Leading Companies Drive Higher Product Profitability Through More Mature Global Design Strategies

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - November 6, 2007) - Aberdeen Group's benchmark report "Profitable Design Chains: Global Product Design Comes of Age" finds that global design is a reality for product development today and the strategy to design products across a global network of companies and individuals continues to grow. Organizations are turning to a global workforce to not only reduce costs, but also accelerate product innovation. Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks company (NYSE: HHS), has found that leading companies are doing this so well, they are 52% more likely to meet product launch target dates and are 28% more likely to meet product development cost targets than Industry Average companies.

"Initially, many companies pursuing global design sacrificed strategic needs, such as protecting intellectual property, in favor of addressing some of the more pressing, operational challenges," observes Jim Brown, Vice President of Product Innovation and Engineering Research for Aberdeen. "Companies are now starting to address both the strategic and operational challenges as a part of a more evolved approach to global design."

While protecting intellectual property continues to be the number one challenge of global design, leading companies have made strides in addressing it with technologies such as Digital Rights Management (DRM). Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and related technologies are also helping leading companies with collaboration, addressing the operational challenges of global design, and managing product development and engineering processes across widely dispersed teams.

The report offers the following recommendations:

--  Enable the design chain to operate in parallel to accelerate
    innovation while minimizing the impact of rework
--  Coordinate the design chain through formal project management, formal
    review processes, and centralized product design data to standardize and
    automate product development processes
--  Implement software solutions that protect intellectual property while
    enabling global design chains to collaborate.
    

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part to the following underwriters: Dassault Systemes Enovia and Cambridge Solutions. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4191.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
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Contact Information: Media Contact: Jim Brown, Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (610) 565-6302 jim.brown@aberdeen.com Michelle Boucher, Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5320 michelle.boucher@aberdeen.com