December 10, 2001 Exstream Software, Inc. announced today that United Information Services (UIS) is using their Dialogue software to improve and expand their document processing services. Based in Des Moines, Iowa, UIS outputs over 20 million customized documents per month—primarily critical statements and invoices—for financial institutions, utilities, manufacturers, wholesalers, communications providers, newspapers, distributors and medical facilities. UIS chose Dialogue to better respond to increased customer demand for more sophisticated, customized statements that include variable pie and bar charts. UIS operates in a Xerox print environment, using the Xerox Metacode output format to support variable digital printing. They found they were restricted by a COBOL platform that made document formatting cumbersome and limited them to using a small number of graphic images and charting formats. A key driver in their decision to purchase Dialogue was the product's ability to output documents in Xerox Metacode with customized charts, messages and logos—without requiring complex programming. Additionally, Dialogue's automatic resource management allows UIS to compose sophisticated customer communications using any TrueType or Adobe font. Dialogue dynamically creates or converts all fonts, images and overlays needed for the targeted output device, including Xerox Metacode and PDF formats, eliminating time-intensive programming. "We were looking for a product that would give us unlimited document format and content capabilities, with a true competitive edge," said Christian Smith, senior systems analyst for UIS. "Without a doubt, Dialogue has given us that edge. We can now offer our customers a variety of document solutions, and deliver results that are beyond their expectations. Our biggest selling point is being able to offer a level of customization to our documents that other companies can't." UIS also finds the flexibility of Dialogue's dynamic file import key to their success since they receive content from a variety of places and in a variety of formats. This feature makes it possible for UIS to connect to a centralized database and dynamically insert customer-created messages, logos and images into documents at run time. Additionally, features such as flowing text and the ability to place business rules on each document element eliminate the restriction of only being able to create fixed length documents. "We are pleased that Dialogue is making UIS more competitive in themarketplace," said Davis Marksbury, president and CEO of Exstream Software. "Dialogue's breadth and depth, flexibility, and ease-of-use make it a perfect fit for industry-leading service bureaus like UIS." Before Dialogue, UIS had to send as many as eight or nine CDs to high-volume customers to fulfill their requests for 100% fidelity archived documents. Their previous system required that all Xerox Metacode fonts be stored in each PDF, making the file sizes huge. Dialogue's automatic resource management eliminates this need, and coupled with its binary compression feature, PDFs are minimized to very manageable file sizes. UIS can now send customers all of their archived documents on a single CD. Alternatively, since Dialogue outputs fully composed PDFs (including bookmarks), customers can choose to view archived documents over the Web, saving time and valuable storage space.