EDMONTON, Canada, Jan. 27, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Upside Software Inc., the leader in contract management software, announced today the release of a powerful case study commissioned by Microsoft that details the highly successful implementation of Upside Software's Contract Management Solution -- UpsideContract -- at BNSF.
UpsideContract, Upside Software's flagship product, helps organizations streamline their entire contract management life cycle. This software helps companies create contracts faster and automates the ongoing management of contract compliance, performance, deliverables and financial terms and transactions. In this new era of stringent corporate governance and tighter control of contractual obligations, organizations are flocking to implement contract management solutions.
"Software companies almost always tout the incredible Return on Investment (ROI) that they can deliver, but most fail to actually deliver that kind of value. I am delighted to see that one of our large customers, BNSF, has been able to demonstrate a full ROI in 62 days. This is an absolutely remarkable achievement for any enterprise software and shows the true value of UpsideContract," said Ashif Mawji, CEO of Upside Software Inc.
The implementation at BNSF was completed in about two months and they were able to streamline their contract administration effort by over 72%, reducing clerical effort by 10 persons and minimizing new contract creation timelines from 30 days to about 11. Mawji continued, "We are very proud to be a part of such a great success story and are committed to this level of value for all our customers."
"UpsideContract running on SQL Server 2000 and Windows 2000 Server paid for itself in only 62 days" said Leigh-Ann Vernon, General Director of E-Commerce and Sourcing Support and BNSF. "Our new contract management solution running on SQL Server 2000 converts a 16-step manual process to a 7-step automated process," said Vernon. "As a result, we've been able to reduce the number of full-time people required to manage contracts from 14 to 4. They now spend most of their time handling special 'one-off' situations, which are added to the system for automation the next time around. There's no way we could have modified our old mainframe application to provide this kind of rich functionality and automation. The costs would have been astronomical -- assuming we could even find the talent -- and we would still have needed to extend it to the Web for self-service access."
The full-case study can be seen on Microsoft's web site at: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies/CaseStudy.asp?CaseStudyID=13670
According to Gartner Group, the market for contract management software and services will hit $20 billion U.S. by 2007. Upside Software's UpsideContract product is ranked in the top three contract management solutions worldwide.
About Upside Software Inc.
Upside Software provides the leading Contract Management Software solution in the market -- UpsideContract -- as well as other integrated business solutions to handle Invoice and Billing Management, Project Management, and Travel & Entertainment Expense Management. UpsideContract and UpsideContract-LITE are well suited to Enterprise (e.g. Fortune 500, Global 2000), Public sector (Federal, State/Provincial, Municipal and Health Care) and the Small and Medium (SME) sector customers. Through improved business processes and leveraged business intelligence, Upside Software's customers can reduce operating costs and improve customer and supplier relationships. The company's Corporate and ASP implementations are delivered to customers in as little as 3 days and provide a full return-on-investment (ROI) in less than one year. Upside Software is a profitable company with a very mature and comprehensive Contract Management Software product. The company has extensive experience delivering real value to a large number of public- and private-sector customers of every size including small and medium enterprises and large global customers (ranked in the Fortune 20). For more information about Upside Software and its suite of business solutions, visit the company's Web site at www.upsidesoft.com or www.upsidecontract.com