Blueridge Adds Graphical Route Developer Tool to OPTIX WORKFLOW® Software

Flint Hill, VA - September 1, 1994 - Blueridge Technologies, "The Internet Document Management Company," announced an integrated graphical route developer tool for OPTIX Workflow, for both Macintosh and PowerPC-based Macintosh computers.

One of the great benefits of workflow is that it gives you the power to control the flow of documents throughout your organization and, if you wish, to reengineer the way your organization does business by reengineering the way you process the documents that are the lifeblood of your business.

"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

One of the great challenges of workflow is finding an easy way to create and modify the routes along which documents flow through your organization. The new graphical route developer tool solves this problem by letting you draw a workflow route on the screen, much the way you would draw a picture with MacDraw or a similar drawing program, and then letting you click your mouse to turn your drawing into a usable route. In effect, you draw a map of how you want documents to flow through your organization, then click your mouse and your documents automatically begin to flow exactly the way you've drawn your map.

The graphical route developer offers several benefits:

1. Saves time and money when you create routes.

2. Gives end-users a tool for creating their own routes, instead of leaving it in the hands of programmers who may know computers, but may not be as familiar with the day to day needs of running a business.

3. Lets you modify routes more easily, so that as your business changes, you can change your routes to keep pace.

4. Helps you better control and monitor your business processes, by controlling the flow of document-based information.

OPTIX Workflow, with its integrated graphical route developer, is targeted at Fortune 2000 organizations in which mission critical business processes depend on paperwork flowing step by step through the organization. OPTIX Workflow allows documents to move 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 and efficiently 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. The graphical route developer puts a powerful reengineering tool in the hands of the users who are most qualified to perform the reengineering, even though they might not know much about computers. With the graphical route developer tool, they can easily create parallel routes, rendezvous points, wait-points, and selection steps, and use all the other powerful features of 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.