LexisNexis Ups the Ante in Professional Services CRM with the Unveiling of InterAction 5.5

Business Wire, May 31, 2006

OAK BROOK, Ill. -- Robust Report Writing, Calendar Synchronization, Internationalization, Document Linking Capabilities and Other Enhancements Support Firms' Growth Strategies

LexisNexis Interface Software announced today the release of InterAction 5.5, the latest version of its market-leading customer relationship management (CRM) solution for professional services organizations. To address the increasingly sophisticated business needs of professionals, InterAction 5.5 extends firms' ability to leverage Relationship Intelligence in the global marketplace, expands the scope of data firms can centrally capture and manage, and provides robust new reporting capabilities to give professionals customized and tailored access to Relationship Intelligence in virtually any layout or format.

"We've built upon the rock-solid InterAction platform and expanded its capabilities to provide firms more," said John McDonnell, vice president and general manager of LexisNexis InterAction. "InterAction 5.5 provides more ways to collect information, more ways to distribute that information to professionals, marketing and business development teams, and more ways to leverage Relationship Intelligence internationally."

Architected on Microsoft's .Net framework, a robust new report writing tool, complemented by dozens of modifiable, out-of-the box reports, provides users complete control and flexibility over presenting InterAction Relationship Intelligence to professionals. Now sophisticated reports can be created quickly and easily to support professionals, marketing and business development teams in their client development and client services efforts. Sample reports include Who Knows Whom(TM), Activities, Win/Loss Analysis on Opportunities, Marketing Event Analysis, Change Reports, Customized Overview Reports, Marketing and Working List Inclusions, Contact Type Reports and many more. InterAction reports can also be created in Microsoft Reporting Services, Crystal Reports and common file formats including Microsoft(R) Access(R) (.mdb), Microsoft(R) Excel(R) (.xls) and Extended Markup Language (.xml).

"Our client development strategy requires that we deliver critical information to users when and where they need it, such as a relationship and client history report that a professional can review in a taxi on the way to a client meeting," said Gregory Trinh, Director of Marketing Technology at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. "InterAction's new reporting facility will significantly enhance our ability to respond quickly to professionals' information requests by enabling us to aggregate and deliver internal and external information."

The new release also adds internationalization support and enhanced mailing capabilities for users that are based in, or doing business with, virtually any country. InterAction and all related modules now supports Unicode data, enabling multi-national customers to integrate contact data into InterAction from all users and sources, regardless of character set or language.(a) Country-specific data now adheres to international standards, making it easier to accurately enter contacts, develop mailings lists, execute mailings and create reports Moreover, the user's home country and language can be configured within all InterAction environments and reports, enabling dates, times, and decimal numbers to be formatted to standard conventions of the user's location.

"Our client- and prospect- base is global and therefore we must be able to effectively track and manage our client data in a multitude of languages and locales," said Sunny Bane, marketing CRM manager at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary US LLP. "InterAction 5.5's internationalization and global mailing support will greatly enhance our ability to effectively communicate with clients and market to prospects worldwide."

To help firms capture valuable Relationship Intelligence found in professionals' meeting and calendar appointments, InterAction now provides Microsoft(R) Outlook(R) calendar synchronization. At their option users can choose to add calendar appointments into InterAction with a single click of a button. The system will automatically log the meeting date, subject matter, location, time, participants and any meeting notes entered into the Outlook calendar form. If any details surrounding the calendar item are subsequently modified in Outlook, the corresponding InterAction calendar item also will be updated automatically.

"Knowing that a person was involved in important conference calls or negotiations in the past can have great client development value in the future, such as when you're trying to win that individual as a new client," said Bane. "With the option of automatically storing Outlook calendar items in InterAction, we no longer are at risk of losing that institutional knowledge."

Finally, very often documents can serve as valuable sources of Relationship Intelligence. For instance, an email message stored as an InterAction activity may provide little insight when viewed later if the attachment originally included in the email has not also been captured. To provide added depth to available Relationship Intelligence, InterAction 5.5 offers document-linking capabilities for firms that have not otherwise implemented a document management system. Now firms can securely link virtually any document type, even those attached to an email message, to activities related to specific people, companies or projects, thus ensuring that all aspects of an interaction are captured and accessible in the centralized repository.