2004 Frost & Sullivan Product Differentiation Innovation Award in Workforce Management Goes to Blue Pumpkin

Business Wire, Dec 13, 2004

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Frost & Sullivan's recent analysis, World Agent Performance Optimization Markets, selected Blue Pumpkin Inc. as the recipient of the 2004 Product Differentiation Innovation Award for being the only workforce management vendor to offer a holistic performance optimization solution. This includes agent scorecards, comparisons to peers, benchmarking against industry standards, and the ability to link performance to corporate objectives.

Every year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to a company that has demonstrated the ability to develop and/or advance products with more innovative capabilities than competing vendors and products. The award recognizes successful adoption of new or existing technology that has become a part of the awarded company's well-designed product family and has the capability to contribute to the industry in terms of product performance and rate of technical change.

In 2003, Blue Pumpkin launched the Blue Pumpkin Advisor Express -- the company's quick launch performance management solution for measuring, managing, and improving organizational and employee performance.

"This solution helps align contact center performance to corporate goals, thereby increasing the strategic role of the contact center," notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Seema Lall. "In addition to tracking performance internally through comparison to peers, a unique feature of this solution is the ability to track performance against industry standards and best practices."

In 2003, Blue Pumpkin was ranked second in the workforce management market based on software license and services revenues and it was ranked first on the basis of software license revenues. Its impressive list of customers includes AT&T, Federal Express, General Mills, JetBlue Airways, Nissan, Visa, and more than 1,000 other companies.

"A feature rich and visionary product line, broad global distribution strategy, effective marketing communications, and a focus on optimizing people and process in addition to technology are some of the reasons for the company's success," says Lall.

Blue Pumpkin released the latest version of its Workforce Optimization suite earlier this year based on extensive input from customer and industry experts. The suite includes Activity Manager, Advisor Enterprise, Advisor Express, Director Enterprise and Planner -- available together or as stand-alone products.

The new additions of Learning Express and Time Record Manager, just a few months after introducing the latest version of the suite, demonstrates the power and flexibility of the new technology platform to quickly respond to evolving customer needs.

Each of these individual products are feature rich, robust and mature, and come together to create a dynamic product that is designed to drive customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and business growth.

"This is a particularly gratifying award, since it acknowledges the hard work and creativity of everyone here at Blue Pumpkin," says Doron Aspitz, President and CEO of Blue Pumpkin. "The key to our successful innovations has always been to listen and anticipate real customer needs in order to deliver real value. This is a hallmark of our solutions and something we will carry forward into the future."

About Blue Pumpkin Inc.

Blue Pumpkin provides industry-leading workforce optimization solutions that improve the performance of a customer contact center's most important and valuable asset -- its people. Addressing critical business challenges and creating competitive advantage with both innovative technology and best-practices professional services, we help our customers Balance and Optimize(TM) three critical and often competing priorities: business growth through customer loyalty, employee satisfaction and retention, and operating costs. For more information, please visit www.bluepumpkin.com.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company founded in 1961, partners with clients to create value through innovative growth strategies. The foundation of this partnership approach is our Growth Partnership Services platform, whereby we provide industry research, marketing strategies, consulting, and training to our clients to help grow their business. A key benefit that Frost & Sullivan brings to its clients is a global perspective on a broad range of industries, markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. With a client list that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, as well as the investment community, Frost & Sullivan has evolved into one of the premier growth consulting companies in the world.