For additional information, please contact:
Harry Albert
XS, Inc.
(919)379-3515 or
halbert@xsinc.com

Roy Cleveland
Doane Marketing Research
314.878.7707 or
rcleveland@doanemr.com

Doane Marketing Research and DataConduit announce strategic alliance
Companies to develop and market research products for production agriculture

RALEIGH, NC-Doane Marketing Research (DMR) and DataConduit announced today the formation of a strategic alliance to jointly develop and market the next generation of market research products for manufacturers and distributors serving production agriculture. The initial product, marketed under the name EZTrak, will use point-of-sale transaction level data to track in-season movement of prices paid by producers for their chemical and seed inputs. The web-based system will allow manufacturers and distributors to query aggregated pricing reports by product name and active ingredient and filter by geography and date range.

"We have worked with DataConduit the past two years on a variety of projects and have been impressed with the quality of their management and operations teams, their understanding of production agriculture and their ability to deliver leading edge web-based solutions to support our data collection and reporting needs," said Dennis Block, chief executive officer of DMR.

According to Block, EZTrak is being developed in response to long standing requests from distributors and manufacturers for transaction-based research that offers farm level pricing on a more real time basis. "They are looking for a solution similar to the price tracking studies that have been available for many years in other industries like consumer and pharmaceutical products."

"One crucial aspect of the point-of-sale data collection process is the way in which data from millions of end user transactions from multiple distributors will be aggregated, then standardized to protect the anonymity of participating distributors and their customers," said Bill Barton, general manager of DataConduit. "The EZTrak price tracking study will complement DMR's syndicated study, AgroTrak, best known for market share analysis by market segment, crop, pest complex and product usage practices.

"This partnership makes perfect sense for DataConduit since our point-of-sale data collection and reporting processes will blend well with DMR's unsurpassed product development and research methodology capabilities to deliver the next generation of market tracking studies."

Doane Marketing Research is the global leader for providing quantitative market tracking studies for production agriculture. DataConduit is an Internet technology and services company serving agriculture and adjacent markets with applications that improve companies' marketing effectiveness, operational efficiencies and regulatory compliance. For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Roy Cleveland at 314.878.7707 or Harry Albert at 919.327.9515. For more details on the two companies, visit Doane Marketing Research's web site at www.doanemr.com and DataConduit's web site at www.xsinc.com.

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