Astea Announces New Flexible Pricing Strategy for PowerHelp.

CHALFONT, Penn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 1995 -- Astea International Inc. today announced a flexible pricing strategy for support operations with two to five concurrent users of PowerHelp, its client/server-based help desk and customer support solution. The pricing strategy is targeted to internal help desk organizations supporting up to 1000 internal customers.

Astea's new pricing strategy enables relatively small help desk organizations to minimize the upfront investment required to implement a help desk, while delivering the full functionality of PowerHelp, the industry's most flexible and scalable solution.

"A majority of help desk organizations are comprised of two to five customer support representatives," said Keith Larson, Astea's vice president of marketing. "The functionality and flexibility of PowerHelp is critical to these smaller sites because they face the same breadth of problems as large support organizations, but lack equivalent resources and expertise. The new pricing strategy for PowerHelp will make it easy for these help desks to meet their specific end-user needs."

The new pricing schedule features a 24-month lease arrangement which bundles PowerHelp, all the software required to implement the system, including the supporting database, and comprehensive technical and hotline support. Pricing varies by the number of concurrent users, ranging from $99 - $149 per month. Pricing for options like Astea's CASE-1 case-based reasoning module will have a separate monthly fee. This pricing is the most competitive in the industry for smaller scale help desk operations.

At the end of the initial period, the customer will have the option to renew the agreement for another 12 or 24 months or upgrade to a full software license.

PowerHelp

PowerHelp, now in Release 2.0, is a leading client/server help desk solution for diverse internal help desk and external customer support environments. PowerHelp's workflow and information capture capabilities automate all aspects of the call cycle -- from call tracking to problem management through problem resolution -- and deliver critical end-user and technical information on the desktop. PowerHelp incorporates the full range of advanced reasoning capabilities, support for OLE, and is the first solution to support computer telephony integration. PowerHelp is a highly scalable solution that can grow with an organization as it expands.

Astea will demonstrate PowerHelp, its client/server-based help desk and customer support solution now in Release 2.0, at the Help Desk Institute Conference and Expo, March 5-8 in San Francisco in booth #613.

Astea International Inc. is the leading developer and supplier of integrated, enterprise-wide customer interaction software systems. Under ACES (Astea Customer Enterprise Series), the company offers the most comprehensive customer interaction software solutions for the sales automation, customer support and customer service markets. The company's software systems are used by more than 500 companies worldwide, representing a cross section of service companies. Headquartered in Chalfont, Pa., Astea also has regional offices in Bedford, Ma., Denver, Co., Los Angeles, Ca., and San Mateo, Ca., with international offices in Europe and Asia/Pacific.

CONTACT: Keith Larson,

Astea International

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Doug Black/Gwen Lewis

Miller Communications

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