Achates Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of knowledge based change management, financial cost control and bid analysis software and services to both the public and private sectors. Achates develops cost effective, intuitive decision support software systems that provide the capability to electronically receive and analyze vendor and contractor bids and price submissions, forecast, historically track and evaluate budgets, estimates and actual cost data that organizations, departments and individuals typically enter and attempt to evaluate on spreadsheets.

We have designed our technology products and services to provide our customers with the competitive advantage they require to be successful in today's business environment.

Our software and business solutions are designed for quick deployment and immediate use. Our customers are as ubiquitous as are the users of Excel spreadsheets. Our software is easily installed on client premises and needs no special training, as all the commands are 'Windows' based.

Achates developed its technology because of the inability of spreadsheets and other programs to provide management with the lifecycle information, analysis and understanding of; a.) The specific reasons for historical and baseline budget or estimate changes, b.) The causes of wide ranging inconsistent pricing from contractors and vendors for the same exact items or the identical scope of work to each other or to the budget or estimate, c.) The historical cost and scope details of contractor and vendor pricing, scope revisions and expenditures, d.) The impact of budgeted or estimated costs to actual costs, historically and to a baseline.

Prior to the development of our products, organizations attempted to track and analyze budgets, estimates and purchases on a myriad of disparate spreadsheet formats. These unrelated departmental or individual spreadsheets had no standardization or consistency for budgeting, estimating or purchasing analysis throughout the entire business enterprise. Typically one person in a department or tasked to a project created all the formulas and links. Hopefully it all worked until that person took a vacation, got sick or quit, leaving management and finance stuck with whatever each person or department individually produced. At best, spreadsheets provided a simple, bottom line, numerical variance that never really told the 'what and why' of budget, estimate, pricing and expenditure discrepancies or changes. Management, using our technology, now has the capability to review the data and analysis enterprise wide, under the same consistent format (apples to apples). As managers know, the 'devil is in the details', and that is what our technology products provide. Our software systems use the power of a relational database to store, mine, track and evaluate the data, enterprise wide, necessary for management control of costs for purchases, projects, expenditures, operations budgets and the financial planning of future projects and operations.

The 'management by exception' reporting incorporated in our software and services solutions provide businesses with the high level standardization, performance, variance and analysis to support smarter, faster and more reliable decision-making across the business enterprise, leading to cost savings and increased organizational productivity.

Representative Customers
Our customers represent leading corporations, institutions and organizations in a wide range of industries and disciplines. They include EMC2, Nova Corp., Montgomery County, Maryland, Anne Arundel Community College, XM Satellite Radio, Data Centers Now and the State of Maryland. Each customer fully and carefully analyzed the capabilities of our products and services before making their purchasing decisions and found them superior to any other products available in the marketplace.

Users
Our users are project and development managers, the finance, administration, facilities, construction, budgeting and procurement divisions and departments of corporations, institutions, governments and consulting organizations, globally. Business managers and department heads across many industries and market sectors are facing increasing pressure to internally manage and control costs, increase productivity and drive down purchase costs in order to remain competitive. Increasingly the word 'accountability' has become the mantra of good management. Our inexpensive and easy to use tools and services provide managers with standardized internal controls necessary for understanding and controlling cost and scope issues with any project, budget, estimate or purchase. Our systems replace paper based manual spreadsheets with intuitive reports that isolate the pertinent information and analysis managers need for increased productivity and decision-making throughout the entire business enterprise.

Software Implementation Services
Achates Systems, Inc. implementation services involve running the appropriate Achates' programs and implementing the associated business process on behalf of the client. This arrangement allows the client to realize the full potential of the IntelliBudget™, or IntelliCost™ program while leaving them free to concentrate on core business priorities. When providing implementation services, Achates Systems, Inc. personnel can produce the reports requested by the client and ensure that the reports contain valid and accurate data. Achates Systems, Inc. personnel have no responsibility for interpreting or acting on the contents of the reports.