Avantos Announces DecideRight, Revolutionary New Software that Improves How People Make Important Decisions; DecideRight's New Approach Streamlines the Decision-Making Process and Enables Consensus Building in a Wide Range of Business Applications.

Performance Systems today announced DecideRight, a new Windows-based productivity software tool that simplifies and enhances the decision making process for individuals and teams.

Avantos Performance Systems, The Management Software Company, set the standard for a new breed of business management software with their award-winning products ManagePro and Review Writer.

DecideRight gives individuals and team decision-makers a fast and flexible means to make everyday decisions. It is the first tool to give users a simple, intuitive, drag and drop interface and a structured framework for simplifying individual decision making, building consensus among multiple decision-makers, and justifying decisions through automatically prepared graphs and reports. Whether making a hiring decision, determining tradeoffs in a budget, selecting features for a new product, or considering an extension for a lease, DecideRight can help users make thoughtful decisions quickly and easily with total confidence.

"With its intuitive, drag and drop interface, DecideRight is the first decision-making software that has the potential to be widely used as a business management tool," said Norman Wu, president and CEO of Avantos. "Never before has it been possible in just minutes to frame a decision, determine the best answer, drive consensus, and create full documentation about the decision."

Decision-Making Evolves From Theoretical Analysis

Many decisions today are based on an intuitive, emotional response to unstructured criteria that define our tastes, sensibilities, and preferences. However, many other decisions are based on more quantifiable factors that require a clearly defined framework to formulate criteria and analyze key information. Avantos contends that these types of decisions -- based on a defined framework -- can be well served by an intuitive software tool.

"DecideRight removes the subjectivity in the decision-making process, and gives me confidence that I'm making the best choice based on what's important in the decision," said beta-user Randy Dugger, SEQUUS Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Traditional decision making software requires that the user spend excessive time performing difficult analytical tasks. These tasks are based on decision theory, a complex mathematical discipline that relies on formulas and hierarchical tree structures. As a result, the work involved in figuring out possible outcomes for a decision, assessing probability factors, and calculating risk factors to make and justify decisions has been reserved for experts in decision theory.

What does DecideRight do?

DecideRight's new approach streamlines the decision-making process:

Organizing thoughts and evaluating options to make the best decision

DecideRight helps users make a thoughtful decision quickly and easily by providing a framework for establishing:

-- Which criteria are important in making the best decision

-- The relative importance of the criteria affecting the decision

-- How the options to be considered are presented and rated on the criteria through an extremely straight-forward drag-and-drop interface

DecideRight's graphical interface makes it easy for users to assign weights to criteria affecting a decision and ratings to options being considered. For instance, a hiring manager might determine the relative importance of job requirements and then rate how each job candidate measures up against these criteria. The manager simply drags and drops boxes representing job requirements and job candidates to the corresponding area of the screen and DecideRight performs the underlying calculations. This intuitive interface makes it possible for users to arrive at an important decision in minutes.

Building consensus for a decision

Making the best decision is just part of the challenge business people face. They also have to get others to "buy into" their decisions. DecideRight helps users build consensus by taking others' perspectives into account and presenting a decision based on another set of assumptions with a feature called Scenario Manager.

"DecideRight significantly reduces the time it takes to drive consensus on important decisions. The software incorporates team members' perspectives and helps them quickly agree on a decision," said beta-user Tom Tate, New York State Electric and Gas.

Justifying and communicating a decision

Since justifying decisions can sometimes be even more time-consuming than making decisions, DecideRight offers users a host of features that makes it easy to explain why the best decision was made. DecideRight records the decision-making process and generates a persuasive report including interpretive charts and tables.

Who Can Use DecideRight?

Professionals in a wide variety of industries and job functions can apply DecideRight's features to improve the decision-making process throughout varying levels of an organization.

Individual managers can take advantage of the short learning curve and quickly use DecideRight to make tactical or strategic decisions everyday. These types of decisions could range from deciding on a vendor, selecting locations for branch offices, or determining who to hire or promote.

Team members formulating a group decision can leverage DecideRight's ability to analyze multiple scenarios and drive towards a consensus decision. Sensitivity analysis tools can also help drive consensus.

At the organizational level, DecideRight can be very effective in providing the framework to lay out the options for strategic decisions about a company's future direction. Taking into account the multiple perspectives of many departments, DecideRight's scenario management features can forge agreement through graphical representations of the decision-making process.

In addition, DecideRight can help consumers make personal decisions such as choosing a college, selecting an investment, or picking a vacation destination.

Strategic Partners

DecideRight also holds the potential to revolutionize how third party information can be used. For example, DecideRight allows publishers to make existing CD-ROM or on-line content more interactive since both business users and consumers will now be able to personalize product recommendations by specifying how important specific features or other characteristics are to them.

Pricing and Availability

DecideRight has a Suggested Retail Price of $149 but is available for a limited time at $99 as a special introductory offer.

DecideRight for Windows will be widely available through software resellers and directly from Avantos on October 27, 1995. A Windows 95 version of DecideRight will be available early in 1996.

System Requirements 

DecideRight for Windows requires Windows 3.1, a 80386DX IBM-compatible PC with at least 4MB of RAM (8MB recommended), and at least 4 MB of free hard disk space, a pointing device and VGA color monitor.

The Management Software Company

DecideRight was developed by Avantos Performance Systems, the leading provider of business management software tools. Avantos Performance Systems was founded in early 1991 by Norman Wu, President and CEO, and Gerald Huff, Vice President of Product Development. The venture capital backed company's charter is to develop, and publish software-based solutions for management excellence.

In addition to DecideRight, Avantos offers ManagePro - software enabling business managers and work teams to easily define goals, organize work, communicate progress and achieve real business results, and Avantos Review Writer - an award winning software tool designed to help managers write high quality performance reviews quickly and easily.

Avantos is based in Emeryville. Sales inquiries should be directed to: Avantos Performance Systems, Inc., 5900 Hollis Street, Suite A, Emeryville, CA, 94608; 1-800-AVANTOS (1-800-282-6867) or 510/654-4600; fax [phone]; Email: [e-mail]; Web site: http://www.avantos.com. -0-

NOTE TO EDITORS: Avantos, Avantos Performance Systems, and ManagePro are registered trademarks of Avantos Performance Systems, Inc. DecideRight, Review Writer and Avantos Review Writer are trademarks of Avantos Performance Systems, Inc.

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