Blue Pumpkin Kicks Off Fiscal Year with Consecutive Profitable Quarters(email this article)

Sunnyvale, Calif. – September 11, 2003 – Blue Pumpkin (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), an industry leader in enterprise workforce optimization solutions, today announced recording its second consecutive quarter of pro forma profitability to usher in a new fiscal year.  Additional highlights of a strong first quarter include unveiling another industry-first solution, expanding its global customer base, strengthening its partner community and winning top honors at the industry’s largest trade show.

"Our ability to achieve and sustain operational profitability in this difficult economy speaks to the strength of Blue Pumpkin as a dominant player and a long-term business partner," said Nilesh Shah, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Blue Pumpkin.  "It reaffirms what our customers and partners already know – that we run an efficient, disciplined company with aggressive innovations that deliver a compelling value proposition over our competitors."

Blue Pumpkin’s pro forma profitability maintains the previous quarter’s momentum and is attributed to robust purchases from new and repeat customers. The company’s solutions strategy has become an increasingly important differentiator in driving sales, consisting of innovative software applications combined with industry best-practices professional services.

In the first quarter ending August 31, new customers worldwide continue to contribute to Blue Pumpkin’s success and include the following in North America: AT&T Solutions, Honeywell, MassMutual Financial Group, Riggs Bank. Star HRG, University of Texas Medical Center, Walmart (Mexico) and many others.  International wins in Europe, India, and Asia Pacific include: Car Care Plan, Cosmos Bank, Mighty River Power, The Law Society and other customers.  The global expansion of its customer base solidifies Blue Pumpkin’s industry leadership and affirms the value delivered by its solutions.

Further, many Blue Pumpkin customers returned to make additional purchases as a measure of strong customer loyalty and compelling add-ons in both product and services offerings.  In North America, these customers include: 3M, ADP Claims Services, Boeing Employee Credit Union, Citibank, Commercial Federal Bank, Guardian Life Insurance, ICT Group, Lowe’s Companies, Plow & Hearth, RMH Teleservices, Scotiabank, Time Warner Cable and more.  Internationally, return customers include: Cathay United Bank, Emirates Banking Group, Nedbank, Nvisage and others.

"Making strategic investments in workforce optimization gives us a tremendous competitive edge, ensuring our people are working effectively and efficiently," said Larry Kaumeyer, vice president of direct sales for ATB Financial.  "Blue Pumpkin’s product strategy makes sense and lets us grow at our own pace – clearly paving the path from workforce management to performance management and beyond."  

Blue Pumpkin also signed on new partners and resellers, including Adirondack, Cross Telecom, InRound, North American Communications Resource (NACR), Qualisys and Salient to help accelerate sales and further expand market penetration.  By continuing to strengthen its partner community, the company increases customer success through the added value, expertise, and responsiveness that local partners provide.

Blue Pumpkin unveiled its latest innovation in the first quarter: Blue Pumpkin Advisor Express, the industry’s first quick-launch performance management solution.  Deployable in just one week, the new solution is designed as the next logical step for contact centers to increase the value of their current workforce management efforts and successfully begin the process of performance management.  With a pre-packaged set of the most important productivity metrics, Blue Pumpkin Advisor Express transforms vast streams of data into actionable information to immediately identify and correct problems as well as reward and repeat successes.

At the International Call Center Management (ICCM) Conference and Exposition in Chicago, the industry’s largest global event, Blue Pumpkin won the "Best of Show" award in the Workforce Management category, beating out products from Aspect, Centerforce, Envision, IEX and other competitors.  Blue Pumpkin earned the award in part due to its vision that "workforce management" is more than just scheduling and forecasting and must include other elements that enable optimal management of a workforce, including real-time tracking of actual agent activity and monitoring and improving employee productivity.

About Blue Pumpkin
Blue Pumpkin is the only workforce optimization vendor that that can deliver both the science and the art required to optimize the performance of a company’s most valuable asset - its people.  Addressing critical business challenges with both innovative technology - the science – and best-practices professional services - the art - we help our customers align performance measurements with business goals, develop strategic staffing plans, deploy resources, evaluate the results, and implement on-going improvements.  Blue Pumpkin solutions deliver proven value to more than 1,000 organizations worldwide such as AOL Time Warner, AT&T, eBay, E*TRADE, Federal Express, JetBlue, Mercedes-Benz and Visa.  www.bluepumpkin.com.

© 2003 Blue Pumpkin Software, Inc.  All rights reserved. Blue Pumpkin and the Blue Pumpkin logo are registered trademarks of Blue Pumpkin Software, Inc.  All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.