Traction Software Introduces Enterprise Weblog solution for Competitive Intelligence and Market Research

Traction is the first weblog product designed for business use

Providence, R.I. - December 16, 2002 - Traction® Software, Inc., leader in enterprise weblog software, today introduced the Competitive Intelligence (C.I.) and Market Research solution to its Traction® TeamPage™ Enterprise Weblog. Traction solves the problem of collecting, organizing, sharing, linking and retrieving strategic competitive intelligence information from many sources. Targeted at strategic planning, competitive intelligence, market research and marketing professionals, Traction C.I. is the first, enterprise weblog technology to address a specific business process.

Nearly every Global 2000 company has a team of professionals charged with collecting, analyzing and distributing competitive intelligence information to a target group within the organization. Valuable, strategic information is typically in pockets and siloed systems across the company, including e-mail, web content, external news feeds, business analytic systems, or authored contact reports - and not easily centralized in repository so it can be leveraged by the right people at the right time for smart decisions.

"Traction's solution addresses the problem of easy collection, organization and dissemination of diverse content from many sources," said Tim Simonson, CEO of Traction Software. "By creating an deep archive of shared information, business teams are able to convert collected information to actionable knowledge faster than would otherwise be possible using email or traditional content management systems."

Traction C.I.: Powerful Tool for Knowledge Management and Communications
Traction's easy to use solution addresses each of the five steps of the competitive intelligence and research cycle: Planning, Collection, Analysis, Dissemination and Retrieval.

Planning: CI provides a flexible topic and content labeling structure for easy organization

Collection: C.I. provides easy capture of content from many sources e-mail, web content, external news feeds, business analytic systems, or authored contact reports.

Analysis: Users can add comments to call out key points, or label items of interest such as competitors, credibility of source, key intelligence topics, and geographical references maximizing the value of the information. Labels can also be used to raise alarms to program and executive teams alerting them to critical information that may impact current programs. Hot links can be added to tell readers where to find related content.

Dissemination: Information collected can be automatically published via a user-specific ExecutiveSummary™ daily email newsletter or secure intranet-based project news pages. Readers navigate through newspages or search by any combination of project, label, author, time, and full text. The automated ExecutiveSummary™, daily email newsletter has been benchmarked after column two of the Wall Street Journal and VentureWire's daily email newsletter, enables busy executives to remain peripherally aware of market activities without the burden trying to make sense of random email messages. Traction's ExecutiveSummary™ automatically organizes and disseminates a one paragraph summary of content entries to permissioned users and enables them to "click-through" to a browser window if they choose to dig into the content.

Retrieval: Information contributed over time builds a deep and valuable archive that can be easily searched by permissioned users.

About Traction's TeamPage Enterprise Weblog
Traction's TeamPage Enterprise Weblog software is an easy-to-use powerful solution that allows everyday corporate users to collect, link and organize information from e-mail, the web, Office and other textual information in an organized format to improve productivity, knowledge sharing, communications and collaboration. Its easy to use hypertext journaling system can label, cross-link and deliver relevant portions of editable content gathered from disparate sources and plug into an existing web infrastructure.

Traction's unique Instant Publisher allows users to collect and post selected text, pictures, links and attachments directly from Microsoft Word, Outlook or Internet Explorer. Users can easily flag and link diverse content at the full entry or paragraph level, overcoming the pervasive problem of siloed information across content stores. Permissioned users can update and enrich content, easily inserting comments, cross-links, topic labels and action flags. To be kept abreast of new information in the enterprise weblog, users have web real-time access or can receive a daily ExecutiveSummary™ email newsletter which consolidates new information organized by project.

Pricing, Platforms & Availability
Because Traction is a self-contained web server, a workgroup or enterprise solution can be installed and ready for use in an hour. The Traction Server is a Java application that can be easily installed and configured on any computer that runs Java including Windows XP, NT or 2000, Linux, Solaris and Macintosh OS X. Traction readers use standard browsers from Microsoft or Netscape. Traction also supports wireless access from Palm, Windows CE or Blackberry browsers so users can easily review a Traction newspage or search published messages by time, content, or topic from a PDA.

Traction Competitive Intelligence & Market Research solution is availability immediately. Traction CI is priced at $10,000 per server and $125 per named account, plus 20% for annual maintenance and support. Traction offers a 15 user, workgroup package for $4,995.

About Traction Software
Traction Software is the leader in Enterprise Weblog software, delivering easy to use tools for groups and teams to communicate, share, organize and link all-sources information in context. The firm's flagship product, Traction TeamPage™, makes the business intranet a writable web that works as easily as email. Traction's pending patent covers the fundamental indexing, cross-reference and navigational elements that jointly make the Traction platform unique. The company distributes its products directly and through global partners. Traction Software was founded in 1996 and is located in Providence, Rhode Island. Investors include In-Q-Tel, Slater Interactive and private individuals. Learn more at tractionsoftware.com.

Contact:
Dana Harris
Red Javelin Communications, Inc.
978-440-8392
Email: dana@redjavelin.com

Traction is a registered trademark and Traction TeamPage is a trademark of Traction Software, Inc.