Hearst Corporation Chooses On-Demand CRM Platform From Relationals to Boost Revenue Growth & Improve Customer Experiences

Market Wire, May, 2006

One of the nation's most prestigious media companies, Hearst Corporation, has selected the Relationals on-demand CRM platform to streamline the sales process, increase sales and improve the experience with customers across their 12 daily newspaper properties, including the San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston Chronicle.

Customer relationship management has long held the promise of reducing customer churn, maximizing up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, optimizing the product and pricing mix, and analyzing the return on investment for marketing campaigns. However, many of these capabilities exist in disconnected systems that create barriers for sales representatives and management access to important business management information.

Until now. Relationals CRM's integrated selling and customer management environment provides an efficient platform for tracking, finding, and managing all aspects of the selling and customer advertising buying relationship.

"Relationals was the best fit for our strategy of deploying sales technology that will improve customer experiences, raise sales productivity and profitably expand top line revenue growth," says Mark Adkins, senior vice president of Advertising for Hearst Newspapers.

"Relationals provides the easiest to use and most powerful CRM system available for the media industry," said Pankaj Malviya, chief executive officer for Relationals. "Sales teams come to quickly understand how this can help them increase their sales, maximize opportunities and retain customers. It provides sales representatives with a complete information system that let's them know everything that's going on with their accounts -- which is something that customers have come to expect from the companies with whom they do business."

About Hearst Corporation

The Hearst Corporation ( www.hearst.com ) is one of the nation's largest diversified communications companies. Its major interests span more than 175 magazines around the world, including Cosmopolitan and O, The Oprah Magazine; 12 daily newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle and San Francisco Chronicle; 28 television stations through Hearst-Argyle Television (NYSE: HTV) which reach a combined 18% of U.S. viewers; ownership in leading cable networks, including Lifetime, A&E, The History Channel and ESPN; as well as business publishing, Internet businesses, television production, newspaper features distribution and real estate.

About Relationals

Relationals provides a hosted platform for creating scalable on-demand enterprise applications. Built on the Relationals on-demand platform, the Relationals' Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suite strengthens customer relationships, improves customer satisfaction and reduces costs by streamlining the process of attracting, retaining and servicing customers. Relationals customers include newspapers from Scripps, Knight-Ridder, McClatchy, Morris, Lee Enterprises, Cox and Gannett. For more information, call 408-364-2432 or visit the Relationals website at http://www.relationals.com .

Relationals is a trademark of Relationals Corporation.

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MEDIA CONTACT: Patricia A. Roche' Relationals (650) 947-0845 (650) 823-0193 (Cell) Email Contact