DANBURY, Conn., August 7, 2001 -- A recent survey of 200 mail and document production professionals conducted by Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI) suggests that document production facilities are inefficient mainly due to system errors, scheduling conflicts and communications problems that could be solved with access to a digital job tracking method. The survey results are available at www.pbdmt.com.

Over half of the surveyed believed that a web-enabled tracking solution could help them more accurately adhere to their contractual obligations, called Service Level Agreements from start to finish. Of the respondents whose shops process from 50 to over 100 print/finish jobs per day, 65 percent admitted to using either manual job tracking methods or none.

"Too many document managers track jobs manually--that is, with a clipboard, a pen and a spreadsheet," said industry expert Mark Fallon, President & CEO of The Berkshire Company, a print/mail consulting firm. "With no means of tracking jobs or collating job history, document managers cannot effectively manage their operations. Instead, they must contend with partial jobs, unexpected jobs, and jobs that compromise their Service Level Agreements."

"This survey clearly illustrates the challenges faced by mail operations managers, and re-affirms Pitney Bowes' commitment to helping customers web-enable their business processes with products like SiteView, a document production management system that provides visibility of the entire document production process online," said Karl Schumacher, president of Pitney Bowes docSense. "SiteView is the most comprehensive job profiling capability on the market, encompassing IT, print, finish, sortation and digital delivery processes to enable full-scope, integrated, closed-loop messaging."

According to the survey, sixty-nine percent of all managers surveyed routinely received calls from dissatisfied customers. More than half said they were under internal pressure to reduce costs. Thirty percent said that they had faced financial penalties as a result of missed Service Level Agreements.

Most mail production facilities are equipped with systems from different manufacturers. Companies either purchased the equipment at different times as they acquired new business, or inherited another vendor's equipment and systems through an industry merger or facility consolidation. This provides heightened challenges for document production management and operations, especially when the equipment operates at varied levels of technical sophistication.

Pitney Bowes docSense developed SiteView to be vendor-neutral, capable of collecting, transmitting and storing data from the equipment of any manufacturer, from the first work step to its completion, as defined by the Service Level Agreement. SiteView facilitates analysis for better preparation, adherence to SLAs and reduced costs and cycle times.

Pitney Bowes Inc. is a $4 billion global provider of integrated mail, messaging and document management solutions headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. The company serves over 2 million businesses of all sizes through dealer and direct operations. Pitney Bowes docSense is the company's global provider of premier solutions for the creation and distribution of efficient and effective documents in paper and digital form. More information about the end-to-end solutions provided by Pitney Bowes docSense can be found at www.pbdmt.com.

Media Contact:
Scott Gerschwer
Manager, Media Relations
203-739-3163
Scott.Gerschwer@pb.com

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