Closeout Retailer Uses New Solution to Manage Partner Performance

Atlanta, GA — April 8, 2008 — Inovis today revealed its Partner Performance Suite and implementation by Big Lots, Inc. (NYSE: BIG), America's largest broadline closeout retailer. The Inovis Partner Performance Suite is an on-demand service that helps retailers setup vendors, monitor transactions, automate deductions and create scorecards.

With more than 1,350 stores in 47 states, Big Lots has the buying power to find and negotiate the best deals in the business. As a closeout retailer, Big Lots sources brand-name merchandise that result from production overruns, discontinued products, bankruptcies, liquidations and insurance claims. These sourcing channels require Big Lots to have a very tight relationship with their vendor community, and be flexible and responsive in setting up and monitoring partners in order to get product to market.

Big Lots turned to Inovis to help them with two strategic initiatives that support getting product to stores faster: to automate their vendor compliance program that Big Lots started in 2006; and to improve processes at their distribution centers.

Using Inovis' Partner Performance Suite, Big Lots is working together with its suppliers to improve the quality of shared business processes, such as ordering, invoicing, logistics, deductions and compliance. By gaining visibility into supply chain problems as they happen, the company minimizes supply-chain disruptions, limits the cost of vendor deductions and gets products in customers' hands more quickly while maintaining a positive relationship with its vendors.

"Our work with Inovis has been beneficial in our effort to improve our responsiveness and flexibility in the supply chain," said Katy Keane, vice president of transportation services, Big Lots, Inc. "We plan to roll out our Vendor Compliance program to ensure ongoing, high-quality vendor collaboration as a way to improve our ability to react to forecasted as well as unplanned purchasing opportunities that keep our customers coming back to our stores."

"With the continued transition to demand-driven supply chains, retailers realize they must look beyond their internal systems and into the partner community for continued improvement," says Erik Huddleston, Inovis' Vice President of Product and Strategic Applications. "Inovis' Partner Performance software has helped Big Lots and its suppliers work together on these challenges."

• Inovis Community Management helps rollout and certify vendors to a company's business process requirements. Surveys, a simulation and testing environment, email notifications and workflow driven task-lists help gauge vendor readiness and ensure timely, quality partner performance in production.
• Inovis Operations Support helps prevent production issues by giving vendor management staff, distribution centers, and vendors proactive visibility into at risk orders and shipments and daily work lists of corrective actions by monitoring "in flight" transactions.
• Inovis Deductions Management reduces the cost of production issues by managing and automating a retailer's vendor deduction program, helping organizations increase the recovery of possible deductions while reducing the need for time-consuming research and automating cross department coordination.
• Inovis Scorecard Management provides retailers and vendors a shared view of performance against key performance indicators, linking performance problems to their root cause and managing scorecard improvement programs and performance programs such as certified receiving.

You can learn more online about the Inovis Actionable Intelligence capabilities.

About Inovis
Inovis is a leading provider of on-demand Business Community Management solutions that empower companies to transact, collaborate and optimize communications with their entire trading community. By standardizing and automating mission-critical business interactions, companies can dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of supply chain communication. This foundation of high-quality, reliable and secure connectivity provides real-time visibility across the order-to-payment lifecycle. The resulting actionable intelligence enables users to proactively address supply chain issues before they impact profitability, shortening cycle times, improving productivity and increasing customer satisfaction.

With more than 20 years of expertise, Inovis delivers its products and services to more than 20,000 companies over a wide range of industries and markets across the globe. For more information, visit www.inovis.com, or visit the Inovis Community Blog.

About Big Lots, Inc.
Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Big Lots (NYSE: BIG) is a Fortune 500 company with over 1,350 stores nationwide. Five regional distribution centers ranging in size from 1 million to 3 million square feet and two furniture distribution centers provide the company's stores with brand-name products from more than 3,000 manufacturers. Big Lots offers consumers a unique shopping experience and wide range of bargain-priced merchandise, including brand-name closeouts, one-of-a-kind deals, seasonal products, consumables, furniture, housewares, toys, and gifts. For more information, visit www.biglots.com.

Inovis is a trademark of Inovis, Inc.