Professionals increase productivity with custom tour guide to LEXIS-NEXIS service on the Web

Business Wire, Sept 4, 1996

DAYTON, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 4, 1996--LEXIS-NEXIS now offers many professionals their own, customized tour guide to the LEXIS(R)-NEXIS(R) online service with its new AnswerPak(TM) series. It is currently available via software which dials directly to LEXIS-NEXIS and will soon be available to subscribers using any browser via the World Wide Web.

Each offering in the AnswerPak portfolio is designed for a particular group of professionals, such as marketers, public relations practitioners, journalists, financial analysts, sales professionals, lobbyists or corporate planners. AnswerPak puts the power of the vast LEXIS-NEXIS data warehouse on professionals' desktops, in an easy to use format.

"As company organization charts become more horizontal and professionals take on more and more responsibility in their everyday work, it becomes difficult for these `knowledge workers' to stay up-to-date" said Ira Siegel, president and CEO of LEXIS-NEXIS. "Using an AnswerPak is like having an electronic personal assistant, who sorts through stacks of newspapers, trade magazines and business publications to find just what you need."

Not only do business professionals free-up valuable time by finding information more quickly online, they also gain a competitive edge because they are better informed and often discover facts of significance of which they weren't previously aware.

Each AnswerPak is designed and customized to satisfy the information needs of professionals in the context of how they do their jobs. They simply click on buttons with a mouse to obtain information they need for their everyday work. Each AnswerPak also allows automatic searching, repeating a search on a schedule the customer determines: daily, weekly or monthly.

AnswerPak prices vary based on the content of each individual AnswerPak. Flexible pricing options are offered, including a predictable, monthly, flat rate and several types of volume discounts. An attachment highlights a sampling of the AnswerPak series.

The LEXIS-NEXIS service is distinguished from all other electronic information sources, including the World Wide Web, by the scope and quality of its online content. On average, LEXIS-NEXIS adds 14 million documents each week to the nearly one billion documents online. In comparison, the World Wide Web adds more than 300,000 documents each week to its current estimated total of 39 million documents. In 1995, the amount of LEXIS-NEXIS online information grew nearly 40 percent, or the equivalent of about six WWWs.

LEXIS-NEXIS, headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, is the world's leading provider of enhanced information services and management tools. The company's mission is to help legal, business and government professionals collect, manage and use information more productively.

LEXIS-NEXIS is a division of Reed Elsevier Inc., and a member of the Reed Elsevier plc group (http://www.reed-elsevier.com), one of the world's leading publishing and information businesses. Reed Elsevier has annual sales of approximately $5 billion and 25,000 employees. It is owned equally by Reed International P.L.C. (NYSE:RUK) and Elsevier NV (NYSE:ENL).

Information about LEXIS-NEXIS and Reed Elsevier may be found at the LEXIS-NEXIS Communication Center on the World Wide Web at http://www.lexis-nexis.com/. A listing of additional news releases available via fax may be obtained by calling 800/34-NEXIS or 800/25-LEXIS and ordering document no. 0001. -0- LEXIS(R)-NEXIS(R) Accounting Professional (released March 1996) Designed specifically for accountants, this research tool enables accountants to quickly and easily retrieve the types of information they most frequently need. Accounting Professional provides easy access to a full range of continuously updated accounting, tax and financial information sources from the LEXIS-NEXIS services, such as federal and state tax materials, accounting technical literature and guidelines for GAAP and GAAS, EDGAR filings, company financial analysis, in addition to news sources such as magazines and trade publications. Accounting Professional, winner of Accounting Technology's 1996 Editor's Choice Award, offers four search groups -- Tax Information, Audit & Accounting, Financial and News.

LEXIS(R)-NEXIS(R) Company Quick-Check (released October 1995) Company Quick-Check is for individuals within corporations, such as financial professionals, investment analysts or strategic planners, who require news and financial information about a company. The interface offers four general options to locate information about a specific company: News, Company & Industry, Financial and Geographical. Each option then prompts the user for more specific selections. For example, by choosing the Financial option, the user would then be able to choose either 10K report, 10Q report, annual report, proxy statement, bankruptcy report or earnings projection.

LEXIS(R)-NEXIS(R) Market Quick&Easy(TM) (released September 1996) This product was designed with the involvement and input of marketing, planning and competitive intelligence professionals to provide a simple, but thorough, tool for gathering information critical to their jobs. It pulls information from industry publications like Advertising Age, Business Marketing, Marketing Tools and American Demographics, plus business publications such as Harvard Business Review. Financial and company information is drawn from the SEC, Vickers Stock Research, American Business Information and Standard & Poor's Corporate News.