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UK's Largest Student Accommodation Provider, UNITE, Selects Interwoven ECM to Enhance Customer Service, Reduce Costs, and Speed Time to Market for New Marketing Initiatives
UNITE to Power Online Housing Management System for University Students Across the Country with Interwoven Solutions
LONDON, England - Interwoven GearUp '05 Europe ECM Solutions Conference - October 20, 2005 - Interwoven, Inc. (Nasdaq: IWOV), a leading provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions for business, today announced that UNITE, the UK's largest student accommodation provider, will use Interwoven ECM solutions to streamline a previously paper-based and time-consuming process for handling rental-related business. UNITE will leverage Interwoven to power the company's fast-growing online accommodation management system, reducing costs, and improving efficiencies by: enabling customers to complete paperwork via a self-service application on the company's Web site; empowering business users to more quickly and easily launch new marketing initiatives; and automating previously manual Web content update processes.
UNITE selected Interwoven ECM solutions for Web Content Management, Extranet Management, and Digital Asset Management. The company also purchased Interwoven's industry-leading Content Distribution software. UNITE will implement the technology with the assistance of Interwoven partner Perot Systems, a technology-based solutions provider with offices around the world.
With a £1.6B ($2.8B USD) property portfolio encompassing 31,000 study rooms, UNITE manages the complete property lifecycle, from securing land to obtaining the relevant planning consents to building, managing, and renting the accommodation. With the UK seeing a substantial increase in student numbers, UNITE is providing much needed quality accommodation in a market where demand outstrips supply. UNITE has achieved exponential growth in recent years, and is now adding approximately 5,000 beds per year to its existing portfolio. As a result, UNITE has outgrown the processes traditionally used for tasks such as selling, contract processing, check-in/check-out, and maintenance. To establish a more efficient platform for its continued business growth, UNITE sought to build a fully automated, online accommodation management system that will provide self-service to its customers while increasing control and reducing operating costs related to its Web site.
After evaluating an array of technology solutions on the market, UNITE chose Interwoven to address its full range of content management needs. The company will use the Interwoven Web Content Management and Extranet solutions to empower business users across the company to quickly and easily build microsites, without IT assistance, enabling students and other parties to enter their information online for automated forms processing. Additionally, since Web components provided via the Interwoven Extranet solution are reusable, UNITE can save development time and costs with the ability to create multilingual sites, without having to start site development from scratch. The Interwoven Extranet solution is powered by Interwoven LiveSite Content Publishing technology.
"This new process will further enhance the service we provide to our student customers as well as provide UNITE with a unique management solution required to sustain our long-term business objectives," said James Granger, finance director for UNITE's Student Hospitality Division. "Our investment in Interwoven ECM will enable us to bring current operations to a new height of efficiency and scalability, as well as respond to new market opportunities quickly and effectively."
The Interwoven Digital Asset Management solution will be used by UNITE to store all types of rich media and digital assets, such as photographs of rental properties, in a common and easily-accessible Web-based repository. In combination with business users' ability to more quickly create microsites, easy access to a comprehensive rich media library will enable UNITE to more seamlessly create and update online marketing campaigns. Further, Interwoven Content Distribution software will enable UNITE to automate the deployment of code and content changes to the Web, ensuring the right information is available at the right time to visitors of the company's Web site and microsites. As a result, Interwoven will help UNITE to reduce costs and free business users to directly roll out new initiatives for increased competitive advantage and market agility.
"With such a rapidly-growing business, it was key that UNITE not only empower customers with online self-help solutions, but also enable business users to directly and more rapidly publish to the Web," said Erik Hansen, senior vice president and general manager, EMEA operations, Interwoven. "We look forward to our new relationship with UNITE, and working with them to continue streamlining processes, enhancing their relationship with their own customers, and achieving maximum ROI from their ECM investment."
About Interwoven ECM Solutions
The Interwoven Web Content Management solution is based on Interwoven TeamSite software, the industry's most advanced content management software that enables organizations to manage mission-critical information on the Web. The Interwoven Extranet solution is powered by Interwoven LiveSite software, the industry's first Web publishing product that empowers business users to quickly and easily create and publish dynamic Web sites-including public sites, intranets and extranets-while still providing IT with the tools to maintain a high degree of control and security. The Interwoven Digital Asset Management solution is powered by Interwoven MediaBin Asset Server software, and is the leading solution chosen by marketing organizations to control, distribute and publish the thousands of digital assets used to promote their products and brands. Lastly, Interwoven's OpenDeploy Content Distribution software automates the entire content distribution process, eliminating traditionally manual, customized, and inefficient distribution processes.
To read about more news announced at this week's GearUp '05 Europe conference, please go to http://www.interwoven.com.tw/events/conferences/gearup_emea05/index.html
About Interwoven
Interwoven, Inc., provider of Enterprise Content Management solutions for business, enables organizations to unify people, content and processes to minimize business risk, accelerate time-to-value and sustain lower total cost of ownership. Interwoven delivers deep industry-specific solutions which reduce business process cycle time from initial collaboration through design, production, sales, marketing, legal review, IT and service. Interwoven leads the industry with a service-oriented architecture today and easy-to-use, best-in-class components and solutions. Today, nearly 3,400 enterprises, law firms, and professional services organizations worldwide are Interwoven customers including BT, Ford, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, General Motors, Jones Day, Motorola and Yamaha. Interwoven is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with offices around the world. For more information visit www.interwoven.com.tw.
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