Additional 9000 User-Licenses Brings Total To 12,000
OTTAWA, Canada, Mar. 3 /PRNewswire/ - Fulcrum Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:
FULCF; TSE: FUL) today announced the details of a licensing deal with Charles
Schwab, one of the leading financial services firms in the United States.
During 1995, Charles Schwab created the ``Electronic Library''
application, as a reference tool primarily for use by the company's registered
brokers. Schwab's Electronic Library was built with Fulcrum(R)
SearchServer(TM) information-retrieval software, to put up-to-the-minute
information about the company's comprehensive array of investment products and
services at the fingertips of the people on the ``front line'' of customer
service. The success of the Fulcrum-based Electronic Library made Charles
Schwab eager to broaden the deployment of the application as the principal
vehicle for delivering all reference information needed by people across the
organization.
``With our Fulcrum-based electronic library project, there was a clear
improvement in the ability of our representatives to answer incoming inquiries
on the first call,'' said Gee Kin Chou, vice president of brokerage
operations at Charles Schwab. ``Powerful searching is everything to us. The
ability to respond to questions quickly, with consistent and relevant
information, is important because it has a direct impact on customer
satisfaction. We experienced improvements in this area at a time when we were
growing and adding new registered brokers daily; the Electronic Library
application gives these brokers confidence that they are providing consistent
and up-to-date information to our customers. Without this application, they
might have had to seek advice from a more seasoned broker, or try to work
their way through the huge reference manuals for the relevant information.''
The productivity improvements that flowed from the Fulcrum-based customer
support solution caused Charles Schwab to look at broadening the deployment to
other areas of the organization. The company recognized the need for an
enterprise-wide reference application that would include product and services
information, corporate policies and procedures, and other corporate reference
materials, including departmental phone numbers.
Chou added: ``Essentially, we want to eliminate the burden caused by the
paper delivery of information that must be kept current and consistent across
the organization. We no longer want to rely on countless manual insertions
and deletions, in countless reference binders, in almost 250 offices and four
service centers nation-wide. That had been the situation every time we'd
update one small policy, or add to or change our investment offerings in any
way.''
``As the provider of the premier software product in the
information-retrieval market, a position we have earned over more than a
decade in the business, Fulcrum has been supplying a key ingredient in many
strategic knowledge-bases at the world's largest companies,'' said Peter
Klante, vice president of marketing at Fulcrum. ``The success of our software
at Charles Schwab illustrates how a company can build a strategic advantage by
putting knowledge at the fingertips of its employees. We will be building on
successes like these when we unveil our next generation of software products
later this spring -- products that will provide more functionality to allow
companies a greater ability to manage their corporate knowledge assets.''
ABOUT THE ELECTRONIC LIBRARY APPLICATION AT CHARLES SCHWAB
The application runs on a Windows NT server, using Fulcrum SearchServer
3.5 as the core indexing and retrieval engine, with a custom Windows front-end
built with Fulcrum SearchBuilder(TM) for Visual Basic. Containing large
volumes of reference material, the application requires powerful indexing
software. When the second phase of the application has been completely
deployed, by June 1997, there will be 6,500 users in almost 250 Charles Schwab
branches and four major service centers. The application will take advantage
of Fulcrum's strength in distributed searching. The documents in the
collection are authored in an SGML format, and the application also makes use
of the DynaText document viewer, which is launched from the Fulcrum result
list.
ABOUT THE COMPANIES
The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE: SCH), through its principal
operating subsidiary, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., provides financial services
for 4.1 million active accounts with $268 billion in assets through 236 branch
offices.
Fulcrum Technologies is a world leader in providing information
search-and-retrieval software for the extended enterprise. This software can
be used on Internet and Intranet sites, on computer networks, and on CD-ROMs.
Fulcrum counts major corporations and industry leaders like Fujitsu, Microsoft
and Novell among its customers. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Fulcrum has
offices throughout the United States, Europe, and in Australia and Japan.
Fulcrum is publicly traded on the NASDAQ National Market (``FULCF'') and on
the Toronto Stock Exchange (``FUL'').
Visit Fulcrum's Web site: http://www.fulcrum.com
Fulcrum is a registered trademark of Fulcrum Technologies Inc. and
SearchServer and SearchBuilder are trademarks of Fulcrum. Other trademarks
used throughout this document are trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE: Fulcrum Technologies Inc.
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CONTACT: Gillian Brouse, Fulcrum, (613) 238-1761 ext.251, e-mail: pr(at)fulcrum.com; Gail Smart, Rourke & Co., (617) 267-0042, e-mail: gsmart(at)rourke.com
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