BEA Systems (BEAS)

[Joemoney]

Answerfriend Extends Relationship With BEA to Provide Intelligent Interaction Solutions Built on BEA

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Answerfriend, a leading provider of software solutions that power Web self-service, today announced that it has extended its relationship with BEA Systems by participating in the new BEA Portal Star Solution, a partner initiative from BEA Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAS - news). The BEA Portal Star Solution provides a designation for partners who offer complementary products or services that are tightly integrated with the BEA WebLogic Portal(TM).

Answerfriend, which already powers BEA's highly successful ``AskBEA' Web self-service and support application, will integrate its Intelligent Interaction self-service solutions with BEA WebLogic Portal. With this integration, customers can easily deploy self-service solutions that provide a significantly improved user experience and reduce the cost of customer, partner, and employee support.

``Enterprise portals are an ideal way to address customer and employee self-service needs,' said Pat O'Haren, senior director of product marketing, BEA Systems. ``With the emergence of intelligent interaction tools provided by Answerfriend, BEA WebLogic Portal customers can increase customer response time and accuracy, the two main factors in judging customer satisfaction.'

Answerfriend's Intelligent Interaction software delivers highly accurate and scalable information retrieval, navigation, and analytics portlets that enable companies to dramatically improve communication with all users. Answerfriend provides direct access to any content source, structured or unstructured, giving users specific answers to their questions, instead of just links. Answerfriend also enables users to quickly find the area of a web site necessary to accomplish their objective, whether that objective is finding a product brochure, ordering a product, or registering a warranty. Answerfriend analytics provide companies tremendous insight to customer interests by analyzing questions by product or service line, frequency, and related functional area such as marketing, sales, and support.

``Combining Answerfriend Intelligent Interaction software with BEA WebLogic Portal provides a highly scalable, extremely reliable and cost-effective Web-based self-service solution for any company,' said Mike Murphy, CEO of Answerfriend. ``This combined portal solution helps strengthen a company's self-service processes and user experience, while significantly reducing the total cost of ownership for the technology.'

About Answerfriend

Answerfriend is a leading provider of Intelligent Interaction software for eBusiness platforms. Answerfriend solutions are designed to provide a rapid return on investment by helping enterprises increase customer satisfaction while simultaneously reducing customer service costs. Answerfriend is a privately held company in Los Angeles, CA.

BEA, Tuxedo, and WebLogic are registered trademarks and BEA WebLogic Server, BEA WebLogic Enterprise, BEA WebLogic Commerce Server, BEA WebLogic Personalization Server, BEA Portal Framework, BEA WebLogic Integration, BEA WebLogic Portal, BEA Campaign Manager for WebLogic, BEA WebLogic E-Business Platform, and How Business Becomes E-Business are trademarks of BEA Systems, Inc.

Contact: Answerfriend, [phone], [e-mail]

SOURCE: Answerfriend

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