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Avolent Introduces BizCast 6.0 with Ground-Breaking New Capabilities to Gain Insight and Control over Cash Flow and Increase Margins by 1-2%

New Patent-Pending Capabilities Leverage Avolent's eBilling Platform to Empower Finance Execs to Accurately Predict and Proactively Control Cash Flow Through Trade Discount Management, Customer Profiling and Cash Forecasting

SAN FRANCISCO,CA
PRNewswire
March 21, 2005

Avolent Inc., the leading provider of eBilling and Cash Flow Optimization software, today announced the release of BizCast™ 6.0, their award-winning solution for streamlining all the financial interactions between a corporation and its customers such as invoicing, collections, payment processing, and reconciliation. BizCast™ 6.0 builds on the success of its real-time eBilling platform to provide a suite of new capabilities for CFO's and Treasurers to accurately predict and control cash flow, including cash forecasting, customer profiling, and trade term management. This enables corporations to increase margins by 1-2% while reducing Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by 3-10 days.

BizCast™ 6.0 is the first software to provide cash flow optimization capabilities based on an eBilling platform, presenting a range of capabilities previously unavailable to finance professionals in existing ERP and Treasury systems. For example, with BizCast™ 6.0 a finance professional can:

Accurately predict inbound cash flow based on real-time information on the status of all invoices, not just historical information

Forecast inbound cash flow based on unique customer payment profiles, not outdated models

Increase cash flow by instantly changing all trade discounts/interest penalties without having to print a single invoice

"We have seen over 70% of customers move their cash and A/R reporting to BizCast due to more detailed and timely data," said Scott Dunlap, VP, Marketing for Avolent, "It makes clear sense for us to build on that to deliver more advanced capabilities for understanding and controlling financial processes."

The CFO's Dilemma: Predicting and Controlling Cash Flow
In today's post-Enron environment, companies are publicly castigated for missing sales and cash projections. However, according to a recent study by CFO magazine, almost two-thirds of medium to large companies lack the internal expertise to improve cash management and forecasting. Avolent, a leading provider of software made specifically to improve financial processes with customers, recognized the need to solve, what has been historically, the most complicated issue facing CFOs and financial management executives -- insight and control into inbound cash flow. To provide both insight and control, CFOs cannot depend on existing Treasury, Business Intelligence, and A/R systems that rely on historical data for forecasting and provide no capabilities to proactively control your forecast should it need to be changed. Avolent's key insight was to build these capabilities on a real-time system like eBilling that would provide accurate forecasts, ensure processes are controlled and enforced, and allow for the dynamic changing of trade terms to influence customer payment behavior. By complimenting existing systems with BizCast 6.0, finance professionals can now reduce operational risk, accurately track cash flow through the organization and effect change in receivables by dynamically adjusting trade terms to meet corporate financial goals.

BizCast 6.0 Provides Real-Time visibility into the "Invoice to Cash Process"

BizCast™ tracks all financial activities and events between a corporation and its customers in real-time, from the moment an invoice is sent to a customer, to when the payment is reconciled (together, these processes are known as the "invoice-to-cash cycle"). By tapping into this rich data source, BizCast™ 6.0 becomes a powerful platform for providing insightful, tangible and strategic value for its customers. Examples of this new functionality include:

Customer Profiler: Using the Customer Profiler, a credit, collections, or CSR agent can quickly review the financial history of each customer (e.g. payment history, past due balances) as well as the relative performance to similar customers to understand their "payment profile." The Customer Profiler can help identify recent changes in account status, how payment behavior changes due to industry seasonality, cyclicality, or size of the invoice.

A/R Dashboard: Provides the Controller and VP of Finance with real-time financial reports, receivable alerts, customer profiling, and cash flow reports that allow you to quickly determine the root causes of changes in financial performance, and suggest courses of action.

Optimizing Working Capital by Controlling Financial Processes
BizCast™ 6.0 goes beyond forecasting and profiling to provide the unprecedented ability to proactively control inbound cash flow through process, trade term, and invoice design automation. This allows finance organizations the ability to stay flexible and adapt quickly to changes in the market, and provide a more efficient means to managing the invoice-to-cash cycle. New module examples include: æ æ

Trade Terms Management: Trade terms often control 1-2% of gross margin for a corporation, yet are still not managed strategically. With BizCast™ 6.0, all trade terms with customers, such as trade discounts and interest penalties, can now be centrally managed for consistency and performance. This allows finance teams to understand how and when trade terms are being used, fine tune their trade term and collection policies, and optimize trade discounts to find the balance between margin and cash flow. Trade terms can also be dynamically adjusted to all open invoices without re-printing.

Invoice Design Studio: Enables a company to quickly personalize the "look and feel" format and data of invoices to meet individual customer needs.

Central Invoice Distribution hub: By consolidating billing data and processes from across the enterprise, BizCast enables companies to have a single central hub/distribution point for all invoices regardless of the distribution media (e-mail, batch print, fax, EDI, etc), business unit, or geography. BizCast can also be deployed in shared services to centrally automate billing and accounts receivable.

"BizCast has redefined the EIPP space and we owe much of this to our customers," said Doug Roberts, CEO of Avolent. "They recognized the power of BizCast in not only streamlining financial processes and improving customer service, but in the richness in the invoice and payment history data that produces, and the ability to leverage this data to control cash flow."

About Avolent
Avolent, the leading provider of enterprise application software for eBilling and Cash Flow Optimization, delivers F2000 organizations unprecedented insight and control over their inbound cash flow. Avolent's award winning BizCast software streamlines all processes in the invoice-to- cash cycle through real-time electronic invoicing and payment, customer self- service, cash management and forecasting. With BizCast, Finance professionals gain insight into cash flow across the enterprise, and can control cash flow through a unique patent-pending ability to dynamically adjust trade terms to meet corporate financial goals. Founded in 1995, Avolent's customers and partners include some of the largest companies in the world, including MasterCard, Delta Dental of California, Office Depot, PacifiCare, Highmark, Do It Best, Unisys and more. For more information call (800) 553-5505 or visit http://www.avolent.com.

SOURCE Avolent Inc.
Web Site: http://www.avolent.com