Family Dollar Selects and Implements Asentinel for Telecom Expense Management

MEMPHIS, Tennessee, April 3, 2006 - Family Dollar, one of the fastest growing discount chain stores in the United States, with over 6,000 stores in 44 states and an additional 400 outlets opening in the 2006 fiscal year, has selected Asentinel's patentpending software for telecom expense management, David C. Perdue, Asentinel CEO, announced today.

Family Dollar will use Asentinel's software for auditing, allocation, reporting, vendor management, contract management, EDI invoicing, and workflow routing and approval. Through Asentinel's web-based reporting, Family Dollar personnel will have the ability to view important reports such as actual charges, active inventory, and performance against budget through a real-time web interface.

"Before Asentinel, all of Family Dollar's telecom expense management was done manually," said Fernando Velado, division vice-president, technology and infrastructure, Family Dollar. "Auditing invoices was difficult due to lack of personnel resources and lack of detail in the invoices we received on paper and CDs."

Asentinel solved the problem by making all manual invoicing processes automated and creating a centralized repository for all of Family Dollar's telecom assets. Now, there is an integrated system for ordering, provisioning, inventory management and reconciliation of invoices that will keep up with voice, data and equipment charges for Family Dollar's rapidly growing roster of stores throughout the country.

"We have confidence that Asentinel will successfully and efficiently generate a significant short- and long-term ROI for Family Dollar," said Perdue. "Family Dollar was the textbook case of a business that had outgrown manual telecom invoice processing. Asentinel's EDI invoicing will provide faster receipt and significantly greater invoice detail and its invoice standardization will ensure that all invoices are translated into a common format with costs allocated to the appropriate department or store."

Asentinel offers a comprehensive telecom expense management software package that integrates with the client's existing systems. Written in Java, the software automates the process of telecom invoice management in real time, analyzing every invoice against vendor contracts, hidden costs, active inventory, and flagging every exception. Since these errors often recur each month and can go back for years, getting an expedient return on investment from Asentinel is not difficult. In the long-term, clients' ongoing telecom expenses also decline while internal processing time is greatly reduced.

Asentinel's Web-based software has more than 50 cumulative years of development behind it. Asentinel continues to grow its list of Fortune 1000 companies and government entities that realize the power of automated telecom expense management. For more information, visit Asentinel at www.asentinel.com.