Houten, October 1 2002 — BroadVision, Inc. (Nasdaq: BVSN), the leading provider of enterprise business portal applications, today announced that the General Services Administration (GSA), the official federal source for government purchasing, is re-launching its e-Buy tool, based on BroadVision technology, responsible for providing access to 3 million products to 8,800 contractors. The GSA announcement coincides with announcements of new initiatives and success stories from a wide range of other BroadVision® customers in the government e-business sector, underlining the company’s position as one of the sector’s leading suppliers of portal solutions.
In addition to GSA, other key BroadVision customers in the government sector include over 60 government agencies such as the city of Chicago, the state of Minnesota, and Gwinnett County in Georgia. Forrester Research expects 4,000 e-government systems to be deployed in the United States by 2006. BroadVision has seen the rapid adoption of web-based self-service applications in government to meet internal objectives and to respond to regulations mandating improved efficiency. Governments are also responding to demands for the type of streamlined Internet interactions they have become accustomed to on private-sector portals.
A wide range of government entities have deployed BroadVision solutions to help them make the transformation to e-government. BroadVision’s enterprise business portal solutions help them effectively and efficiently manage constituent relationships with one-stop, personalized self-service access to information, transactions and business processes. BroadVision government customers take advantage of an integrated suite of e-business solutions supporting the complex relationships, processes and interactions necessary for e-government. BroadVision portals make it possible for government to reach its goals for 24/365 availability, paper reduction, citizen participation in governance, knowledge transfer and cost reductions.
“We believe BroadVision enterprise portal technology is the ideal solution for government agencies working to address legislative policies while building and maintaining relationships of trust with their constituencies,” said Sanjay Gupta, senior vice president of marketing and alliances for BroadVision. “We anticipate building on our momentum in the government sector as more and more agencies embark on e-government transformations.”
BroadVision Powers GSA’s e-Buy Tool
The largest government e-commerce site is run by the U.S. General Services Administration Federal Supply Service (GSA), a centralized federal procurement and property management agency that acquires office space, equipment, telecommunications, information technology, supplies and services for the federal government. On August 8, the GSA officially launched its revamped request-for-quotes (RFQ) tool called e-Buy. GSA used BroadVision’s enterprise business portal solutions to build the new sites.
E-Buy is part of GSA Advantage! (http://www.gsaadvantage.gov), the GSA's online catalog, which provides access to more than 8,800 contracts offering more than 3 million products and services. Average daily sales on the GSA Advantage! system are $750,000, with peak periods reaching as much as $1.5 million. As of early June 2002, the site had over 3.2 million products/services and more than 7,300 vendors with 8,000-plus contracts. During the past year, over 342,000 orders were processed for more than $163 million. The site has over 127,000 registered users, with approximately 400 new users registering each day. The site was also awarded an e-Gov 2002 Explorer award.
E-Buy enhances GSA Advantage! by giving buyers greater flexibility in obtaining what they want, whether it’s a special price on a standard item or an immediate delivery date. With approximately 7,300 vendors on the system, e-Buy can generate special-request quotes on non-standard services and types of product. E-Buy enables buyers within an organization to aggregate items within an RFQ for greater price leverage.
According to Al Iagnemmo, director of GSA's E-Business Division in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, e-Buy is one of the most exciting aspects of the new system. “We leveraged the existing BroadVision application to accommodate the hundred different government business rules associated with RFQs,” says Iagnemmo. “One of our biggest growth areas now is services. E-Buy will help us offer services online, so buyers can order services, such as accounting and building cleaning, and actually get the RFQs, evaluate them and award them, all online through GSA Advantage!”
BroadVision Enables e-Government Transformations
The following government customers are also using BroadVision enterprise business portal solutions to cost-effectively provide personalized self-service to their various constituencies.
City of Chicago: The third largest city in the United States, Chicago has an annual budget of $4 billion and has more than 40,000 employees serving more than 3 million residents. The city rolled out its BroadVision-powered e-government initiatives beginning in Q4 of 2001. The first initiative was an online bill payment system that allows citizens and businesses to easily pay a variety of fees and debts owed the city. The next initiative was an on-line permitting center application (http://egov.cityofchicago.org/permit), which enables citizens and businesses to renew their city permits online, substantially reducing application turnaround times. It also increases the efficiency of business processes that span city departments by connecting to the city's back-end systems, and facilitates content management by using BroadVision's IP forms.
“Mayor Daley’s vision is to use technology to make it easier for citizens and companies to do business with the city of Chicago,” said Chris O’Brien, deputy chief information officer for the city of Chicago. “BroadVision has a well-integrated suite of applications that provide us with a scalable portal framework, powerful content management and online transaction capabilities that we can leverage across all of our e-government initiatives.”
State of Minnesota: (www.northstar.state.mn.us) The state of Minnesota is using BroadVision enterprise business portal solutions to create its next-generation state government portal, designed to connect multiple state agencies and give citizens easier access to Minnesota government services and information.
“This project goes far in achieving the vision of Governor Jesse Ventura to assure that citizens can more easily communicate with, work with and participate in Minnesota Government,” said Reggie David, assistant commissioner, the Office of Technology.
The new version of Minnesota’s “North Star” portal will provide citizens with convenient, self-service access to consolidated information and services from more than 100 state agencies. A “My Minnesota” feature will allow each visitor to register and customize the homepage. Once registered, users can subscribe to receive notifications via their home page when content of interest changes. The state hopes to provide interactive, up-to-date info for frequent users of state information. The new portal provides a broad range of services to users, reduces state costs for web development, leverages technologies developed within a variety of settings, and enables collaboration across state agencies.
Gwinnett County, Georgia: (www.co.gwinnett.ga.us) In January 2002, the Gwinnett County government launched its enhanced BroadVision-powered site as part of a five-year IT initiative to offer residents access to county government services via the Internet. According to a recent Horizon poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, 85 percent of Gwinnett County residents are online. At present, county residents utilize the web site as a resource for government and county information, news, careers and calendar of events. The new web site provides more than 618,000 residents with self-service access to information and services including online property tax payment and status of building permits for local companies.
“After the initial plans had been developed for the new web site, we discovered that BroadVision already had a product that met our exact needs,” said Connie Hinson, Director of Support Services for Gwinnett County. “Even better, we needed just 15 weeks to get up and running. Without BroadVision, our site may have taken as long as two years to test and develop prior to the launch.”
About BroadVision
BroadVision’s (Nasdaq: BVSN) enterprise business portal applications create immediate business value by transforming the way organizations do business—moving relationships to a personalized, self-service model that enhances growth, reduces costs and improves productivity. Leading global companies use BroadVision as the basis for their enterprise business portal initiatives—using the web and wireless devices to unify and extend an enterprise’s applications, information and business processes to serve its employees, partners and customers in a personalized and collaborative way.
For more information about BroadVision, Inc., call 650.542.5100, email info@broadvision.com or visit www.broadvision.com.
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