Press Release

For immediate release
October 10, 2004

Softeon Releases the Industry's Most Powerful Fulfillment and Delivery Solution for Beverage Distributors

Integrated Order Management, Forecasting, Warehouse Management and Delivery Management Solution Drives Out Warehouse Costs, Improves Inventory Management, and Increases Route Sales

Vienna, VA -- Softeon, which provides the industry's most functionally-rich solutions for logistics and distribution management, today announced the release of an integrated order management, fulfillment and delivery solution targeted specifically at the increasing complex needs of beverage distributors, including those in the beer, wine, spirits and soft drink segments. These solutions offer a powerful set of capabilities that enable beverage distributors to substantially reduce operating and distribution costs, achieve real-time inventory management, optimize loading of delivery trucks, and drive increased sales through improved forecasting tools linked to fulfillment operations.

Softeon serves a wide variety of vertical markets, but has developed gained deep insight and built industry-specific functional capabilities through work with several large beverage distributors. The company is currently delivering these integrated capabilities to a major Midwest beer distributor.

Softeon's solution for beverage manufacturers is built on an integrated set of modules from its supply chain execution and order-to-delivery solution suite. These modules can be implemented as a complete solution, or as individual components, and integrate easily with existing order management, financial and route accounting applications the distributor may already have in place. The solution set includes capabilities that have been developed specifically to meet the needs of beverage distributors, offering many features available from no other software vendor in the market.

The full Softeon solution for beverage distributors includes

A flexible, easy-to-use order management system, including web-based order entry.
A powerful forecasting system that enables beverage distributors to increase sales by deriving the order patterns of retail, restaurant, and other customers by SKU for each delivery route and day. This enables the distributor to increase "opportunistic sales" for route drivers by accurately matching inventory on the truck to likely order requirements for customers that have not pre-ordered.
Comprehensive inventory control capabilities that enable real-time management of inventory by location, SKU, lot/batch and expiration date, significantly improving accuracy and reducing shrinkage and costs associated with inventory that becomes obsolete or past its expiration/freshness date.
Highly configurable warehouse management capabilities than drive efficiency in putaway, order picking and other functions. Advanced functionality includes support for paperless warehouse operations, voice picking, use of dynamic, optimized pick paths, and order picking synchronized with delivery truck loading plans (both traditional and side loaded trucks).
Tools that automatically create optimized delivery truck plans, which are integrated with both customer pre-orders and a route-specific sales forecast. These tools include operator-friendly visual loading diagrams, and drive labor efficiencies in both loading operations and delivery route stops.

"The market and competitive landscape has changed significantly for many beverage distributors," said Steve Hopper, VP Marketing & Sales of Softeon. "Increasingly, beverage distributors are looking for increased operational efficiencies and opportunities to increase sales. We've delivered a powerful solution for this market enables them to do both."

In addition to its powerful capabilities, Softeon's order fulfillment solutions are easy to install and for operators and supervisors to use. The result is an extremely high level of ROI for Softeon customers.

About Softeon

Softeon (www.softeon.com) providers the industry's most functionally-rich suite of WMS and supply chain execution solutions. Built on an advanced, fully web-native technical architecture, Softeon's solution offers a comprehensive yet modular solution for warehouse and distribution management, order management, labor and resource management, work order processing, and transportation management. Companies consistently find that Softeon's solution offers the most deep and comprehensive set of capabilities in the supply chain execution industry, supported by an advance and flexible technical architecture, satisfying both operations and IT requirements.

Softeon's growing list of customers includes such well-known companies as Time-Warner, Matrix, House of LaRose, Federation Logistics, and other logistics leaders.

Contact information:

703-356-8727
contact@Softeon.com