CBH Consultants acquires TriWise Solutions to broaden BI and CPM expertise and fuel growth

— Acquisition a natural evolution of relationship, and allows CBH to better serve customers throughout the West —

Laguna Hills, CA, March 1, 2004 – CBH Consultants announces the acquisition of TriWise Solutions, helping the Cognos and Microsoft business partner continue to expand its corporate performance management (CPM) and business intelligence (BI) consulting practice.

TriWise Solutions, based in Carlsbad, CA, specializes in business intelligence for mid-market and larger companies such as SCAN Healthcare, NeWays and ISIS Pharmaceuticals. Both TriWise and CBH Consultants are business partners with Cognos, the world-wide leader of CPM and BI solutions. BI is the process of transforming large volumes of data into meaningful information that can used to support decision-making throughout a company or organization.

By combining the BI expertise of TriWise with CBH’s expertise in CPM, which includes planning, budgeting and financial reporting, the merged companies can better serve the needs of a customer base that now exceeds 200, said CBH president Joe Baird. It also gives CBH a stronger sales and marketing presence throughout California.

“By formalizing the partnership through the acquisition, we can devote more resources to our efforts to service existing customers and find new ones,” Baird said. “The acquisition gets us closer to our goal of being the leading BI and CPM solution provider in the West.”

CBH customers include Impac Mortgage, Ascent Media, Patagonia as well as other key enterprise and middle market companies. CBH now has operations in the San Francisco area, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego as well as a support center on the North Coast.

CBH also provides TriWise customers with the security of a larger business partner. CBH is a member of the CBH family of companies, which serves over 2,000 clients in the West, including several Fortune 1000 companies. The parent company, which was founded in 1950, is still based in Crescent City, CA.

“It just made sense to bring the talents together,” said TriWise president John Martin. “We’re both stronger together than independent. It’s a case of one plus one equals three.

“A lot of our BI customers have had a need to add Cognos’ financial applications, and as a result, we have brought CBH into these accounts. CBH customers have been adding BI capabilities, and CBH has been getting us involved with these accounts. So there has been a lot of interaction back and forth between our customers. It’s more straightforward for our customers to deal with one company and one set of consultants with a cross pollination of talents.”

CBH is a Cognos Corporation Pinnacle partner. CBH also has a partner relationship with Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) and FRx Software, which is a part of MBS. Through the relationship with MBS, CBH markets and supports general accounting, distribution and project accounting software for mid-market companies. Through the relationship with FRx, CBH markets and supports the leading mid-market applications for financial reporting and budgeting.