Portman Building Society Selects Metastorm BPM Suite

UK-Based Building Society Works with Leading BPM Vendor to Transform its Operations

BALTIMORE, MD and LONDON, UK – June 22, 2006 – Metastorm, a leading provider of Business Process Management (BPM) software for modeling, automating, integrating, and improving both human and system-based processes, today announced its software is being implemented at Portman Building Society, the third oldest and one of the largest building societies in the UK. The Metastorm BPM™ Suite will help Portman significantly enhance the process of capturing, storing and transporting information content across its enterprise. The organization’s deployment of Metastorm will also support the transformation of its operations to an electronic medium to help meet its ultimate goal of providing a much more effective and efficient service to its customers.

Portman is deploying the entire Metastorm BPM Suite, including the advanced modeling and simulation and advanced integration modules.

"We chose the Metastorm BPM Suite after a careful selection and evaluation process. Their proposition was able to demonstrate exactly how the software would work in relation to our business,” stated Lisa Whittle, Head of Insurance and Investments at Portman. “The evaluation highlighted not only Metastorm’s ease of use and implementation, but also the breadth of its application set and its flexibility and scalability going forward, which will enable us to leverage the solution across our business.”

As a highly successful building society, Portman is committed to delivering a highly competitive range of products to its customers. To continue providing a leading edge, fully differentiated and cost effective service proposition, Portman wanted to transform its operations from largely paper-based to electronic – giving the organization a fully integrated solution to help manage capacity, capability and cost. To enable this, Portman began deploying the latest technologies to support its teams across a wide range of communication channels, and Metastorm BPM is at the core of this initiative.

Initially, Metastorm will be used to address Portman’s Insurance and Investments department which alone processed over 725,000 pieces of paper last year. Selection criteria included functional fit and flexibility, the ability to deliver to plan and integrate with Portman’s existing improvement initiatives, and vendor and application quality – all of which Metastorm were able to demonstrate successfully.

By using Metastorm BPM, Portman expects to benefit from a more flexible workforce, increased efficiencies, productivity gains, and the automation of mundane administrative tasks to optimize capacity and capability. In addition, Portman expects Metastorm will help the organization achieve greater competitive advantage through the ability to provide outstanding service to its customers.

Metastorm partner EDM, an existing supplier of Document Management services to Portman, recognized that business process management software would benefit Portman and introduced Metastorm to the organization. “We are extremely pleased to have the opportunity to work with an industry-leading organization like Portman and be at the core of supporting its business goals,” stated Mike Malaure, vice president of International Sales for Metastorm. “Portman is in such a competitive business sector and by deploying our BPM technology to streamline its operations, there is no doubt we will also have a direct impact in its efforts to attract and retain customers – the core of its business.”

About Portman Building Society
Portman Building Society is the third largest UK building society and 13th largest UK mortgage lender. In the five years since 2000, Portman has more than doubled in size. During this period Portman was the fastest growing top ten building society in terms of total assets.

The Group has total assets exceeding £17.8 billion and employs over 2,300 staff, serving 1.8 million members. The Society has a network of 143 branches. Its Head Office is in Bournemouth, Dorset and it has an administration centre based in the West Midlands.

About EDM
EDM has established itself as the leading UK provider of electronic document management solutions by combining their expertise in systems development and deployment, consulting services and large scale document conversion services. EDM has the experience of delivering solutions to a range of industry sectors in the UK and their European operations - manufacturing, retail, financial services, business services, healthcare and government. The Company has built an unrivalled reputation in the competitive Financial Services sector where highly regulated businesses aim to produce compliant business processes and increasing levels of customer service. Whenever deployed, the full service offering from The EDM Group can also produce significant improvements in operational efficiency and related cost reductions through improved workflow and access to vital records. For more information please visit our website at www.theedmgroup.co.uk.

About Metastorm
As the first breakaway BPM vendor, Metastorm is a leader in business process management (BPM) software and best practice methodologies for modeling, automating, integrating, and improving both human and system-based processes. Metastorm BPM™ is a complete solution for roundtrip process improvement, designed specifically to address complex processes that are unique to organizations. Metastorm’s 1200+ global client base in manufacturing, retail, financial services, business services, healthcare and government are achieving rapid ROI and Enterprise Process Advantage® in customer service, supply chain operations, risk management, and internal operations. For more information visit www.metastorm.com.

Copyright 2006, Metastorm, Inc. All rights reserved. Metastorm BPM and Enterprise Process Advantage are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Metastorm, Inc. Other product, service and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

THIS NEWS RELEASE CONTAINS ARCHIVAL INFORMATION, WHICH SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED CURRENT AND MAY NO LONGER BE ACCURATE.

Press Contact Information:
Gina Karr
Metastorm
T: +1 443-874-1260
T: +44 (0) 208 971 1519
gkarr@metastorm.com

Shahed Ahmed
Merritt Group
T: +1 703-390-1515
ahmed@merrittgrp.com