Group 1's Leading Data Quality Solutions Adopted as Company-wide Standard Technology by Nation's Second Largest Newspaper Publisher LANHAM, Md., March 27 - Group 1 Software, a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM)- enabling software solutions, today announced that Knight Ridder has selected its data quality solutions to develop an accurate single customer view of its advertisers and subscribers. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Knight Ridder publishes 32 daily newspapers in 28 U.S. markets, with a readership of 8.4 million daily and 12.3 million Sunday for its newspapers. Group 1's address data quality, customer matching and geographic and demographic intelligence solutions will provide to Knight Ridder verified, enhanced and consolidated intelligence for subscriber and advertiser information, enhancing target marketing programs. "We selected Group 1 Software as our data quality provider because of Group 1's leading solutions and commitment to working closely with us to ensure the success of this most strategic initiative,'' said Steve Hannah, vice president of technology at Knight Ridder. "Corporate data can be a company's most important asset. Group 1 is helping us to utilize this most valuable information better by validating, standardizing and enriching both data entering the enterprise plus the existing subscriber and advertiser records residing in our databases. By combining name and address verification, geographic and demographic intelligence and duplicate record consolidation, we can obtain a holistic view of each customer's business relationship with Knight Ridder. The foundation of accurate data will enable us to make more informed business decisions in the areas of market research, customer knowledge and target marketing.'' The Group 1 solutions will provide data integrity and enhancement for Knight Ridder's circulation and advertising databases and the databases of each of the company's newspapers. In addition to greater subscriber and advertiser intelligence, Group 1's solutions will enable Knight Ridder to achieve significant savings from the United States Postal Service by standardizing addresses, validating postal codes, and presorting mailings. The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer is the first Knight Ridder newspaper implementing Group 1's data quality solutions. "We're very pleased to be working with Knight Ridder to implement a data quality solution which will be utilized enterprise-wide,'' said Bob Bowen, CEO of Group 1 Software. "This solution will be a foundation of Knight Ridder's industry-leading efforts to harness the power of its corporate data to increase newspaper circulation and advertising revenues.'' Group 1's data quality solutions are the cornerstone of successful CRM initiatives. These applications enable businesses to validate the integrity of customer and prospect data and enhance that information with valuable geographic and demographic intelligence.