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ConneXt

SEATTLE, WA., May 15, 2001 -ConneXt®, a premier developer of billing and customer care solutions for utilities, today announced the 4.0 release of its flagship product, ConsumerLinX, which will be showcased at the 25th Annual CIS Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 15 – 18, 2001.

ConsumerLinX is the most sophisticated and comprehensive off-the-shelf billing and customer care solution for utilities on the market today. Now available on multiple platforms, including Sun Microsystems Solaris UNIX with an Oracle database and IBM OS/390 with a DB2 database, ConsumerLinX is a complete CIS for mid- and top-tier utilities. In a single software application, the powerful system incorporates all of the modules that utilities need to run their complex billing and customer care operations, including:

• Customer relationship management to track lifetime customer relationships
• Sophisticated billing for real-time and flexible multi-tier pricing to all customer classes
• Accounts receivable management to support virtually all payment methods, including Internet bill payment
• Outage response management for a coordinated and systematic approach to both planned and unplanned outages
• Credit collections management for automated oversight of every aspect of the payment and credit function
• Customer communications management to manage and personalize all customer support functions, including automated targeted communications generation
• Service order management to oversee and track work orders from origination to completion
• Equipment management to ensure that all field billing equipment is in place and functioning properly

“Utilities are struggling not only with how to handle today’s business, but also with finding solutions that will meet their future needs,” said Bob Dryden, ConneXt president and CEO. “Our challenge was to provide these utilities with the tools necessary to run their businesses more efficiently and profitably. ConsumerLinX was developed by seasoned utility professionals. You could say we took utilities’ ‘wish lists’ and incorporated them in this software package. While other software companies struggle to keep up with the evolving energy market, our software is designed to go beyond the present to help utilities meet tomorrow’s challenges. ConsumerLinX is the ultimate solution for utility needs.”

The power and adaptability of ConsumerLinX allows a utility to customize the system to comply with its specific business requirements. Once business processes are defined, changes require only simple reconfiguration by business analysts, eliminating the need to bring in costly outside programmers. Along with a shorter than average implementation time, ConsumerLinX offers XML open standards for seamless interface capability to existing legacy systems or other best-of-breed applications and a user interface that puts more power at the user’s fingertips.

About ConneXt
ConneXt is a Seattle-based developer of packaged customer information system software that enables utilities to meet the challenges of today’s rapidly changing energy marketplace. The company’s flagship billing and customer care solution is ConsumerLinXal", a powerful, agile and adaptable system featuring high-volume billing for all customer classes, including a separate solution designed specifically for commercial and industrial (C&I) accounts. ConneXt is located at 1301 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1900, Seattle, Washington, 98101.

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