NEWS RELEASE

For More Information Contact:

Ingrid Andrews
Creative Marketing Group
760-438-3399

Marti Colwell
iMarkup Solutions, Inc.
877-MARKUP1 Ext. 251

MARS ADVERTISING ACHIEVES ONLINE COLLABORATION WITH CLIENTS THROUGH iMARKUP

Document Review Server Facilitates Real Time Client Collaboration
 

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Sept 2, 2002 – iMarkup Solutions Inc., (www.imarkup.com), a leading provider of Web-based collaboration tools, today announced it has been selected by MARS Advertising, a marketing and advertising company and leader in brand development, to provide document collaboration and review for both clients and internal employees. The deployment of iMarkup’s Document Review Server (DRS) will assist the company in communicating with clients, among them leading consumer packaged goods and manufacturing companies, that required a secure, real time and intuitive tool for reviewing PDF files and other documents. MARS will also deploy DRS across the agency and will incorporate iMarkup’s online approval system into its co-op advertising approval process.

     The agency has developed an in-house system that manages workflow, automates reporting and enhances communication with clients. With an ongoing volume of work in progress that needs to be reviewed, critiqued and approved, collaboration about documents is critical. To more effectively communicate about these documents, MARS added on to its existing system, building a simple online file repository for sharing information internally and with clients.

     Online collaboration was a requirement for the agency whose team of 300 strategic thinkers, including more than 40 creative directors, create, modify and change documents daily. Emailing attachments created version control issues in addition to message storage challenges and lacked the interactive, real time relationship MARS wanted to have with its clients. As a result of online research, Bill Davidson, Vice President, Information Systems with MARS discovered iMarkup’s Document Review Server. “iMarkup designed a product that does exactly what we need it to do—it allows us to annotate documents collaboratively, securely and in real time, is affordable and self-administering and provides excellent interoperability with our existing systems,” Davidson observed.
 

EXPEDITING DOCUMENT REVIEW

     Developed to address the needs of enterprise users collaborating on documents, the iMarkup Document Review Server (DRS) provides a powerful and easy way to distribute, collaborate on, annotate and review documents throughout all stages of the document review process. During workflow, versioning and review cycles, all shared documents are stored securely on the Document Review Server and accessible to appropriate users. Markups, notes and annotations made by the reviewers can be displayed either by one reviewer at a time, a subset of reviewers or by all simultaneously.

Unlike other tools available to workgroups and virtual teams, DRS can be self-administered, allowing users to create workgroups, invite users into their workgroups and set permissions. Users can easily and securely publish and distribute documents to members of their workgroups for feedback and review. Documents are automatically rendered in HTML or PDF format for easy distribution, without requiring reviewers to install the original applications.

Original documents are stored on the Document Review Server, allowing them to be “checked out” while also preventing others from editing these documents simultaneously. Notification facilities within DRS then allow authors to automatically notify all reviewers when the documents are ready. Authors have the ability to track reviewers’ progress as they work on their documents and security permissions identify which documents are accessible to which users, controlling the usage of those documents.

“With the online collaboration capabilities of the iMarkup Document Review Server, MARS Advertising is now in a position to review documents with its clients easily and effectively,” commented John O’Brien, President and CEO of iMarkup Solutions. “We are pleased to be working with forward-thinking companies like MARS and their distinguished clients to help them standardize processes and improve communication,” he concluded.
 

About iMarkup Solutions

     iMarkup Solutions (www.imarkup.com) provides real-time Web-based collaboration tools that enable end-users to communicate, annotate, organize and collaborate over the Web. The company is focused on developing tools that improve workflow and enable users to maximize their efficiency, working as intelligently with electronic information as they do with paper-based information. The company is privately held and is headquartered in San Diego, California. For more information, call 877-MARKUP1 or visit www.imarkup.com.

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The iMarkup name and logo are the registered service and trademarks of iMarkup Solutions, Inc. Notice to editors: iMarkup graphics, reviews and more are available online at www.imarkup.com/press.