LEXINGTON, Ky.-- Exstream Software, Inc. announced today the winners of its 2006 Visionary Awards, presented at the fifth annual North American Dialogue User Conference held in Lexington, Kentucky, Oct. 22–25, 2006. The awards recognize customers that have achieved outstanding results using the company’s Dialogue enterprise personalization software. More than 270 attendees representing over 100 companies participated in this year’s conference, themed “The Next Dimension.” Thirty-six Dialogue applications addressing a variety of challenging business requirements were submitted for a Visionary Award in one of five categories: Best Designed Document, Best Application Architecture, Most Significant Return on Investment, Best Interactive/Distributed Application, and Most Sophisticated Application. Best Designed Document was awarded to Blue North Strategies of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, an industry leader in personalized print and interactive communications. Blue North’s winning entry was the redesign of the “Your Better Place” semi-annual newsletter produced for The Co-Operators insurance company. Mailed to approximately one million customers twice annually, the newsletter is used to foster customer retention and for cross-selling and up-selling to customers who can hold policies in five different areas (life, home, auto, farm, and commercial). Blue North created the newsletter using Dialogue and developed a staggered production and distribution schedule in order to spread out costs throughout the year, and to time mailings to coincide with customer policy renewals. Additionally, with Dialogue, newsletter content and imagery is continuously updated and refreshed. Though Co-Operators’ exact numbers are confidential, Blue North reports that with the redesigned newsletter the company has seen an overall increase in customer retention and gains in revenue through cross-selling in specific product groups. Agents also have begun using the newsletter as a lead generation tool, following up with clients on the personalized offers they receive in the newsletters. Best Application Architecture was given to Lason Inc. for development of TransUnion Disclosure documents, government-mandated credit reports that inform consumers of credit data collected by TransUnion. Lason, headquartered in Troy, MI, with more than 35 locations in North America, Mexico, China, and India, was asked to design disclosure reports for multiple languages on demand. Data could come from a number of different sources; the reports had to be formatted for printing at any one of TransUnion’s three different printing facilities; and the finished documents had to fit one of nine different window envelope positions. Lason integrated Dialogue with its own Integrated Document Manufacturing System (IDMF) to develop TransUnion’s complex real-time application. TransUnion transmits a print image file to Lason, which is used as input to create the reformatted document and distribute it to a printer at one of TransUnion's facilities—all in less than 60 seconds. Additionally, while the new disclosures contain 30 percent more information, on average each is about 20 percent shorter than previously because only relevant information is presented. The new disclosures have allowed TransUnion to meet regulatory mandates without significantly reorganizing internal procedures. The streamlined documents reinforce the TransUnion brand and save the company an estimated $1 million per year. HealthNet, one of the nation’s largest managed health care companies, was recognized with this year’s Most Significant Return on Investment award for its Western Region ID Card application. The company’s goal was to develop a faster, more efficient and economical method of producing and delivering member ID cards. HealthNet has been using Dialogue since August, 2005 to generate the personalized cards and related documents, totaling approximately three million pages per year. Since migrating to Dialogue, HealthNet has reduced the time required to deliver an ID card to the customer to a matter of days, and has cut associated costs by $360,000 per year. Principal Financial Group of Des Moines, Iowa, a leader in offering businesses, individuals and institutional clients a wide range of financial products and services, received the award for Best Interactive/Distributed Application for its Individual Health Assessments. The company’s Principal Wellness Company, which conducts customer health screenings on site at client locations where there is no access to Principal Financial Group’s corporate network, used Dialogue to develop a web service application that allows client locations to create assessments whether on a stand-alone laptop or one connected to the company’s web-based application. The solution ensures accuracy of the screening data, and ensures all assessments have the same high-quality, professional appearance. Louisville, KY-based Humana Inc. was named the recipient of this year’s Most Sophisticated Application award. In efforts to improve upon its conventional black-and-white Explanation of Benefits (EOB) statements, Humana created quarterly statements to supplement the EOB. Using Dialogue to design its SmartSummary health benefits statements, Humana now prints the documents in full color with variable graphics, charts and icons to clearly present plan costs and benefits, and to call attention to various types of information. The new statement makes it easier for commercial customers to read and understand their health plan details, benefits, costs, and payment information. Humana also utilized Dialogue to create a flexible data hierarchy and dynamic messaging process, establishing multiple qualifiers to add personalized, relevant messages on the statements, and tracking to measure their effectiveness. In October 2005, Humana rolled out SmartSummary to a pilot group of 50,000 customers for testing and feedback, and due to the positive response now plans to deliver the new statement to 1.5 million more customers over the upcoming year. One of the chief advantages of using Dialogue, Humana noted, is that it has been able to develop and deploy SmartSummary within a six-month period. In addition, SmartSummary Rx statements were subsequently developed, making use of the original SmartSummary processes. This “second generation” statement won Humana the Stevie Award as Best New Product for American Business—a prestigious award which honors the efforts, accomplishments and positive contributions of companies and business people worldwide. “Once again, our customers have delighted us with the many unique and sophisticated ways they are using Dialogue to create better experiences for their customers, while improving their own operational efficiencies,” said Davis Marksbury, president and CEO of Exstream Software. “It is truly inspiring for us to see our clients realizing so much value from Dialogue.” The North American Dialogue user conference is held annually to provide customers with an opportunity to network with other users and learn new ways to improve customer experience, increase productivity, and grow their business. The 2006 event was sponsored in part by Doculynx, Inc., EarthColor Business Solutions, and IBM. Exstream also held its annual European user conference this year, June 14-16 in Prague, Czech Republic.