Australian utility selects imaging software from Wang to improve customer service.

BILLERICA, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 21, 1995-- Wang (NASDAQ: WANG) announced today that South East Water Limited, a provider of water and sewer services to approximately 500,000 properties in the southeastern region of Melbourne, Australia, has selected its imaging software to improve customer service and increase cost-efficiency in its service departments.

South East Water is using Wang's OPEN/image software to store, retrieve, and manipulate on-line the 700,000 property service plans used by the utility company. According to South East Water, the imaging system has already resulted in substantial cost savings in both storage space and labor costs, enabling staff to concentrate on other business-critical tasks.

The company's service plans record the details of a property's sewer connections to Melbourne's main sewer lines. Its previous paper-based system for managing these documents had proven cumbersome and time-consuming. In addition, many of the frequently-used paper plans date back to the 1880s and had begun to decay. Having considered microfiche systems as an alternative, the company chose to use imaging software because of its easy on-line access to documents and system maintainability.

"Customer service is a critical issue for us," said Kris Andrew, South East Water's project leader for the imaging system. "With the imaging application, images can be retrieved within two to four seconds and printed out within 30 seconds. This lets us service a customer requesting a document within a minute, as opposed to the five to ten minutes it took under the manual system.

"Wang made an essential contribution to the successful implementation of the imaging system with its high quality project plans, an open and accessible approach, and a clear understanding of our needs," added Andrew.

With Wang's imaging technology, a customer requiring sewer plans merely requests specific details from a South East Water system operator, and receives a printout of the property's plans. Any alterations to the property are subsequently scanned into the file, and a current image of the property sewer plan is maintained in the system.

"Utility companies, like other publicly-focused service organizations, are typically faced with the challenge of managing hundreds of thousands of documents that need to be accessed and changed constantly," said Mias van Vuuren, president of Wang International Operations. "Imaging provides these organizations with dramatic improvements in quality, efficiency, and customer responsiveness that makes a difference in their day-to-day business."

The application runs on a Local Area Network, and uses Wang's OPEN/image software as a front end, connected to a Fujitsu mainframe. The database is comprised of 700,000 plans, accessed by approximately 40 users using ten PC workstations at two main sites in Frankston and Moorabbin, Australia.

Wang is a recognized worldwide leader in enterprise work management solutions that incorporate workflow, integrated imaging, document management and related software for client/server open systems, and a major worldwide provider of integration and support services for software networks. Wang's products and services enable customers to realize major improvements in productivity, quality and responsiveness by the definition, automation, management and measurement of critical business processes.

Wang is also one of the industry's largest independent service organizations. The worldwide Service Business provides network integration and support services, warranty and maintenance services, help-desk support, and other value-added services for more than 4,000 products and 350 equipment and software manufacturers. Headquartered in Billerica, it has offices and distributorships in more than 130 countries and more than 5,000 technical support professionals answering more than ten million service and support calls a year.

CONTACT: Ed Pignone, Wang, 508/967-4912

Sue Parente, The Weber Group, 617/520-7072