Astea brings Fortune 500-level customer service to medium-size businesses.

HORSHAM, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 7, 1997--

ServiceAlliance(tm) is first software designed to meet the customer

service needs of medium-sized organizations that also require quick

implementation and rapid return on investment

Astea International Inc. (NASDAQ: ATEA) today introduced ServiceAlliance(tm), the first integrated service automation software that enables medium-sized service organizations to utilize the business functionality and best practices that, until now, only the larger Fortune 500 companies could deploy. ServiceAlliance incorporates many of the features and business processes of Astea's DISPATCH-1, the industry's leading customer service application used globally by over 400 companies. ServiceAlliance is a new breed of customer care software that centralizes, automates and accelerates all aspects of customer service.

What is ServiceAlliance?

ServiceAlliance is an integrated solution designed for medium-sized service businesses or service organizations. ServiceAlliance tightly integrates customer requests, contracts, service orders, sales orders, customer support, inventory and logistics so that entire service organizations can work together as a team. Unlike other products, ServiceAlliance provides a universal view of each customer that makes it easy to track and manage customer support throughout the customer service lifecycle.

"ServiceAlliance is the culmination of careful engineering and development," said Zack Bergreen, President and CEO of Astea. "With ServiceAlliance, Astea capitalized on its vast and extensive experience in field service and customer support, and successfully translated that knowledge of technology and best business practices into a superior product design."

Some important ServiceAlliance characteristics include:

-- Integrates "best of breed" business processes into a decision-support management system, which focuses on the "pressure points" of the service manager and enhances a service organization's financial and operational performance. -- Enables centralized management of the complete service cycle that supports service automation best business practices, which eliminates the traditional overhead associated with entering information into multiple systems and provides quicker customer response. -- Allows rapid implementation and is easily customizable to reflect the actual workflow of the way service organizations run their business. -- Utilizes the latest client/server, distributed objects and web technology and will comply with the recently announced "Green Shark" open architecture, which supports common component industry standards, such as CORBA and DCOM.

"Today companies of all sizes need to improve the level of their customer service in order to remain competitive in the global economy. ServiceAlliance incorporates Astea's 'best-of-breed' knowledge of the complete customer service cycle. This knowledge, acquired from 17 years in customer service automation, has helped many organizations achieve a quick return on investment, enabling them to significantly enhance their service profitability," said Len von Vital, Senior Vice President for ServiceAlliance.

"Mid-sized enterprises require the same levels of functionality for customer service and field service/dispatch as large enterprises. However, mid-sized enterprises cannot use the same applications as large enterprises due to complexity, cost and platforms. Thus, there is a need and a large market opportunity for a class of customer service and field service/dispatch applications designed for mid-sized enterprises," said Carter J. Lusher, Vice President & Research Director, Customer Service and Support Strategies at the Gartner Group.

What users are saying about ServiceAlliance

Minnesota-based VAR DataSource Hagen provides networking products and services to businesses, helping them make the right technology decisions in the face of increasingly complex networking issues. DataSource Hagen uses ServiceAlliance to help improve its efficiency and its customer response times.

"Our business is more project than product-oriented. We provide customers with design services, consulting and training as well as products, and we need to maximize our resources to ensure we can meet all our customers' needs," said Mike Beach, Director of Services at DataSource Hagen. "ServiceAlliance is the only software we found that provides the features and flexibility we need to track multiple customer activities and requests. It's truly a one-of-a-kind product."

More service organizations are implementing this integrated approach into their service strategies. New York-based Jade Systems Corporation, a hardware and software VAR, chose ServiceAlliance because it matches the company's "cradle to grave" service approach, according to Mark Romanowski, Jade's Vice President of Services.

"Customers want resellers who offer everything from consulting, to products, to maintenance and asset management. ServiceAlliance supports this approach by providing a universal view of all customer activities, which makes managing service operations more efficient with less overhead," Romanowski said. "ServiceAlliance provides us with an easy-to-use front-end to a central repository of valuable customer information, enabling anyone in the company who answers a customer call to immediately find the information they need to solve issues and requests."

ServiceAlliance also allows businesses to model the various units when multiple service departments or hierarchical infrastructure exists so that the system can adapt to the business' infrastructure and provide the flexibility to adapt to changes. "These features assure management control and provide the information required to enhance any organization's profitability," von Vital said.

Enables centralized management of the complete service cycle

ServiceAlliance manages the complete customer service cycle with an integrated set of applications that manage everything from customer requests, schedule planning and task management to service delivery and invoicing/billing. "As companies go through the service cycle with their customers, ServiceAlliance provides them with deliverables, which can include actual services rendered, materials (parts) used, service contracts, and expenses. The system is pre-programmed with a set of rules that ease operation and ensure consistency. These rules can be easily changed to maintain the regular workflow of a specific business," von Vital said.

ServiceAlliance is an integrated customer service system especially designed to accommodate the unique need of field service operators. It enables centralized management by accumulating a wealth of information for service businesses -- project histories, service trends and staff productivity -- so that organizations can make better business decisions.

While competitive products limit different departments' views of customer information, ServiceAlliance modules are tightly integrated to provide a universal view of each customer's complete background regardless of the department where the user works. This integration is important so users can find answers quickly and reduce customer downtime.

The centralized request management capability of ServiceAlliance allows users to easily receive, manage and close complex requests from within a single application. The central point-of-entry allows you to issue and track service calls, customer support activity, sales orders, or issue an RMA number for returns. This gives your customer a single point-of-contact into your organization, which improves your responsiveness and the quality of service that you provide.

Another feature in ServiceAlliance includes the central price book system, which is a powerful tool to manage pricing discounts across products, service types and customers.

Supports rapid implementation and customization

"ServiceAlliance has been designed from the ground up to be implemented in companies with the assistance of VARs, system integrators and implementation firms. You can adapt ServiceAlliance to the way your business operates -- even down to the business rules, data elements, and the user interface. This level of flexibility and ease of use is tailored to the needs of medium-sized businesses or divisions, enabling them to get up and running in record time," said Bergreen.

"ServiceAlliance is the first service system that I have seen in my 10 years in the business that allows companies to run their customer service operations the way they need to," said Ron Wegmann, President of Vertical Solutions, Inc., a value-added reseller (VAR) for Astea in Cincinnati, Ohio. "ServiceAlliance is integrated customer service with a totally innovative approach in meeting customer requirements. In our initial installations we found it to be easily configurable with its drag and drop capabilities. You can establish your own business rules and customize workflow even by individual users."

ServiceAlliance's open architecture can be tailored to each user. For example, companies can add workflow capabilities to automatically route different service activities to particular employees. Or, through the software's Open Financials API, companies will be able to add out-of-the-box financial applications, to track all financial information associated with each service activity. ServiceAlliance automatically captures this financial information and creates invoices that can be printed or e-mailed to customers.

Component and open architecture configurable to customer requirements

"ServiceAlliance will adopt the company's distributed objects through a CORBA-based component architecture that will in the future allow individual component and business rules to be configured to a customer's requirements. This 'configure to order' capability will provide control and flexibility for future growth and changes," said Bergreen.

"In addition, since ServiceAlliance is platform and network-independent, it helps companies protect their existing hardware and software investments. ServiceAlliance provides service organizations a competitive advantage by helping them offer superior customer service so they can differentiate themselves in a crowded market," concluded Bergreen.

Availability and pricing

ServiceAlliance is available from the Astea global sales and partner network. The product will support multiple languages including double byte characters. Call 1-800-724-2891 for additional information. A minimum configuration for 10 users, including server and customization tool set, starts at $47,000 (US).

About Astea International Inc.

Astea International develops client/server-based customer interaction software that enables organizations to automate their customer support, field service, and marketing and sales operations. This includes DISPATCH-1, the industry's leading customer service application with over 400 customers worldwide, the Abalon sales and marketing solution, and HEAT(tm), the leading helpdesk product from the Bendata division. Astea markets its products through a direct sales and services network throughout North America, Europe, Israel, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The company's customer base of approximately 3,500 companies and 75,000 end users includes such industry leaders as GTE Customer Networks, Siemens Business Communications Systems, the Swedish PTT, Chevron and Sprint. Astea can be reached at [phone] or via the World Wide Web at www.astea.com . -0-

This press release contains forward-looking statements which are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could materially affect future results. Among these risk factors are continuing acceptance of Astea's products, general competitive pressures in the marketplace, and the continued overall growth in the customer interaction software industry. Further information regarding these as well as other key risk factors and meaningful cautionary statements which could affect the Company's financial results are included at length in the Company's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 1996, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CONTACT: Bob Ingersoll 

Astea International Inc.

[phone]

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Claire Larsen

Astea International Inc

011-612-9436-0855

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