City of Ventura, CA Selects FootPrints to Centralize Multiple Help Desks and Automate Departmental Processes.

EDISON, N.J. -- UniPress Software, Inc., a leading provider of web-based service desk automation software, today announced that the City of Ventura, California, has expanded its use of FootPrints(R) to automate its internal support to a majority of the city's employees. The IT division deployed FootPrints to power its IT help desk, responsible for supporting 440 desktops, 77 network printers, and 30 servers.

FootPrints' flexibility and ease-of-use has allowed city officials to set up numerous additional FootPrints support-based projects, as well as automate the main IT help desk. Some of the projects include: the Public Safety Technology Help Desk, Engineering Traffic Request Management, Facilities Management, Graphics Design, and Printing Services. For example, Ventura's police and fire departments use FootPrints to manage IT support requests for personal computers, mobile data computers, and telephones within their own help desk.

The city has customized the product to manage many different processes. By setting up custom project templates and using drop-down menus, FootPrints projects are configured to follow automated escalation rules that help agents open and close tickets, and address problems much more quickly. Through FootPrints' email management capabilities, agents can automatically trigger email notifications to employees with status and other information throughout the trouble ticket's lifecycle. Also, by using FootPrints web-based interface, employees of city department's can obtain the status of their request at any time, from anywhere.

The ability to deploy FootPrints without external vendor or third-party support was a critical factor for the city when deciding what service desk solution to deploy. Eventually, after researching nearly 40 different products, the city selected FootPrints based on its ease-of-use and flexibility.

"After looking at so many choices, you intuitively know the right one when you finally see it," said Tom Fratello, a systems analyst for the IT division. "After my colleague and I went through the FootPrints demo, we just looked at each other and said 'this is the one.' I knew we could deploy FootPrints ourselves, whereas the other product required hiring a third party integrator or having a SQL Database Server expert on staff -- which we didn't have at the time."

"With FootPrints, the City of Ventura was able to meet its most important goal of automating the IT help desk within three months," explained Mark Krieger, President of UniPress Software. "Due to the solution's ease-of-use, flexibility, and fully customizable interfaces, the city has also been able to save money, increase employee efficiency, and improve inter-departmental communication."

In the near future, the city's marketing department plans to launch a new web-request project within FootPrints that will allow city staff to submit and track content additions and changes to the city's web site. Also, the IT division would like to incorporate into FootPrints its citizen response system used by the Public Works Department. This would allow citizens to use email and the Internet to submit requests.

About UniPress Software, Inc.

Headquartered in Edison, New Jersey, UniPress Software, Inc. is a developer of web-based service desk automation software targeting mid-market companies, departments within large enterprise organizations, and small businesses. The company's FootPrints(R) product line, launched in 1996, provides a comprehensive range of capabilities to significantly improve help desk and customer support operations, and is widely used by nearly 2,000 corporate organizations, government offices, and educational institutions worldwide, including Prudential Financial, BHP Petroleum, IBM, Kampgrounds of America, Schwab Soundview Capital Markets, Hunter Fan Company, the IRS, and the University of Pennsylvania. For more information, contact UniPress at 732-287-2100, or via the web at www.unipress.com.