, conveyed our primary objectives, which were to provide knowledge-based consulting services to Fortune 1000 companies. We addressed our clients' strategic business needs by offering a wide range of integrated services s, including benchmarking, process transformation, software package implementation, electronic commerce, decision support technology, technology architecture and integration and Year 2000 solutions. These solutions targeted a client's specific business functions (finance and administration, human resources, IT, sales and customer support, and supply chain management) and allowed businesses to reach beyond the enterprise and link the people, processes and technologies of the extended organization. We marketed our services to senior executives in organizations where business transformation and technology- enabled
change could have a significant competitive impact.
However, virtually from inception we emphasized the importance of our intellectual property base to propose solutions to our clients' most critical and complex business problems. Shortly after our formation, we acquired several consulting and IT services businesses, each of which brought to the Company complementary skills and customer relationships. None of those acquired companies would be as vital to our current success as The Hackett Group. At the time of the acquisition, The Hackett Group was a consulting firm specializing in benchmarking and selective process transformation. It allowed us to approach our clients with a knowledge-based approach to consulting which combined the knowledge and experience of our consultants with its proprietary "best-practice" database focused on the efficiency of organizational functions, such as finance, human resources, IT and supply chain management.
The Hackett Group An Emerging, Yet Powerful, Global Services Brand
Ten years later, after significant investments in the expansion of our intellectual capital, namely our Best Practice Intelligence Center, and the promotion of the brand globally, The Hackett Group brand is more broadly recognized than the Answerthink brand. As a result of the number of benchmarks for global companies and the expanded reach into global clients based in Europe, The Hackett Group brand is truly a global brand. Today it drives market permission in Europe and Asia as well as North America. Today, we believe that our intellectual property, our people and The Hackett Group brand are our greatest assets.
The Hackett Approach
The Hackett Group is a strategic advisory firm and a world leader in best practice research, benchmarking, business transformation and working capital management services that empirically define and enable world-class enterprise performance. Only Hackett empirically defines world-class performance in sales, general and administrative and supply chain activities with analysis gained through more than 4,000 benchmark studies over 15 years at over 2,700 of the worlds leading companies.
We provide business and technology consulting services designed to enable companies to achieve world-class business performance by combining intellectual capital from The Hackett Group, with its extensive database of business process best practices and performance measurement results, and our proprietary Best Practice Implementation (BPI) approach.
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Hackett is a strategic advisory firm that helps executives understand how well they are performing today compared to a peer group and world-class performance levels. Hackett enables world-class performance by defining what is possible, providing objective performance comparisons to establish priorities, developing strategic alternatives to address performance improvements, creating initiative roadmaps, and designing best practice solutions and implementation services.
Hackett is differentiated through its use of empirical data, a large repository of proven best practices, implementation tools and global implementation insight that are used to provide advice and solutions. Hackett provides both continuous and best practice implementation programs. Continuous services are referred to as Advisory Programs, which include: membership-based offerings providing a mix of best practice research, on-demand advisor telephonic access, peer learning opportunities and annual events. Best practice implementation offerings include benchmarking, business transformation and working capital management services. Hackett business advisors have the skills, experience and access to proprietary data sets to advise, develop, design and implement solutions grounded in actual client performance measurement results. Hackett provides deep insight into how top-performing companies operate and applies
those best practices to generate performance gains for clients.
Similarly, we integrate Hackett-Certified Practices directly into technology solutions. We believe it is imperative that companies simplify and automate processes to meet best practice standards before new technology implementations and upgrades are completed. The automation of inefficient processes only serves to continue to drive up costs, cycle times and error rates. We have completed detailed fit-gap analyses, in most functional areas of major business application packages from Oracle, Hyperion, PeopleSoft and SAP to determine their ability to support best practices. Application-specific tools, implementation guides and process flows allow us to optimize the configuration of ERP software, while limiting customization. Best practice implementations establish the foundation for improved performance.
We believe the combination of optimized processes, a best practices-based business application and business intelligence environment allows our clients to achieve and sustain significant business performance improvement.
Why Rename and Rebrand Now?
While Answerthink defined us originally, we believe that The Hackett Group represents our present and future. Over 65% of the revenues we reported in our most recent fiscal quarter were derived from The Hackett Group. In addition to having a better recognized brand, Hackett spans our multiple practices and service offerings today. We believe that changing our corporate name to The Hackett Group will establish a long-term vision for our Company and produce a competitive advantage through the unification of our vision, values and culture.
Our organization strongly supports the change of our corporate name to The Hackett Group. We feel that only by placing more of our businesses under The Hackett Group umbrella can we take full advantage of the global market permission and brand recognition associated with the brand.
As an international enterprise, it is important for us to evaluate our actions at the local and global levels. We believe that an approach taken in local or regional markets, whether it be in Europe of North America, is more likely to be successful if it is part of a unified global brand. The name change from Answerthink to The Hackett Group will allow us to better align our businesses and to present a consistent brand, image and experience to our clients globally. It will reinforce and align how we go to market regionally and locally with our global strategic objectives. It will allow our associates to build and maintain stronger customer relationships.
If our shareholders approve the amendment changing the name of the Company, we will change our ticker symbol on the Nasdaq Global Market to HCKT. This ticker symbol has been reserved.
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