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West Group Expands Noosh Deployment

Press release from the issuing company

Santa Clara, CA - January 30th, 2003 -- Noosh, Inc., a leading provider of collaborative e-Business software solutions, today announced that West, the foremost provider of integrated information solutions to the U.S. legal market, has deployed the company's Noosh 5 solution to provide web-based project management tools to bolster productivity and speed cycle time. West's line of print and electronic information products are well known for their authority and accuracy.  West brands include Westlaw, Foundation Press®, The Rutter Group, FindLaw, and ProLaw Software.  Since 2000, West has managed more than 17,000 projects using Noosh 4 and has realized significant timesavings, particularly during the procurement stages of a project's life- cycle.  Procured items included printed business communications, collateral, direct mail, and advertising. More recently, West was seeking a best-of-class tool to better ensure that projects run on time and on-budget during the development stages, including the concept, design, and copy-editing phases.  West's creative services team was seeking a tool to: 1) chart the overall schedule; 2) maintain up-to-date lists of tasks, dependencies and deliverables; 3) provide ready access to project templates; 4) record time tracking and allocate costs to numerous cost centers; 5) store and share document files with full revision histories; 6) report on process bottlenecks; and 7) ensure maximum security on all levels -- file, user, and system. Previously West had relied on "off the shelf" project management software to track project elements -- at the end of each day all users would manually submit data to an administrator who would collate the information and push out an updated view of the next day's schedule and tasks.  With Noosh, updates occur electronically and in real-time, schedules and dependencies are automatically shifted based on key project factors, notifications regarding changes are instantly sent to affected team members, and an accurate view of project status and relevant information is always available to team members. "Using Noosh 4 significantly decreased time spent on project administration for the procurement stages of our projects," said Virginia Flo, Marketing Production & Technology Manager of West. "Likewise Noosh 5 has delivered timesaving technology to streamline processes at the development stages of a project.  With Noosh our creative services team can focus on the important work that's required to bring new materials to market."  Flo added that the company is exploring plans to move from Noosh 4 to Noosh 5 for procurement processes, too. "Today's creative service and marketing departments are challenged to do more in less time," said Mike Gardner, CEO of Noosh.  "We are delighted that our Noosh 5 technology is helping to meet that challenge at West Group." About West Headquartered in Eagan, Minn., West is the foremost provider of integrated information solutions to the U.S. legal market. West is a business within The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) and was formed when West Publishing and Thomson Legal Publishing merged in June 1996. For more information, please visit the West website at www.westgroup.com.