LANG GERHARD: OK. One more question, if I could. With regard to eCOST, lets you batten down the
hatches, create the platform and have an OK 06 and a good look into 07. What do you do next? Do
you take it to Europe or do you just you do another deal with another online retailer? Or
whats the next step so to speak or the how do you parlay that?
MARK LAYTON: Well, if assuming your facts or your stated assumptions are true, then, you know,
I would I would expect that we would have a growth in the shareholder value that we have that
would give us access to additional capital, and the acquisition marketplace would be an area where
we would certainly consider doing this again. I think that because of the scalability of our
platform and how good an application it is, we believe, into the Web commerce area, that we can
plunk other companies on top of this, given them scale, drive costs out and do the same thing
again. Then international expansion is also very likely. You know, I think that, you know, were
not completely decided on it, but certainly we have an eye on Canada and Europe for eCOST because
weve already got investments in those markets that we can we can launch on.
LANG GERHARD: OK, thanks.
MARK LAYTON: Thank you.
OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Jack Andrews, of Inflexion Partners.
JACK ANDREWS, INFLEXION PARTNERS: Hi, good morning. I want to drill down on the services business
a little bit if I could. You talked about, you know, peaks and valleys in the past. And it seems
that 2004 was certainly a peak in terms of new business signings. And it seems that youve been in
a bit of a valley here over the last several months and you talked about kind of re-focusing maybe
more on your core verticals. I was just wondering what else you think is kind of necessary or
to really drive this business. I mean, is there something that youre seeing in the marketplace
that might lend you to change your sales process, perhaps, or just you know, besides kind of
narrowing your focus, is there something that you think might re-ignite the signings on the side of
the business?
MARK LAYTON: Well, I think you know, one of the things I think that has impact in the domestic
outsourcing area in the last couple of years has been a lot of companies interest in the
attractiveness and cost in the offshore outsourcers, you know, particularly in the what we would
call the silo areas of the outsourcing business, particularly customer service, call center, e-mail
response, credit and collections activity. A lot of those activities were offshored by companies.
You know, weve seen some social dissatisfaction, I guess, in words I would use in terms of the
consumers in the U.S.s responsiveness to that, challenges in terms of actually achieving the cost
benefits that companies thought they were going to gain out of that. And I think that one of the
trends that were beginning to see is a movement back of a lot of these functions or the deployment
of hybrid models where, you know, you only offshore very under-sophisticated transactions and
try to keep them, you know the more sophisticated ones here where theres a greater
understanding and sensitivity to the transaction. So I think thats one trend that weve been
battling and I think its turning from there.
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