San Ramon, CA – November 17, 2004 – Relevant Business Systems, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software provider to leading Aerospace & Defense, Engineer-to-Order, Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul, Contract Manufacturers, and other project-based firms, announced today that Dexter Research has purchased Relevant’s Enterprise Software.

Dexter Research, located in Dexter, MI, is a leading supplier of heat, light, and toxicity sensors to the automotive, medical, industrial, consumer, and military markets. They are the market leader in engineer-to-order, custom sensors, a position they’ve attained by building a solid reputation for high quality during almost thirty years in business.

Cory Ziegler, Dexter Comptroller, believes that quality alone will be insufficient to maintain a leadership position in a very competitive future climate. Cory teamed with Dexter employees from Engineering/Sales, QC, Manufacturing, and Finance to evaluate the ERP software purchase they believed would provide a backbone to improving functional areas critical to future growth. After a thorough search, Dexter chose Relevant Business Systems’ Enterprise Solution because of its ability to deliver superior Customer Relationship and Inventory Management capabilities:

• Customer Relationship Management
  The custom sensor market has extremely long sales cycles, with sales taking from three to six years to mature. Excellent customer tracking and service, from the initial request for samples and engineering input, through delivery of the final product is crucial to Dexter. In addition, because sensors are often components of higher level component products, Dexter is often at arm’s length from the eventual end user and wanted a system that would enable more sophisticated targeting based on a better understanding of where their sensors are deployed.
  
  According to Ziegler, “Relevant had the best integrated CRM we saw. For example, the software tracks disparate customer communication threads, so Customer Service knows exactly what was communicated by Technical Support, even though there might be an interval of several years between the conversations. It also enables us to better ID end users.”
• Inventory Managment
  Once a sale is actually received, turn around time becomes critical. Through the implementation of lean manufacturing initiatives, Dexter has succeeded in reducing its typical order fulfillment from four weeks to two. But thousands of raw components, some with lead times of up to fourteen weeks, require excellent inventory tracking to support the newly reduced turn times without significantly increasing inventory safety stocks.
  
  Ziegler states, “We found that Relevant offered an ability to track inventory at a very granular level and combined that with more flexibility to maneuver within the system.”

According to Ziegler, “In the end, Relevant also just had a better feel. The Business Wizard Dashboard not only provides the cleanest user interface we saw, but also lets each user customize their view of the system and the information they need to see to get their job done. That’s a real benefit, and we didn’t see anything comparable.”