HOUSTON, April 17 /PRNewswire/ --

- Acorn Systems launches new pre-packaged cost and profitability management solutions designed for new clients in Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Consumer Products, Distribution and Logistics

Acorn Systems, Inc. today announced the launch of several new, highly targeted applications in the form of Acorn Industry Value Accelerators. The solutions enable new Acorn clients to leverage pre-packaged, best practices to realize bottom line profit improvements in an accelerated timeframe. Acorn's suite of Industry Value Accelerators is available for its core industries: Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Consumer Products, Distribution and Logistics.

Each Acorn Industry Value Accelerator (Acorn IVA) incorporates Acorn's wealth of knowledge and best practices in enterprise performance measurement, costing, and profitability modeling and optimization. The Acorn IVAs feature:

-- Pre-defined data fields and data dictionaries for required source-system data -- Pre-defined costing and profitability models, including business processes, activities, dimensions and object structures, and modeling logic -- Pre-defined reporting and analytics -- Pre-defined profit improvement roadmaps and blueprints

"For a company in one of these industry verticals who is interested in implementing a costing or profitability solution, the 'silver bullet' of accelerated profit and performance improvement is here," said Chris Fraga, Chief Strategy Officer of Acorn Systems. "With any of our traditional software competitors, you are essentially buying software that requires quarters to man-years of internal resources, consulting services and brute force to build, customize and implement a system for your specific needs. Imagine the advantage of investing in software that is pre-populated with proven best practices from the start. Pre-defined data dictionaries, a pre-configured business process model and pre-built reporting and analytics greatly reduce the time to implement so the solution can be used for its intended purpose -- meaningful analysis and making profitable business decisions."

"The impact of marrying Acorn's proven best of breed platform applications, Performance Analyzer or Cost Analyzer, with an Industry Value Accelerator is profound. Companies will benefit from shortened implementation and time to value, leveraging proven best practices to mitigate risk, and a lowered total cost of implementation and ownership," commented Mr. Fraga. "Acorn's mission from the start has been to improve the bottom line profit and performance of our customers. Now we are making that promise better, cheaper and faster for net new clients. One new Acorn IVA customer in distribution was installed and utilizing the solution in 30 days from start to finish. The proof is in the pudding, and we have the proof."

John E. Van Decker, Research VP, Gartner, states, "Profitability management is a key component of corporate performance management (CPM), enabling a firm to understand its costs/profit by product and customer, leading to better business decisions. Packaged solutions for vertical industries can provide quicker paths to value and should be a key consideration for a firm scoping a profitability management solution."

About Acorn Systems, Inc.

Acorn Systems provides profit improvement solutions that enable clients to maximize revenue, minimize cost, and improve operational efficiencies. Acorn reveals profit improvement opportunities across the enterprise -- customers, channels, segments, products, vendors and processes -- enabling clients to make continuous, fact-based decisions to improve their bottom line and Earnings per Share (EPS). Acorn's unique and proven approach to profit improvement is used by leaders in Financial Services, Retail, Consumer Products, Manufacturing, Distribution and Logistics, who have realized over US$1B in annual profit improvements and created over US$9B in new shareholder value. For more information, visit http://www.acornsys.com or contact sales@acornsys.com.

Contact: Kimberly Box Vice President, Marketing Acorn Systems, Inc. Phone: +1-713-963-9000 kbox@acornsys.com

Web site: http://www.acornsys.com

Kimberly Box, Vice President, Marketing of Acorn Systems, Inc., +1-713-963-9000, kbox@acornsys.com