Cardiff's Employee Self-Service Solutions Enable Organizations to Reduce Costs and Improve Service and Communication Across the Enterprise.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

HR Technology 2003

Booth #526

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 7, 2003

Organizations of All Sizes Across All Industries Are Integrating

Cardiff's Interactive Document Solutions to Improve Internal

Collaboration and Strengthen Portal Strategies

Cardiff Software Inc., a leading global provider of document capture and eForm solutions for enterprise business process automation, today announced that a growing number of organizations from various industries are integrating Cardiff's employee self-service solutions to reduce costs and increase collaboration through the automated exchange of critical business information. Organizations as diverse as Baja Fresh, Johnson Controls and LG Electronics have implemented Cardiff's LiquidOffice eForm solution to convert their internal paper or static online forms into interactive eForms that can be automatically routed, tracked and approved across the enterprise.

Current economic conditions are forcing companies to do more with less, which is placing increased cost and resource constraints on most Human Resource (HR) departments. These constraints can also impact employee job performance and career development by inhibiting their access to critical information. In response, companies are recognizing the economic and operational benefits of providing employees with self-service solutions that make employee interactions more informed and efficient. This is corroborated by a July 2003 Aberdeen Group survey that places employee self-service as one of the top five applications to be purchased by organizations in the next six to 12 months.

Companies are achieving this objective by implementing portal strategies to improve and expand communication between business and employee. Cardiff's interactive document solutions are a vital component of an online portal strategy for providing a distributed workforce with self-service access to critical business data and a 24x7 forum for collaboration.

For example, the English Schools Foundation (ESF), which employs 680 teachers at 18 schools throughout Hong Kong, recently implemented Cardiff LiquidOffice to automate its complex, worldwide recruitment process. Historically, ESF received teacher applications via paper documents (mailed or faxed). ESF chose the Cardiff open system approach because it enabled them to use existing systems as well as to take advantage of new technologies. Now, teaching candidates use a Web-based interface to submit an application. LiquidOffice manages the approval routing of the application and transfers the information directly into an HR database, thereby significantly reducing data entry costs and increasing the efficiency of the process.

"Cardiff offered the only open-standards solution that faithfully mirrors our paper process, both visually and mentally," said John Tustin, director of human resources, English Schools Foundation. "We selected LiquidOffice because it's flexible, does not involve hardware or software investments for the end user, and requires little training of faculty and staff."

Cardiff creates flexible solutions for meeting the diverse needs of HR functions and enhancing the processing of internal forms and documents. Cardiff's open standards approach enables its solutions to be easily integrated into existing systems and employee-focused tools, thereby protecting a company's current and future IT investments. This next-generation methodology embraces back-end systems, corporate portals, the Internet and wireless devices to empower end users to create and deploy living documents with bi-directional interface to the enterprise.

"Cardiff provides HR organizations with a real opportunity to improve service and operational efficiencies by implementing a cost-effective eForm solution that easily integrates with existing systems," said Dennis Clerke, president and CEO of Cardiff Software. "An important function of any employee self-service solution is to reduce the current drain on a HR department's limited resources, and LiquidOffice's intuitive interface and ease of use is designed to do just that."

The automation of employee-focused forms, such as benefits enrollment and expense reports, can improve employee satisfaction and reduce HR processing costs, while the automation of business-critical forms, such as purchase orders and inventory control forms, can lead to operational savings due to improved productivity and resource planning. The ability to track the approval status of forms that affect revenue and expense enables an organization to improve budgeting and forecasting.

More information about Cardiff's employee self-service solutions can be found at www.cardiff.com/vertical/ess or by visiting Cardiff's booth (#526) at the upcoming HR Technology Conference and Expo in Philadelphia, Oct. 8 - 9.

About Cardiff Software Inc.

Put Information to Work -- Cardiff Software (www.cardiff.com) is a leading provider of document and form-driven business process automation solutions for Global 2000 organizations. The Cardiff family of integrated software products empowers organizations to automate existing business processes using technology to capture, process and connect to strategic business information, thereby improving employee productivity, customer service and profitability. In business since 1991, Cardiff has a global distribution network reaching every continent and more than 20,000 customers worldwide spanning every industry.

(C) 1991-2003 Cardiff Software Inc. All rights reserved. TELEform, LiquidOffice, LiquidCapture and MEDIclaim Option are trademarks of Cardiff Software Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks belong to their respective owners.