Alogent Enhances Offering for Banks' Small Business Customers, as the New Vanguard for Distributed Capture

Business Wire, Oct 22, 2007

Sierra Xpedite Remote Deposit Automation to Feature Simple Deployment, Additional Capabilities

BOSTON -- Alogent Corp., a leading provider of enterprise deposit automation technologies for global financial institutions and processors, today announced its enhanced focus on small business in response to the market's evolving demand for remote deposit capture. As a pioneer in deposit automation, with more than a decade of product development and implementation experience, Alogent is helping banks develop their small business banking customer base as the new frontier in distributed capture deployment.

"The missing link to superior banking customer service for small businesses has been the ability to extend real-time, self-serve capabilities to the desktop. Doing so simplifies the workflow inside the office walls and eliminates the need to physically leave the office to make a deposit," said Paul J. Citarella, executive vice president at Alogent. "By introducing an offering focused on small business, financial institutions can gain entry to this huge opportunity of more than 24 million small business banking customers in the United States," he said.

Since Check 21 went into effect in October 2004, most small businesses have not been exposed to its benefits. Remote deposit capture, one of several technologies born in the post-Check 21 era, now allows the nation's businesses to automate more cumbersome traditional deposit processes, saving time and reducing costs.

Alogent's Sierra Xpedite[R] Remote Deposit Automation[TM] solution offers key features that enable financial institutions to extend these benefits to smaller businesses. These include:

* A simple, web-based user interface and intuitive workflow that requires virtually no end user training

* Real-time capabilities such as image quality analysis (IQA), duplicate detection and verification of deposit

* Ease of deployment, managed entirely by Alogent, using a service oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure

* Enhanced, integrated security standards

* Sierra Deposit Portal[TM], a customizable interface that facilitates additional reporting capabilities

In addition, Alogent has now integrated its remote deposit automation solution with lower-cost scanning devices from vendors including Unisys, RDM, Digital Check and Panini.

Without remote deposit capabilities, small businesses expend time, effort, and costs to prepare and process bank deposits, and to post them to A/R systems. The capture and storage of payment information, including receipts, purchase orders, checks, and payment coupons further consume time and resources. As with any manual process, a margin of error is inherent; the corresponding measures to resolve errors are time consuming, adding even more cost and inconvenience to the bottom line. Finally, traditional deposit methods call for regular trips to the local branch to conduct in-person deposit transactions. In addition to the hard-dollar costs and time involved in doing so, the small business may incur opportunity cost due to the resulting absence from the workplace.

According to BAI's Small Business Payments 2006 research report, small businesses display strong demand for integrated payment and business management tools. Close to 10% of small businesses and SOHOS (small office/home offices) in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors are already using RDC or have concrete plans to begin using it by the end of 2007.

Alogent is demonstrating Sierra Xpedite Deposit Automation solutions, including its next-generation remote deposit features for small business, at booth numbers 407 and 408 at AFP's Annual Conference in Boston this week.

About Alogent

Founded in 1995, Alogent Corporation is a leading global provider of enterprise-wide deposit automation technologies that enable financial institutions and processors to leverage the conversion of paper to electronic processing. The company's Sierra suite of solutions automates deposit processes at every point of presentment (including branches, ATMs, merchants, corporations and cash vaults), while optimizing electronic data and image processing and settlement. As the deposit automation market leader, Alogent's platform processes billions of payments annually, with more than 70,000 seats sold to date. The company counts KeyCorp, Lloyds TSB and SunTrust among its 1,000 financial institution customers. For more information, visit www.alogent.com or call 888.333.6030.