AMERICAN EXPRESS AND SOLVER ENTER INTO MARKETING AGREEMENT TO LICENSE AND SELL AMERICAN EXPRESS' INVESTMENT OPTIMIZATION SOLUTION
American Express teams with technology and consulting partner to offer resource allocation methodology & software platform to Fortune 1000 companies
NEW YORK, October 18, 2005 -- American Express and Solver, a Microsoft Certified Partner, announced that they have entered into an exclusive technology and co-branding agreement to bring American Express' patent-pending resource allocation methodology and software platform called Investment Optimization (IO) to the marketplace. As a result of this agreement, Solver and its partners will offer Fortune 1000 companies a solution called “Investment Optimization by American Express” which is built upon Microsoft technologies.
Investment Optimization is a strategic and financial discipline and system created by American Express in conjunction with Solver to enable companies to accurately project financial returns, strategic impacts and risk of their discretionary investments. Applicable investments include marketing, information technology, research and development, sales, strategy, business development and operations. Once projections are created, IO integrates with internal tracking systems to enable a comparison between projections and actuals. Ultimately, this “closing of the loop” serves to improve investment performance and enable more optimal resource allocation. American Express currently uses IO to capture thousands of investment initiatives, which represent billions of dollars of annual investment spend and has used IO to reallocate tens of millions of investment dollars within and across business segments and product lines.
Gary Crittenden, chief financial officer of American Express, said, "All companies, irrespective of industry, are faced with the issue of where to invest limited resources given different financial and strategic priorities and constraints. IO gives us the information needed to put all initiatives on a similar playing field so that we can make the right decisions. The discipline IO imparts on an organization and its resulting ROI can be significant as we have seen.”
IO can be applied to a company at an enterprise level or can be utilized by specific functional areas such as marketing, information technology, finance, operations, etc who are challenged with determining what is their best portfolio of investments given finite resources. "We see tremendous value in investment optimization,” said Alan Gallo, senior vice president of Corporate Planning & Analysis at American Express. “Eighteen months ago, we realized there was no off-the-shelf solution for optimizing resource allocation and began building it with Solver on our own. We know that other companies are struggling with this problem, and as a result, we are glad that Solver will be working with us to offer IO to other companies.”
Mr. Crittenden added: “We're very proud of the intellectual property we've developed around IO and are hopeful that other companies can benefit from it.”
Earlier this year, Baseline Magazine presented American Express with Baseline ROI Awards in two categories, including most innovative application and best overall application. The grand prize award considered IO's ROI to American Express and also the impact of IO on American Express' overall prospects. Investment optimization is gaining increased attention among industry advisors and observers, including the Corporate Executive Board and the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable.
Per Solli, co-founder and CEO of Solver, stated. "We have been building financial solutions for our customers for over a decade and are pleased to partner with American Express, an industry innovator. The IO methodology designed by American Express will help business leaders make informed decisions to improve corporate performance."
American Express is a leading global payments, network, travel and banking company founded in 1850.
Solver (www.solverusa.com), founded in 1996, is a Microsoft Certified Partner specializing in the design and implementation of Business Performance Management (BPM) solutions targeted at large organizations in the private and public sector.
