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PRAGMATECH EXPANDS SALES EFFECTIVENESS PRODUCT LINE WITH WEB PUBLISHING AND KNOWLEDGE BASE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

In One Simple Step, Web Publisher Lets Users Easily Create New Web Sites For Broader Information Delivery; Ensures Consistent Messaging Across All Sales And Marketing Channels

Amherst, NH, October 23, 2000 --  Pragmatech Software, Inc., a leading provider of sales effectiveness software, today introduced Web Publisher, a Web site creation and knowledge base management solution.  Web Publisher helps companies deliver sales and marketing information consistently, accurately, and easily via the Internet to the widest possible audience, including employees, sales and marketing professionals, customers, prospects, and channel partners.

"Companies today are struggling to give a consistent look and feel to product and service information across the enterprise, but in spite of their best efforts, information gaps still exist that often result in inconsistent and confusing messaging," says Pragmatech CEO Brooke Savage.  "With Web Publisher, they can now create a continually evolving knowledge base of mission-critical sales and marketing information and through the use of personalized web sites, make it accessible to anyone within or outside the organization.  And they can do it without investing in a costly and complex content management solution."

Web Publisher can be implemented as a stand-alone solution or as part of Pragmatech's Sales Effectiveness Software Suite.  In either case, the software extends the reach of a company's Pragmatech knowledge base to the worldwide Web.  In a single step and from the comfort of MS Word, content created for and stored in a Pragmatech knowledge base can be easily published as web sites for use on intranets, extranets, and the Internet without HTML coding or programmer involvement.  

Whether utilizing a newly created Pragmatech knowledge base or one generated from another of Pragmatech's products (e.g., The RFP Machine or The Proposal Assembler), Web Publisher provides all the functionality companies need to disseminate the most up-to-date information possible to critical audiences.

Using Web Publisher, sales and marketing professionals can create their own compelling professional web sites without relying on an HTML-savvy programmer.  The solution's unprecedented and unmatched ease-of-use gives non-technical sales and marketing users a method for improving their selling capabilities and their closure rates by way of unique, customized web sites that can provide the most up-to-date product and service information to their customers and prospects.

Kathleen Otis, Proposal Specialist in the Presales group within SAP America's Human Resources Business Sector, has been evaluating Web Publisher's viability as an additional component of the group's proposal automation activities. "With Web Publisher I was able to create a website with our database in about an hour. This was impressive because the database for our HR product contains about 2,000 records. This could allow us a much more efficient way of distributing information that is vital in our sales process. Our sales force would have access to current and accurate information about our products and would be able to assemble RFPs on the fly. It's a constant struggle to keep up with the rate at which new and enhanced products are being introduced. This tool would help us keep up with information as soon as it is available," she said. "The product was easy to use and I suspect that most people would be able to pick it up without training. Also, the HyperAssembly tool and drag and drop simplicity will be popular with our users who have little time to deal with complicated instructions."

A Wide Range of Tools And Features

Web Publisher provides a wide range of content management and web publishing tools that simplify the dissemination of valuable product and service information and optimize access to this data through web sites.  With one simple product, users can:
·       Create and/or modify the content using the product's Build and Quick Build features;
·       Search records using Key Words or sample questions;
·       Publish knowledge base content to the Web;
·       Update and modify web site content and layout through the familiar Word interface;
·       Enhance the web site layout through simple customization of frame size and layout, font style, and background elements.      

According to Rob DeSisto, vice president, Customer Relationship Management, The Gartner Group: "There is growing demand in companies for fast, affordable ways to create sales and marketing web sites that are customized to meet a prospect's unique requirements."

Web Publisher's key features include:
·       Ease-of-use for non-technical users
Since Web Publisher is tightly integrated with Microsoft Word 2000, users can work from a familiar environment to easily update knowledge base and web site content.  Web Publisher handles all of the technical details surrounding the creation of HTML files required for web publishing.  Web site features, such as background color, font styles, and frame positioning and size, can all be modified from the comfort of Word, eliminating the need for a user to know HTML programming language.  Automatic HTML conversion, in turn, frees users to concentrate on content quality.

·       Rapid, efficient update of web site content
Web Publisher's query-based republishing feature saves time when updating Pragmatech-based web site content, enabling companies to readily satisfy public demand for up-to-date information.

·       Comprehensive security
User-defined security fields can be set for individual content records or groups of records, and provide greater control over web site content.  Users can flag "works in progress" not intended for immediate publication and selectively exclude records "for internal use only" from a publicly accessed site.


·       Drag-and-drop document assembly via hyperlinks
Web Publisher includes Pragmatech's innovative HyperAssembly add-in that allows links from the Web to be dropped into a Word document.  When the user invokes the "Assemble" command, a Word document is created from the links, providing a quick and easy way to assemble a unique document.

System Requirements

Pragmatech recommends the following hardware and software configuration for Web Publisher implementation:
·       Intel Pentium 350 MHz processor
·       128 MB of available RAM      
·       Windows 98, Windows 2000, or Windows NT 4.0
·       Microsoft Office 2000
·       Network connection
·       25 MB hard disk space for application installation.  Additional hard disk space may be required for the database, depending on content type and quantity.
·       Plus appropriate corporate web server hardware and software infrastructure

About Pragmatech Software

Pragmatech Software, Inc., headquartered in Amherst, New Hampshire, develops and markets innovative and intelligent web-enabled sales effectiveness software solutions for a variety of industries, including financial services, banking, healthcare, telecommunications, legal, insurance, technology, and many others.  The company's Sales Effectiveness Software Suite - which includes The RFP Machine and The Proposal Assembler - greatly simplifies the process of creating winning business proposals and responding to Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and Requests for Information (RFIs) for sales and marketing professionals and, with the addition of Web Publisher, expands the means through which corporate messaging is disseminated.  The company can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.pragmatech.com


Note to editors:  All company and product names appearing herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders.

 
Editorial Contact:
Tom McFarland
Vector Communications, Inc.
617 846 1116
tmcfarland@vector-comm.com
 
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