Telecom Expense Management - Rivermine News and Events

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Rivermine Unveils New Version 5.0 with Clarity Decision Engine, Enhanced International Capabilities, and Improved Wireless Support
New Features Help Organizations Realize Even Greater Telecom Savings as Well as Optimize and Manage Their Global Telecom Environments

Fairfax, VA, February 26, 2007 - Unveiling its most extensive product release to-date, Rivermine, a leading provider of automated telecom expense management (TEM) solutions, today announced Rivermine 5.0.

Rivermine 5.0 marks the debut of the Rivermine Clarity Decision Engine, a powerful addition to existing Rivermine Clarity reporting and analytic capabilities. Decision Engine enables organizations to quickly analyze complicated data to make optimal network migration and rate plan decisions as well as benchmark key performance areas. Many other new features include broad international currency support and enhanced wireless management capabilities.

"Gartner's research shows that the market's expectations of traditional TEM solutions are growing beyond standard features such as invoice auditing and dispute management," said Eric Goodness, research vice president, Gartner. "More customers are looking to proactive capabilities to help them make decisions regarding migrations to carrier plans and new network technologies. TEM providers that can help their customers migrate efficiently to meet new communications requirements should be well positioned."

Rivermine Clarity Decision Engine

Rivermine Clarity the first product to fully integrate business intelligence into a TEM solution, and now it reaches new heights with Decision Engine. Helping organizations to make better decisions about their networks, the solution quickly evaluates the cost, time, and other implications of complex decisions such as migrating to VoIP, renegotiating rate plan terms, or switching carriers. Instead of spending hours contemplating these changes, management can enter basic information through automated what-if scenarios and have the system automatically process that data against the current network environment to decide whether a network change is worth pursuing.

Decision Engine also provides organizations the ability to perform benchmark analysis, using key performance indicators (KPIs), against industry peers or their own internal historical performance. Example KPIs include: actual telecom spend versus budgeted amount, average wireless cost, average cycle time for dispute resolution or invoice processing, and others. Working with leading industry analysts, Rivermine identified the KPIs most important to the industry and best-in-class performance metrics in those areas.

"Decision Engine will allow IKON to plan with greater efficiency as we're able to test potential changes to network technologies or rate plans and immediately learn their predicted outcomes. Based on the tool's financial analysis, management will be able to make key network optimization decisions," said Larry Van Etten, senior manager, telecom expense management, IKON Office Solutions. "In addition, we will be able to compare our current expense performance with the industry and get a clear picture of where our strengths and weaknesses are and we can then focus on the most cost impacting areas."

Many new dashboards and reports have also been added to Rivermine Clarity to facilitate the management of wireless spend, disputes, financials, inventory, invoice processing and provisioning. New out-of-the-box reports with drill-down functions enable companies to readily access data and take action before major problems arise.

Expanded International Support and Comprehensive Wireless Capabilities

To meet the needs of global organizations, Rivermine has expanded the solution's international capabilities to include support for more than 100 currencies and the ability to automatically or manually upload exchange rates. Organizations can easily toggle between currencies, and when combined with Rivermine Clarity, access specialized dashboards and drill-down reporting.

In addition, Rivermine 5.0 offers improved wireless management functionality that allows organizations to seamlessly manage all wireless and wireline data in one solution. Rivermine 5.0 wireless capabilities may be leveraged by Rivermine partners to deliver a complete wireless managed service or may be used directly by the end customer. Wireless features include:

Wireless Management Portal: Track wireless devices; create, view and change orders by user or carrier; and manage internal approvals.

Wireless Self-Service Ordering: Enable employees to order their own devices, accessories, or carrier plans online based on organizational policies.

Wireless Reporting and Optimization: Track wireless spend by time period, department or carrier; evaluate which devices accrue the highest and lowest spend; and leverage gathered data to negotiate optimal rate plans.

Other Features

Rivermine 5.0 includes a number of other new capabilities such as:

- Improved Dispute Management: Rivermine 5.0 includes a robust Dispute Management Module. Rivermine is the only TEM vendor to offer a Telco Interface that enables automated communication with all carriers regarding the submission and status of both disputes and service orders.

- Integration with Rivermine Call Accounting: Powered by SAI, Rivermine Call Accounting facilitates PBX-based call detail gathering, analysis, monitoring, and reporting. The new integration provides, in a single solution, broad visibility into telecom spend from high-level management dashboards to detailed call record analysis.

- Greater Security Features: Enhanced Role-Based Security enables companies to grant specific access permissions to employees based on their position in the company and TEM responsibilities.

- Rivermine Search: An intuitive "Google"-style search application enables companies to quickly locate and view specific data within the Rivermine solution, such as locations, circuits, wireless service plan information and more.

- Graphical Workflow: Rivermine 5.0 offers a new graphical workflow engine that enables complicated company-specific invoice and service order approval schemes to be quickly and cost-effectively implemented.

"We continue to heavily invest in both our software and managed services to deliver maximum value to the nearly 70 companies and government agencies using the Rivermine solution," said Mark Logan, president and CEO, Rivermine. "5.0 will enable our customers to save millions of dollars annually by reducing their telecom costs and helping them make faster and better decisions to optimize their overall network environments."

Rivermine 5.0 may be deployed as a managed service or as on-premise software. As the solution is modular, companies may choose to implement specific portions to address their highest pain points first and subsequently implement other modules to ultimately manage their entire telecom lifecycle.

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About Rivermine:
Rivermine is a leading provider of automated, award-winning solutions that enable organizations to gain visibility into, and control over, their wireline and wireless telecom spend. Hundreds of companies including many Fortune 1000 corporations and large government agencies have selected Rivermine to optimize their overall telecom environments and dramatically reduce costs. Rivermine currently manages over $6 billion in annual telecom spend globally. The company's patent-pending Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solutions automate the entire telecom lifecycle including ordering, inventory management, invoice processing and auditing, wireless expense management, mobile device management, and reporting/analytics.

Rivermine's Telecom Expense Management software andmanaged services save many companies and governmentagencies MILLIONS of dollars per year.

Rivermine's Telecom Expense Management software and
managed services save many companies and government
agencies MILLIONS of dollars per year.