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Microsoft Announces National & State Winners of Office XP Smart Client Solutions Challenge

Partner solutions have delivered real business benefits for a range of customers in Australia and overseas

Sydney - April 16, 2003 - Microsoft Australia today announced the national and state winners of its Office XP Smart Client Solutions Challenge - a competition extended to all Microsoft partners to submit products or custom-built solutions that integrate Office XP's features with Line-of-Business data from the desktop.

In total 52 entries were received.

State and overall national winner is MacroView Business Technology (NSW), recipient of the AUD$20,000 first prize and a range of other benefits. The other state winners, who each receive over $15,000 worth of benefits and will have their solutions proactively promoted by Microsoft, are: Globe Software Pty Ltd (WA), Intology Ltd (ACT) and iP³ Systems Ltd (VIC).

"The aim of the competition was to encourage our partners to demonstrate how their products and solutions are delivering measurable improvement to the end user experience and providing a clear return on investment," said Jacqueline Peterson-Jarvis, Microsoft's Group Marketing Manager, Business Productivity. "The calibre of the entries was very high and the winners underline the strength and innovation among our partners to leverage the business productivity properties of Microsoft Office XP for their customers."

Overall national and NSW state winner is Sydney based MacroView Business Technology (www.macroview.com.au). The winning solution is based on Office XP and SharePoint Team Services and has been created for the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET). The system handles the tracking and coordination of workflows related to the production and distribution of annual reports for some 2,200 NSW schools.

Installed over a three-month period prior to the 2002 Primary School reporting cycle, the Tracker system has proven more reliable, flexible and user-friendly than the previous system. In particular, training overheads and the cost of providing IT support have been reduced drastically. The overall cost savings is described by MacroView's managing director, Noel Williams, as 'significant'.

The product's familiar feel also won positive acclaim from senior members from DET. Dr Max Smith, the Department's Manager Research and Analysis, Students Assessment and School's Accountability said, "Our Chief Education Officers already rely heavily on Microsoft Office in their day-to-day work. A big advantage of Tracker is that it integrates neatly into existing work routines. It looks and feels like a Microsoft product which boosts user confidence and encourages greater use."

About the state winners

Perth based Globe Software 's ( www.globesoftware.com.au ) winning entry is Atlas xl, a Microsoft Excel based financial reporting solution. It was created specifically to help mid-market and corporate organisations with annual revenues in excess of AUD$5 million secure business opportunities and have a competitive advantage, as it can be tailored to support specific business processes quickly and effectively with integrated functionality across a wide range of company work practices.

Atlas xl is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that provides access to Microsoft Axapta data, Global Software's leading enterprise resource and management solution, which does not require the users to understand relational database concepts or the structured query language (SQL). The result is a direct and easy link between Microsoft Axapta and Microsoft Excel.

It is the end users' working knowledge of Microsoft Excel that lends to true return on investment and positive feedback from users worldwide. "Combining Axapta with the extensive functionality of Excel through Atlas xl enables users to develop and deliver powerful financial reports and presentations," said Global Software Director Steve Wright. "Leveraging your employees' knowledge of Microsoft Excel eliminates the need for highly paid consultants and developers and reduces the burden on your own IT department, whenever a report is required."

Located in Canberra, Intology Ltd . ( www.intology.com.au ) develops a range of .NET Connected web services that further enrich and add value to Office XP. For its submission, Intology enhanced the latest version of Office XP with automated business tasks that seamlessly integrate with Microsoft's Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer and corporate applications such as SharePoint Portal Server and Content Management Server.

These offerings capitalise on the flexibility and strengths of Smart Tags, a major feature of Office XP. The solution, called Knowledge Neighborhood, offers a number of significant end user benefits, including timely access to property sensitive information, facilitating quicker real time collaborative tasks across a business' network, regardless of file destination, instant support, advice and summaries when needed.

"From a user perspective the solution facilitates real exchange of information without relying on human beings," said Intology Managing Director Ralph Meyen. "Document contents are automatically scanned and summarised by the system, enriching the properties of the saved document. This allows users to link to existing knowledge documents from within Office via keywords rather than physical file location."

iP3 Systems Ltd ( www.ip3systems.com ) from Victoria has developed an electronic business process solution. The ElectronT enterprise based software application automates and simplifies complex B2B, (business to business), B2G (business to government) and B2C (business to consumer) transactions across domestic and international borders.

The management of the catalogues for a host business and its trading partners is the largest task in the implementation and administration of an ElectronT. By leveraging the power of Microsoft's Office XP with the ElectronT Catalogue Management Web Services, iP3 has helped the user to drastically increase their catalogue management productivity by decreasing maintenance time and eliminating the previous geographical restrictions to data access.

With an estimated catalogue management update for 40 products down from one hour to just five minutes, this is evidence of a significant return on investment. "One of our clients estimated that they will achieve a full return on investment in just six months through using this solution to maintain 30,000 catalogue items from 500 active suppliers (out of a total 5,000)," said Mr Chris Garty, VP, Research & Development. "This means they will now be able to redeploy some of their 15-person procurement department to focus on leveraging their buying power and strategic sourcing to achieve significant savings."

Because this solution also uses the familiar Microsoft Excel interface, training costs are significantly reduced. Combined with the speed of .NET, this means users will have time to update the entire catalogue more frequently, providing more accurate information to supply chain partners and customers.

Judging criteria included the use of Office XP Smart Tags, leveraging public or private web services and linking to data from a web site using real time data servers. A key weighting included demonstrable business benefits like reduced steps to complete tasks and better access and use of business information. It was also mandatory that each solution required Office XP on the desktop.


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