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President & CEO of Contact Networks Explains the Power of Leveraging Relationships to Gain Competitive Advantage at the KMWorld & Intranets 2005 Conference

Customers that Have Implemented This Valuable Solution include Law Firms, Consulting Firms, and Financial Services Businesses

Boston, MA – November 17, 2005 - Contact Networks ( www.contactnetworks.com), a leading next generation enterprise search company, today announced that more than 100 business and IT professionals attended a session to learn how advanced search technology can help professional services firms better leverage relationships within their own companies to gain competitive advantage. Geoffrey Hyatt, President & CEO of Contact Networks delivered a customer case study about Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, an AmLaw 100 law firm with 950 employees in offices across the US and abroad. Mintz Levin has successfully transformed individual employee contacts into a trusted firm-wide asset by using an innovative solution called ContactNet.    

"Many firms lose business deals because the competing firm had an incredibly powerful advantage: pre-existing relationships," said Mr. Hyatt. "The fact is, people prefer to do business with someone they know and trust, or know through a trusted source. However, without a tool to leverage these valuable relationships and find out ‘who knows whom' in their own firms, companies miss opportunities to get in the door, secure new business, and generate more revenue."

The challenge that Mintz Levin and most other large professional services businesses face is how to uncover ‘who knows whom' in a quick, efficient, and non-intrusive way, when there are dozens, hundreds or thousands of employees located in offices spread around the country or the world. Contact Networks' customers can easily identify colleagues who have valuable contacts. They consider ContactNet a competitive advantage because it enables them to better leverage their relationships, sign more deals, and generate more revenues.

Mr. Hyatt's session at KMWorld & Intranets Conference and Exposition, which took place from November 15-17, 2005 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, sparked questions, particularly around CRM and why companies aren't leveraging these systems to tap into relationships.

"While many professional services organizations have CRM systems in place, doing a ‘who knows whom' search is only as good as the information that has been entered and updated," responded Hyatt. "Not all staff members participate in a CRM system and those who do only enter a portion of their extended network. In fact, over 80% of valuable contacts will never be entered into CRM systems."

Contact Networks' ContactNet is a quick, non-intrusive solution that requires no manual data entry and takes only 10 days to implement. ContactNet analyzes address books and email traffic patterns to identify relevant contacts and find the most powerful relationships. The company's proprietary technology is currently being used by some of the industry's leading professional services companies, including law firms, consulting companies, and financial services businesses.

Mr. Hyatt is a frequent speaker and thought leader on the topic of enterprise relationship search. To find out where he is speaking next, please see our website www.contactnetworks.com. For more information about this case study or to learn more about how you can better leverage your company's relationships, please contact Contact Networks at 617-305-7961.