CheckFree Named 2005 Best Practices Winner by the Data Warehousing Institute

ATLANTA – CheckFree Corporation today announced it has received the 2005 Best Practices award for “Business Intelligence Stewardship and Data Quality” from The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI). These annual awards honor companies that have demonstrated excellence in developing, deploying and maintaining business intelligence and data warehousing applications.

CheckFree created its Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) to consolidate information about its customers, subscribers, payment history and other critical business information. CheckFree never sells this data but keeps it secure in a best practices environment to complete transactions as authorized by customers. The EDW enables CheckFree to provide more tailored and streamlined customer service and product offerings, and quickly notice customer trends and patterns. By institutionalizing the EDW, CheckFree is able to provide a central database of information reducing time spent on research and meetings-resulting in an estimated average annual savings of $300,000 in staff resources.

The TDWI award is the latest recognition of CheckFree’s focus on industry- leading quality. CheckFree has had a Sigma quality program in place since 1999. Earlier this year, NACHA, The Electronic Payments Association, presented CheckFree with the 2005 Kevin O’Brien ACH Quality Award in recognition of the company’s excellence in accounts receivable conversion processing.

The TDWI’s Best Practices Awards Program, presented annually since the organization’s inception a decade ago, identifies companies that have demonstrated their business intelligence and data warehousing projects as truly innovative solutions to problems commonly faced by data warehousing practitioners. The awards aim to provide professionals with best practices they can follow as data warehousing and business intelligence continues to grow and expand. Previous winners include: AT&T Wireless Services, Bank of America, Continental Airlines, L’Oreal Paris Consumer Products Division and Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc.

“Information is a corporate asset and having it secured while accessible to authorized users enables clients and associates to make more informed decisions in a time-efficient manner,” said Steve Olsen, Chief Information Officer for CheckFree Corporation. “The implementation of data stewardship as part of our Six Sigma initiative has resulted in cost-efficiencies, increased employee productivity and ever improving processes. This award recognizes the focus of our associates in moving data stewardship beyond CheckFree’s EDW and across all lines of business to maintain the consistency and accuracy of data.”