Welcome to The Hackett Group fourth quarter and year end conference call. Your lines have been placed on a listen only mode until the question-and-answer session. Please be advised that the conference is being recorded. Hosting tonight’s call are Mr. Ted Fernandez, Chairman and CEO and Mr. Rob Ramirez, Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you for joining us to discuss The Hackett Group’s fourth quarter and full year 2008 results. Speaking on the call today and here to answer your questions are Ted Fernandez, Chairman and CEO of The Hackett Group and myself, Robert Ramirez, CFO. A press announcement was released over the wires at 4:75 pm Eastern time. For a copy of the release please visit our website at www.TheHackettGroup.com. We will also place any additional financial or statistical data discussed on this call that is not contained in the release on the Investor Relations page of our website. Before we begin I would like to remind you that in the following comments and in the question-and-answer session we will be making statements about expected future results which may be forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Federal securities laws. These statements relate to our current expectations, estimates and projections and are not a guarantee of future performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict and which may not be accurate. Actual results may vary. These forward-looking statements should be considered only in conjunction with the detailed information particularly the risk factors contained in our SEC filings. At this point I would like to turn it over to Ted.

As I customarily do I will open by commenting on the quarter and year end overview or highlights. I will then turn it back over to Rob and ask him to comment on the quarterly operating results, cash flow and also comment on outlook. Rob will turn it back over to me and I will make some market and strategic related comments and then we will open it for Q&A. Let m start with the quarterly overview and highlights and let me also welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and year end earnings call. For the quarter we are pleased to report pro forma EPS of $0.10 which represents a year-over-year increase of 25%. These results were led by The Hackett Group’s 13% growth 23% on a constant currency basis or assuming the same foreign currency rates for this same period last year. Our strong operating results coupled with our continuing improvement in DSO resulted in over $11 million in cash flow from operations in the quarter. For our 2008 fiscal year pro forma earnings per share increased 94% which drove cash flow form operations of $27.5 million our best in the company’s history. This allowed us to continue to increase our cash balances during the year while returning $19 million to our shareholders through our stock buy back program. As I have mentioned throughout the year several changes have driven our improved performance, the introduction of our transformational benchmark has expanded our initial entry point with our clients. The improved performance by our REL team has been very meaningful and the stability of our HTS group also contributed to our improvement. One key area where we have shown improvement has been our ability to sell other services into our executive advisory client base. We are pleased to say that…

I plan to cover the following topics, an overview of our 2008 fiscal year annual results, an overview of our fourth quarter results along with an overview of related key operating statistics, a breakdown of our fourth quarter revenue, an overview of our cash flow activity during the quarter and I will then conclude with a discussion on our guidance for the first quarter of 2009. For purposes of this call any references to Hackett Group will specifically exclude Hackett Technology Solutions. Correspondingly I will comment separately regarding the financial results of The Hackett Group, Hackett Technology Solutions and the total company. Please not that references to gross revenues in my discussion represent net revenues plus reimbursable expenses. Additionally references to full pro forma net income exclude non-cash stock compensation expense and intangible asset amortization expense and assume a normalized tax rate of 40%. First let me discuss our full year results. For the full 2008 fiscal year total company revenue was $192.1 million a year-over-year increase of 9% or 10% adjusting for constant currency driven by an increase in The Hackett Group of 19% or 21% adjusting for constant currency. For the full year pro forma net income totaled $13.9 million or $0.33 per dilutive share an increase of $0.16 or 94% from the previous year. Full year pro forma earnings per dilutive share were favorably impacted by approximately $0.01 as a result of the net impact of fluctuations in foreign currencies. These were arguably the best operating results in the company’s history. Pro forma operating income for fiscal 2008 was $23.1 million or 12% of gross revenues as compared to $12.8 million or 7% of gross revenues in fiscal 2007. For the full year 2008 GAAP net income totaled $17.9 million or $0.43 per dilutive share as compared…

As we look forward we continue to believe that the market demand for our services remains favorable but it also clear that the global macro economic environment is impacting client decision making. As I mentioned in my opening comments a growing number of companies clearly recognize the need to reduce costs and optimize cash. However they are being more thoughtful and involving more people in these decisions which has lengthened decision making. In late December through early January we noticed an unusual delay in decision making especially in Europe that impacted how we started the quarter. However we are encouraged by the pipeline activity and decision making we have experienced over the last four to five weeks. Geographically we have seen this improvement in both European and North American clients. The question is whether this is a sustainable trend. In 2008 we were net winners in an increasingly difficult environment. In other words we had more clients turn to us quickly than those that either delayed or made a decision to go it alone. As we look at '09 our planning assumptions are that the US dollar will stay close to current levels or perhaps strengthen slightly against both the euro and British pound and will negatively impact our revenue assumptions for the year as Rob covered earlier. It is clearly too early and market volatility too high to know whether we can continue to be net winners as we were in '08. However we also know that if we’re able to stay close to our '08 revenue levels net of the expected FX impact our business model provides us with the leverage to be strongly profitable and cash flow positive. We also believe that although we do not know the length or extent of the current economic cycle we…

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from George Sutton – Craig-Hallum Capital. George Sutton – Craig-Hallum Capital: Rob, I wanted to specifically ask you with respect to 2009, I know you don’t give guidance but as we look out through the full year, is there any reason we shouldn’t expect you to continue to be nicely cash flow positive?

No I would expect to continue to cash flow nicely throughout the year. George Sutton – Craig-Hallum Capital: Ted, there were several statements you made, I just wanted to get a little more clarity around. The first related to the pick up that you saw in February with respect to pipeline activity both in Europe and the US. It sounds like it has improved but it’s not convincing to you yet and we’ve heard similar statements from other consultants who suggest they’ve seen improvements in February. Why are you not yet convinced? What was not convincing about it?

It’s simply the consistency in decision making. We’re seeing that clients are just going through different kinds of hoops and I’ll call it, it’s either more thorough, more thoughtful, more people involved then normal. Everyone is just being a little bit more diligent on how they spend their money and trying to be absolutely certain that they have a quick and very targeted payback. It’s just that, I will say that when Rob mentions the word stall in the pipeline, in Europe we really did feel a stall in that latter part of December to even the first of 10 days of January. But we saw the pipeline activity just improve just noticeably shortly thereafter and then obviously the decision making now has given us the opportunity then to guide the way we have. We just want to see more evidence in how that happens and how that plays out given what happened in December before we really comment further. George Sutton – Craig-Hallum Capital: You mentioned that you were expanding incentives and client briefings as a way to try to build more breadth across the customers. What did you mean by that?

We know that our executive program clients especially under these times will turn to those offerings as an efficient way of trying to leverage our capability and know how to make their decisions and make their assessments. I think one of the things that we clearly see is that they clearly turn to us quickly and I would say we’re at the very top of almost any list when a client is trying to gauge their opportunity to improve given their benchmark. I think we now know that our opportunity to grow is to take those benchmark entry points or these executive advisory clients that are leveraging our intellectual capital very efficiently to make sure that they also know that we’re able to make recommendations that we are prepared to stand by and fully implement which drives a substantial amount of our revenues. When we look at our total revenue, George, and look at the percentage of our clients and the percentage of our revenues that are coming from this initial assessment or high level prioritization that we do for clients and we look at how many of those clients given their total budgets could significantly increase their spend with us given our capabilities that’s where we see the greatest opportunity. But we know that in order to do that we need to make sure that the clients see beyond our intellectual capital and our benchmarking and turn to us with the same fury or access that they provide when they’re trying to quickly measure or assess their opportunity to improve. It’s a big opportunity for us. George Sutton – Craig-Hallum Capital: Lastly you mentioned you were looking to build a dedicated US and European sales team and I wasn’t sure exactly what you were referring to there, but I think it was with respect to some of the advisory work. Can you just give a little bit more detail around that?

If you recall in 2007 we went to a commission program that basically incented the sales force equally for the sale of all of our services. We expected this. The offering that sells for the lowest average selling price which happens to be [inaudible] program then [inaudible]. We have seen the leverage from those clients that buy our executive advisory program into our other offerings. When I mentioned that over 40% of our total Hackett sales came from that client base so we’re saying even though we may have allowed that executive advisory growth rate to slip a little bit in '08 vis-a-vis our other services we want to now take and commit a dedicated [European sales force] that will exclusively sell these advisory offerings because it is now clear to us that those clients that buy those executive advisory offerings are very loyal to us, have been significant users of our other offerings. George Sutton – Craig-Hallum Capital: Can you put some relevant context around the size of that initiative in terms of people?

I’m saying this with a smirk because I know all of our people are listening but never enough. Let’s just say it’s a meaningful commitment for us, it’s a meaningful commitment to the total sales group that we run today.

Our next question comes from William Sutherland - Boenning & Scattergood, Inc. William Sutherland - Boenning & Scattergood, Inc.: Following up on George’s question about the dedicated sales people for advisory, you mentioned it on the third quarter call too, Ted, and I didn’t know if it’s already something you’ve begun to implement and whether we’re already seeing it in the SG&A and direct costs or whether that’s something that’s going to tick up in '09.

You are correct that in the latter part of the year we took and dedicated some of our existing sales people fully to the sale of executive advisory programs. We will be spending incremental and new dollars to expand the number of dedicated people focused both in US and Europe. In fact we had only done that in the US, we had not done that in Europe. Given the strength of our European performance we decided to expand that dedicated sales team into Europe. Probably the best thing I could say relative to the cost is that we have clearly started to build out that capability. We’re not at the full headcount rate, however it’s clearly in our Q1 SG&A guidance and as we look at all of '09 we’re going to plan on spending a slightly higher amount in terms of the total sales cost as a percentage of our planned revenue but not meaningful enough to note. It’s simply because we had an opportunity to also reallocate some sales and marketing dollars differently into this dedicated group. It was a combination of new dollars and a reallocation of other dollars that we just didn’t believe we were getting the kind of return we wanted on. William Sutherland - Boenning & Scattergood, Inc.: Ted, the point you were making on talent management near the end of your comments, was that for all groups or was that particularly for sales or what was that focused on?

Not it’s for the entire organization. Is there an increased emphasis on sales? Yes, I would say that clearly we will be spending more dollars in training and development in '09 than we did in '08 and we will be clearly spending more in the client facing or sales and marketing side of that as well because again as I covered with George we know that if we effectively present all of our capabilities to our clients at the beginning and this is all of our market facing people, sales and our more senior people, that our revenue per client increases very quickly. We know that those are dollars that will be very well invested. William Sutherland - Boenning & Scattergood, Inc.: How about your plans for I call them conferences, I don’t think that’s what you call them, the client get togethers, same sort of schedule as last year even with the economy?

Same schedule, we are asking them if they want us to deliver it differently as you saw from the comments that I made around the usage of '08 and the participation of webcasts. There’s no doubt that we’re seeing an increased number of clients participate in our webcasts as the economic circumstances have gotten a little tougher. We’ll continue to talk to them and ask them if they want us to deliver it in a different way. We will respond directly to them. We will not miss any opportunity to make sure that we have a chance to be in front of our clients, make sure they understand how we can help them. We know it’ll pay off in the long run. William Sutherland - Boenning & Scattergood, Inc.: On executive advisory the trend there declining a bit, is that also a drop in renewal rate? I don’t think you actually publish that.

No, the renewal rate was really pretty consistent both on the membership and on the client side. So, no it was simply just probably more net new sales but renewals didn’t vary a whole lot from what we thought at the beginning of the year. We still think there’s significant room for improvement. We’re planning on improving in '09. We believe we can just given everything we saw and a good understanding of where some of our turnover came from. No, I would say that those program just simply require the right level of dedicated sales focus. I think the clients are seeing the value and we’re seeing the long term value both in the profitability of those programs themselves as well as just how broadly these clients have become users of our other offerings. William Sutherland - Boenning & Scattergood, Inc.: Switching over to tech for a second, that group had progressed last year to the point where they were even year-over-year in the back half. I know there’s no currency impact there, so Rob said it would down Q1 year-over-year. If you could just provide some color on the underlying trends there.

Yes and I’m glad you asked that because the color would be slightly different. I can’t say that the pipeline activity and access is favorable the way I characterize it for the Hackett and REL related businesses. I think we expect it to be a little tougher times for technology oriented investments and solutions. I think they require a little bit more time to implement and provide a longer ROI visibility. We just expect we’ll do worse in this environment so in fairness that’s what we think will happen in tech. Having said that when we look at the nature of our tech offerings, the fact that our Hyperion Group, the whole EPM and reporting space has been a hot space and that these are solutions that we can implement within three to nine months normally at very sophisticated clients. We think that should fare better than what we consider to be a normal tech solution group and our SAP group which as you know focuses on small and medium businesses and the majority of our client base is in the light sized area, biotech, medtech area where investment in those areas continue. We also expect that group to remain reasonably stable and do reasonably well in '09 or at least as we had into '09 we feel that way. The pipeline is able to feel that way and then the group where we’ve had the most concern really throughout all of '08 has been the Oracle Group and that group is probably the one that’s getting hurt a little bit more than the others. I’m sorry, our Oracle non-Oracle EPM group because I still refer to Hyperion as Hyperion instead of Oracle EPM. William Sutherland - Boenning & Scattergood, Inc.: Rob, you were saying that absent FX assuming the same revenue level in the first quarter of last year I think you would be saying Hackett’s pretty close to even in the first quarter in your assumption?

Yes. Hackett on a US dollar basis would be about flat. Hackett on a constant currency basis would be up. William Sutherland - Boenning & Scattergood, Inc.: That’s not what I was thinking. In other words, just to use numbers, you did $30 million last year in Hackett Q1 and you’re saying on a constant currency basis you’d be up from $30 million?

That’s correct.

I’m showing no further questions. I would now like to turn it back to Ted Fernandez.

Let me thank everyone for participating on our fourth quarter and year end results call. Look forward to providing you our next update when we report the first quarter. Thank you again for participating.

That concludes today’s call. please disconnect your lines at this time.