I've had the chance to chat with Joe Warnemont at Digital Fairways. He's one shap guy, with a really solid view of the tech sector at large. And cost allocation is a huge issue for corporate enterprises. One of the biggest struggles any CIO has is cost justifying new technologies to support the business. Digital Fairways is bringing solid tools to enterprise business that add tremendous value.

PROVERGENT ENABLES ENTERPRISES TO ACCURATELY ALLOCATE CORPORATE TELECOM COSTS

New general ledger code support helps automate the allocation of telecom service
costs to business units consuming those services

TORONTO – September 4, 2007 – Digital Fairway (www.digitalfairway.com), a leading developer of software solutions that help enterprises centralize and automate management of their telecommunications infrastructure, announces ProvergentTM Communication Services Management Suite Version 3.2, adding enhanced workflow and reporting capabilities as well as the ability to accurately allocate the costs associated with communication services to an organization’s general ledger.

For most enterprises, gaining control over the internal accounting of communications expenditures and maintaining transparency into these costs represents a major challenge, not least because the majority of these enterprises still manage such tasks manually.

“Keeping track of cost center assignments and cost allocations for communication services in a spreadsheet are time consuming and error prone tasks,” says Digital Fairway CEO Joe Warnement. “With Provergent V3.2, enterprises can now associate a communications service and its cost to a general ledger code within the application, allowing the service costs to be accurately allocated to the cost center consuming that service. This can be done at the point the service order is entered into the system, or as a workflow task in the order approval or completion process.”

This ability to associate a unique service or circuit identifier to both the cost and a general ledger code greatly facilitates telecom billing reconciliation activities, speeding up the accounts payable process. It also enables enterprises to gain a more accurate view into the telecoms services being consumed by different parts of the organization.

Accurate telecom cost reporting and projections have traditionally been a weak link in achieving Sarbanes Oxley compliance for many organizations. This new functionality in Provergent V3.2 goes a long way to alleviating this critical issue.

Other new features provided in the Provergent Communications Services Management Suite V3.2 include:

• MPLS Support: Migrating a corporate network from a conventional Layer 2 Frame Relay to a Layer 3 IP-based virtual private network (VPN) offers enterprises many strategic and tactical advantages. Provergent V3.2 now supports three versions of MPLS –Verizon MPLS, also called Private IP Service, AT&T MPLS, also called Private Network Transport Services and a Generic MPLS service for use with other service providers’ products.
• Expanded Workflow Roles: User roles have been expanded so that financial and administrative users can now participate in the service order and delivery process along with telecom and IT users. For example, the finance department can now be included in the order process workflow whenever communications expenditure or general ledger cost allocations requires their validation and/or approval.
• Enhanced Reporting: New cost allocation reports have been added to provide detailed reporting of cost allocations across a company’s communications service inventory. Using these reports, enterprises can accurately analyze and forecast operating budgets for voice and data services across business units, based on an analysis of the current inventory. Additional reports for operational performance management and vendor management have also been added, as well as the ability to export detailed circuit and service reports to Crystal Reports, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Rich Text (RTF) formats.
• Microsoft Vista Support: In addition to support for Windows 2003 and Windows XP, Provergent now supports the latest Microsoft Vista operating system.

Provergent Communication Services Management Suite Version 3.2 further improves corporate oversight into communications expenditures and ensures that proper policies and procedures are followed when procuring and accounting for enterprise communications services. Using Provergent, organizations can achieve new levels of visibility and control over their communications infrastructure and services and, armed with this information, begin to identify and eradicate significant cost overruns hidden in their existing telecom infrastructure.

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About Digital Fairway
Digital Fairway is a leading developer of software solutions that help enterprises simplify the management of their voice, data and video communications infrastructures.

Its flagship product ProvergentTM helps organizations centralize and automate their telecommunications service order and inventory processes to build accurate, easy to manage inventories of circuits, equipment and mobile devices. This set of easy-to-use management applications helps substantially reduce the runaway telecommunications costs associated with both traditional and converged voice and data communications services

Digital Fairway’s customers and partners include a growing list of some of the world’s most successful communications service providers and largest enterprises.

Founded in 1999, Digital Fairway is a privately-held corporation, with Canadian headquarters in Toronto, Ontario and U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, California. For additional information, please visit www.digitalfairway.com.