Avotus Adds to Expense Management Capabilities With ICM Inventory Management.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

TORONTO & BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 21, 2004

Helps Organizations Save Costs by Tagging and Inventorying

Voice and Data Circuits to Avoid Paying for Unused Assets

Avotus Corporation (TSX Venture: AVS) of Toronto, with U.S. headquarters in Boston, has introduced Avotus ICM Inventory Management. This capability addresses the increasingly complex challenge of managing and tracking logical assets and other communications services and components to ensure that they are being properly invoiced and serviced by carriers. Part of Avotus' Intelligent Communications Management(TM) (ICM) Expense Management solutions, ICM Inventory Management is offered as a fully outsourced managed service, a remotely hosted solution, or an onsite application, depending on the customer's infrastructure and staffing priorities.

In addition to tracking logical and physical inventory assets, Avotus ICM Inventory Management also tracks the relationships between access technologies such as T1, and services such as Frame Relay, and their many components, including ports, PVCs and MPLS services. It extends this comprehensive inventory control from traditional voice and data to mobile devices and conferencing, and even to market data and other subscriptions, which are often tracked as telecommunications costs.

"Tracking and accounting for logical assets is an issue that drives financial people crazy - and rightfully so," commented Alan Gold, Avotus senior vice president, marketing and corporate strategy. "It's nearly impossible to manage what you can't see. More often than not, when we go into a company we find that they are paying for telephony and data capacity that should have been disconnected and taken off the inventory. We're talking about thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars in large organizations."

Starts with a Business Process Analysis

"We've applied some of the best principles of supply chain management to telecommunications," continued Gold. "We recognize that inventory management is a series of business processes that includes external vendors and customers, and that must be tracked and monitored at every step."

The Avotus ICM Inventory Management process starts by determining what assets and services are actually installed. An Avotus team works with the customer's technical and financial staffs to identify and virtually "tag" the logical assets and then log them into the tracking system. Often these complex and expensive assets are managed by different departments, such as telecommunications or networking, and tracked using spreadsheets. The audit consists of discovering all of the billed assets on invoices from carriers and other service providers to capture and manage corporate network assets.

Then Avotus analysts review the findings to look for anomalies, such as data lines to closed offices, or trunk lines with no activity. By applying their expertise in communications management, Avotus analysts inevitably find unused or under-used communications assets. Avotus then works with the carriers to reconcile the communications assets with the customer's actual usage.

Once an accurate baseline inventory has been determined, Avotus can provide additional managed services to monitor and review bills and ensure that the correct information is then provided to the enterprise budget and accounts payable systems. Avotus Inventory Management also interfaces with other Avotus modules and services during the IMACD processes to maintain a high level of accuracy going forward.

The Avotus ICM Inventory Management business process continues by interacting with carriers, other communications vendors and internal technical and finance departments. It can be integrated into corporate supply chain, ERP, and other corporate systems.

With an easy-to-use Web interface, Avotus ICM Inventory Management gathers and shapes communications data into useful information that can be reported on, analyzed and shared, enabling companies to gain unprecedented savings. The Web-based management reports facilitate budget reviews, vendor performance evaluations, contract negotiations and billing status reviews, as well as ad hoc queries.

Part of Avotus' complete communications management solution

Avotus ICM Inventory Management is part of Avotus Intelligent Communications Management, a comprehensive model for managing the entire communications environment. Available as an onsite application, in a hosted environment, or as part of a fully outsourced managed service, Avotus ICM integrates critical information about communications expenses, infrastructure and usage into a single, actionable environment. Avotus ICM is a solution that makes it possible to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of enterprise communications.

About Avotus

Avotus provides solutions that dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of enterprise communications. Intelligent Communications Management is Avotus' unique model for a single, actionable environment that enables any company to bring together decision-critical information about communications expenses, infrastructure, and systems usage. Avotus is empowering Fortune 500 companies as well as more than 3,000 organizations worldwide to gain insight into and control over their communications environment. Whether deployed as an onsite or hosted application, or as a completely outsourced value-added solution, Avotus improves productivity and efficiency while enabling dramatic savings.

The company has been consistently recognized for product and service excellence and thought leadership for more than two decades in a wide range of communications-intensive markets. Avotus' solutions are strongly supported and endorsed by industry-leading partners such as Avaya, Cisco, and Nortel. For more information, visit www.avotus.com.

PVC - Permanent Virtual Circuit 

MPLS - Multiprotocol Label Switching 

IMACD - Installations, Moves, Adds, Changes, Disconnect

ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning 

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.