Blueridge Announces OPTIX WORKFLOW®

Flint Hill, VA - May 1, 1993 - Blueridge Technologies, "The Internet Document Management Company," announced OPTIX WorkFlow, the first workflow software for the Macintosh that is designed to be part of a complete Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), including Workflow, Document Imaging, Text Search, OCR, Archival/Retrieval, and Fax Server. OPTIX WorkFlow allows businesses to move electronic documents automatically along a user-definable routing path, from one workstation to the next, around an entire local area network or wide-area network.

OPTIX Workflow is targeted at Fortune 2000 organizations in which mission critical business processes depend on paperwork flowing step by step through the organization. With OPTIX WorkFlow, documents can be moved throughout even the largest organizations at the speed of light, instead of the speed of paper. The bottlenecks that are part of a paper routing system - copying documents, moving documents from one desk to another or one building to another, manually keeping track of documents as they move, locating documents when they are lost or misplaced - are all reduced or eliminated by OPTIX WorkFlow. Not only does OPTIX Workflow allow documents to move more quickly from one step to another in a process, but the processes themselves can be re-engineered to eliminate unnecessary steps, increase productivity, monitor and enhance quality, improve customer satisfaction, and speed up delivery of products and services.

"Workflow is collapsing inefficient business cycles that once took months or days, to hours. Workflow will change the office environment as dramatically as factory automation changed manufacturing." Delphi Consulting Group

With the addition of OPTIX WorkFlow, Blueridge Technologies becomes the first company to offer a complete Electronic Document Management System for the Macintosh, including:

1. Document Imaging (the ability to turn all types of paper and microfilm documents, as well as photographs, into digital images that can be viewed and stored on your computer)

2. Text Search (the ability to search the text of documents for any word or phrase, as well as photographs, into digital images that can be viewed and stored on your computer)

3. OCR (the ability to turn document images into text, as well as photographs, into digital images that can be viewed and stored on your computer)

4. Archival/Retrieval (the ability to archive to Optical Disk Jukeboxes literally millions of electronic documents-either images or existing computer files such as spreadsheets and wordprocessing documents-and retrieve any document in a matter of seconds, as well as photographs, into digital images that can be viewed and stored on your computer)

5. Fax Server (the ability to receive faxes electronically and automatically route them to the appropriate processing queue, as well as photographs, into digital images that can be viewed and stored on your computer)

6. Workflow

OPTIX WorkFlow is the crowning piece of this unique suite of products because it is the application that ties together all existing OPTIX applications to create a new tool businesses can use to process all of their document-based information more efficiently-including all types of paper and microfilm documents, photographs, and documents that already exist on a computer, such as spreadsheets, databases, graphics, and wordprocessing files.

"OPTIX is the only Macintosh-based system that offers both document imaging and workflow. OPTIX WorkFlow is the real payoff for document imaging because it lets us enhance the way we do business, not just the way we retrieve information. Without workflow, a document imaging system is just a big electronic file cabinet." - Stu Nixon, Genentech; OPTIX Workflow User

One of the most powerful and unique features of OPTIX WorkFlow is the ability to move documents simultaneously along parallel routes, a feature available from no other workflow software for the Macintosh. The advantage of any good workflow system is the ability to move a document forward step by step through a structured process until that process is completed. Parallel routing means that the processing steps that require the attention of a number of different people can be handled simultaneously, instead of one step at a time. Just as certain computer operations can be speeded up dramatically with parallel processing, so can certain human tasks - such as claims processing - be speeded up dramatically with the parallel routing featured in OPTIX WorkFlow.

Founded in 1988, Blueridge Technologies is one of the industry's oldest and most respected providers of electronic document management systems (EDMS). Long the leading industrial-strength document imaging and workflow system for Apple Macintosh computers, in 1994 OPTIX became the first electronic document management system to offer workflow, document imaging, document control, COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disk), and natural language text retrieval for both Windows and Macintosh workstations. Via the new OPTIX WEB interface, OPTIX also supports popular Web browsers, including Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer from Microsoft, Mosaic, and all the client platforms these products support, including Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX workstations. An online demo of OPTIX WEB is available at http://www.optixweb.com. Blueridge Technologies is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Metters Industries.

OPTIX systems begin in the range of $40,000 and include server software, client software for both Macintosh and Windows, installation, training, and support.