BEDFORD, MA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 08/18/05 -- iPhrase Technologies, a leading provider of adaptive search solutions for eBusiness and eService, today announced it will leverage IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition to deliver an innovative solution to help organizations get the most out of their enterprise portal environments. OneStep InterAct Enterprise Edition will allow organizations to convert their customer, partner, and employee portals into powerful self-service channels that provide users quick and easy access to pertinent information across the enterprise.

Organizations around the globe have invested billions in self-help resources designed to improve customer service, reduce operating costs, and grow revenue. Unfortunately, in many cases return on investment remains elusive because of poor end user adoption of these tools. The fact remains that while a wealth of resources exists across the enterprise, the process of finding information is too complex and time consuming for all but the most diligent individuals. Since the majority of people lack the patience or skill to become experts at finding information, this leads to a high degree of dissatisfaction and costly phone- and email-based support.

OneStep InterAct Enterprise Edition helps solve this problem by leveraging a unique understanding of who users are and what their inquiries mean to deliver pertinent information and guidance on demand allowing people to find answers, make purchases, and solve problems. The solution combines iPhrase's ability to understand and guide end users through the information discovery process with IBM's ability to tap information assets that exist across the enterprise. Leveraging the power of IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition, OneStep InterAct can provide semantic search and text analytics across dozens of databases, content management systems, file systems, external websites and email systems like IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. By allowing people to efficiently sift through large volumes of information, customers, partners and employees can take advantage of the rich resources that organizations have to offer without the need for expert assistance.

iPhrase's OneStep Platform adds unique technology, intuitive tools, and industry solution expertise to optimize the search and navigation experience. The product can intelligently understand typos, synonyms, and the semantic intent of questions to optimize search relevance. It also breaks the "list of links" paradigm with presentation capabilities that include faceted navigation, personalization, and advanced content promotion. Unlike most black box search engines, OneStep allows business people to analyze usage and progressively improve the end user experience minimizing reliance on IT. These capabilities have allowed iPhrase customers in a wide variety of industries to realize tangible benefits like growing their channels by 30% without adding incremental support headcount, improving their online resolution rate by 58%, and increasing their online conversion rate by 300%.

As part of this announcement, IBM is also offering iPhrase capabilities in a Premium Support Portal for customers of IBM Workplace products. The premium support portal delivers a complete on-line support resource that provides IBM Lotus premium level customers with an enhanced search capability. New features include providing expanded queries based on acronyms and the ability to cluster results by specific categories, for example, by product line, version number or operating system.

"IBM's innovation in enterprise search and our leading search technology provide powerful capabilities for fast, relevant, high quality enterprise search," said Nelson Mattos, distinguished engineer, vice president information integration strategy, IBM. "Our open Unstructured Information Management Architecture used by WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition allows companies like iPhrase to easily plug-in additional feature-rich software to enhance search quality and enable advanced business intelligence."

In addition to using it for supporting IBM Workplace customers, iPhrase and IBM will market this solution to a wide variety of industries by capitalizing on the fact that iPhrase's recently achieved the industry optimized level within IBM's PartnerWorld Industry Networks program. iPhrase is taking advantage of IBM's sales, marketing and technical expertise to develop and deliver solutions that meet customer requirements in the Banking, Insurance, Financial Markets and Retail industries.

"Bringing our innovative solutions to market that complement IBM infrastructure is a key element of our business strategy," said Tim McCarthy, vice president of Strategic Alliances at iPhrase Technologies, Inc. "We are incredibly excited to add IBM as a customer and leverage the exposure of the PartnerWorld Industry Networks program to bring our integrated self-service solution to organizations around the word."

The IBM PartnerWorld Industry Networks provide ISVs with comprehensive business insight, technical resources, networking opportunities, and marketing and sales support designed to help them reach more customers and close deals faster. Participants in the PartnerWorld Industry Networks can team with IBM to bring on demand solutions to market more easily and to ensure these solutions meet specific industry needs, reflecting how customers buy technology today.

ISVs can sign up for PartnerWorld Industry Networks at www.ibm.com/isv.

About iPhrase Technologies

iPhrase Technologies is a leading provider of adaptive search solutions for eBusiness and eService that helps companies leverage content across the enterprise to increase self-service adoption, and improve call center productivity. Our award-winning OneStep solutions help companies increase sales, optimize service and reduce support costs by enabling people to quickly and easily find answers, make purchases and solve problems. More than 200 companies including Countrywide Financial, Gateway, National Semiconductor, Neiman Marcus, and Netegrity use OneStep Solutions to add millions to their bottom line by reducing costs, increasing revenue and improving satisfaction among customers, partners and employees. For more information, visit www.iphrase.com or call 781-533-7300.

© 2005 iPhrase Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. iPhrase and OneStep are registered trademark and the iPhrase logo is a trademark of iPhrase Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT:
Tim McCarthy
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