Mechanical Seals Giant John Crane Selects Bowstreet Business Web Factory To Create Custom Business Webs for Up to 40,000 Customers.

Business/Technology Editors

LYNNFIELD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 26, 2001

Company and its customers will streamline purchasing and inventory

management, create new markets and save money

John Crane, the global leader in Engineered Sealing Systems, has selected the Bowstreet(TM) Business Web Factory to sell products on the Internet and eventually save as many as 40,000 customers money through lower transaction costs, improved access to engineering data and better inventory management. Engineered mechanical seals keep fluids inside rotating equipment, and contaminants out. They are used in oil refineries, chemical plants, pulp and paper mills, power generation, mining, commercial and residential water systems, automotive water pumps and other applications. With North American headquarters in Morton Grove, Illinois, John Crane boasts worldwide annual sales over $1 billion.

With the Bowstreet (www.bowstreet.com) solution, John Crane is creating thousands of business webs, individually customized for each customer, for a fraction of the cost and time of programming traditional custom B2B extranets. John Crane salespeople can simply point and click to personalize product offerings and pricing, enabling their customers to order their mechanical seals on the Internet. This process eliminates faxes, phone calls, duplicated data entry and human error, and it frees up John Crane salespeople to find new customers.

The business webs draw data directly from John Crane's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, populating web pages with a list of a customer's 10 most-ordered products, the shipping status of any orders and current product availability and pricing. This data helps John Crane customers more efficiently manage their own inventory flows.

"Until Bowstreet, companies would spend a million dollars and months of programming time to develop a single business web or B2B extranet," said Rick Page, John Crane's director of marketing. "We wouldn't have the resources to do what we're doing today if we tried to create these sites the old-fashioned way, without Bowstreet." John Crane has several dozen customers using business webs today. By the end of the year the company expects to bring several hundred customers online. "As we increase functionality, we'll be able to scale thousands of customers with minimal programming," said Page.

XML enables John Crane to build on-the-fly business webs

The vendor-neutral Bowstreet Business Web Factory is a business web platform used to create and manage a new class of dynamic, web-native applications composed of plug-and-play web services. Bowstreet's patent-pending parametric change-automation technology enables John Crane to easily propagate modifications across some or all of its customer sites instead of reprogramming each one.

Bowstreet combines the parametric technology with XML and directories to let companies connect on-the-fly with their partners and customers to achieve extended business reach and adapt to change in minutes instead of months. When Crane customers check the shipping status of their orders, they immediately see information from the shipper - e.g., FedEx or UPS - formatted into a John Crane web page. In this model, John Crane, its customer and the shipper are linked in a business web. John Crane chose the Bowstreet Business Web Factory because of Bowstreet's early expertise with XML and its business web leadership. Bowstreet and Crane, with the help of Integrated Systems and Services Group, implemented the system in three and half months - "record time," said Page.

John Crane first turned to Bowstreet because it wanted to reach new customers, connect with web marketplaces and communicate automatically with customers' procurement systems. With Bowstreet and XML, Crane will easily serve any customer online and instantly plug into these systems.

In the future, John Crane envisions using Bowstreet to open up the engineering process to customers. An automated configurator, for instance, could collect customers specifications then offer customers the particular seal they need. It also could custom-design one. Also, each customer could see engineering drawings of their products and adjust the designs online.

"Although John Crane is nearly a century old, the company typifies the best of the New Economy and is truly distinguishing itself from the competition," said Bob Crowley, president and CEO of Bowstreet. "John Crane is both propelling and capitalizing on the mounting business web revolution."

About John Crane

John Crane has been designing and manufacturing mechanical seals since 1917. With over 50 active patents, John Crane employs more than 9,000 people worldwide at more than 200 facilities in over 47 countries. Its unrivaled global service capability includes:

--Over 1,000 sales and application engineers;

--25 manufacturing plants; and

--Over 135 service centers.

With world-class technology centers in Slough, UK, and Morton Grove, IL, USA, John Crane is one of Smiths Group's four world-leading businesses. Smiths Group is a global business with market leading positions in each of its four business sectors: advanced aerospace systems; mechanical and polymer seals; healthcare devices and critical care equipment; and air moving and specialized interconnect products. Further information on Smiths can be found on the company's website, www.smiths-group.com. For a detailed description of John Crane, please visit www.johncrane.com.

About Bowstreet

Bowstreet is one of the first companies focused exclusively on creating the software breakthroughs required to support business webs - the emerging model for companies in the digital economy. Bowstreet provides one of the industry's first business web platforms for discovering, assembling and delivering a new class of dynamic applications composed of plug-and-play web services. Unlike hard-wired solutions, Bowstreet's Business Web Factory platform was designed from the ground up to be totally vendor-neutral, employing highly innovative, parametric change-automation technology. With Bowstreet's Business Web Factory, technologists can design massively customizable business web applications that empower business people to expand their business web relationships without programming. More information can be found at www.bowstreet.com or by calling 781-586-7100.

Bowstreet is a trademark of Bowstreet, Inc. All other company names and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies or owners.