Avidian Adds Sales Management to Outlook, Exchange.

Business Editors

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 10, 2004

Prophet 2004 and Prophet 2004 Server Edition Integrate with Outlook

2000 & XP to Provide Single Contact Management Interface for Sales

Avidian Technologies today announced the launch of Prophet 2004 and Prophet 2004 Server Edition. Prophet 2004, a powerful sales management solution built into Microsoft Outlook, supports real-time sales data sharing between Outlook users on a peer-to-peer network. Prophet 2004 Server Edition, an enterprise sales management solution, enables Outlook users to store and share real-time sales information from any location, provided that they have Internet access to their Microsoft Exchange Server. With the introduction of Prophet 2004 Server Edition, small businesses and large corporations, alike, can manage sales opportunities and share sales information -- without leaving the familiar environment of Outlook 2000 and XP.

"For companies looking to increase sales, an effective sales management solution can make the difference between profitability and success or inefficiency and lost opportunity," said James Wong, CEO and president of Avidian Technologies. "Prophet 2004 is an easy-to-use and full-featured sales solution within Outlook which extends the conveniences of Outlook and Exchange, adding sales cycle management tools to assist users in closing more sales."

Prophet provides a single contact management interface for sales opportunity management, e-mail communications, calendaring, task management, and reporting. Prophet also streamlines the sales management process, helping sales personnel focus on their most important sales tasks.

"We needed software that would help us establish a consistent sales process for the first time in our company history: it had to be easy to use so that we could get up and running quickly," said Bobby Holt, president of Brandrud Furniture. "Prophet 2004 was the perfect solution for us because of its integration into Outlook and its ease of use."

With Prophet 2004 and Prophet 2004 Server Edition, users can associate e-mail with sales opportunities at both the contact and company account levels (multiple office locations can be tracked as company accounts). Notes, e-mails, appointments, and account progress are organized by sales opportunity. With a single mouse click, e-mails, attachments, notes, and appointments associated with either an opportunity or a contact are retrieved. In addition, users may send personalized e-mails to large groups within their Outlook contact list, leveraging the time they spend on e-mail communication.

For greater efficiency, Prophet enables sales opportunities to be tracked by more than 100 customizable fields, including stage, sales type, probability, priority, lead source, and estimated close date. Sales personnel can even keep track of whether they won or lost an opportunity, and why.

Sales pipeline and forecast reports are also easy to generate with Prophet. More than 30 pre-built sales reports are included, sorting sales data by date, account, revenue, account manager, and other variables. In addition, an intuitive wizard helps sales people build their own sales reports. For increased flexibility, Prophet's reports can be saved in any one of today's most popular formats, including HTML, XLS, PDF, TXT, TIFF, and RTF. Moreover, custom report templates can be shared with other users on the network.

Pricing and Availability

Prophet 2004 is available now for an estimated retail price of US$149.95 from Avidian.com and Amazon.com. Prophet 2004 Server Edition is available now for an estimated retail price starting at US$495 for a five-user license.

About Avidian Technologies

Avidian Technologies, a Seattle-based software development company, is committed to creating solutions that help Outlook and Exchange users be more effective. Prophet 2004, the first shrink-wrapped product from Avidian, leverages the .NET platform's programming efficiency to build the most important requirements of a world-class sales opportunity management solution into Outlook. For more information on Avidian and Prophet, visit www.avidian.com.

NOTE TO EDITORS: If you would like additional information on Avidian Technologies and its products, please view the company's Web site at www.avidian.com. All prices noted are in U.S. dollars and are valid only in the United States. Avidian and the Avidian logo are trademarks or registered trademarks, in the United States and certain other countries, of Avidian Technologies. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.