CHICAGO (March 22, 2004) – Participate Systems, a leading provider of collaborative software solutions, announced today the latest update to its flagship software product, Participate Enterprise. Participate Enterprise, version 3.5, extends several key areas of innovation, including expertise management, natural language search, document and content management and online community. These innovations are driving the adoption of Participate Enterprise within Fortune 1000 customers as a robust collaboration platform that can be deployed both internally to improve sales and marketing effectiveness as well as externally to improve customer support efficiency.

Privately-held Participate Systems enjoyed one of its best years in 2003, as it recorded double-digit revenue growth, and achieved and maintained profitability in the third and fourth quarters of 2003. Global organizations continue to turn to Participate Enterprise to solve problems internally and externally. These industry-leading companies include Audi, Caremark, GE Medical Systems, Handspring, PalmOne, Logitech, Thomson Higher Education, and TiVo.

Product Highlights
Participate Enterprise 3.5 enables a company to capture and reuse the knowledge and expertise that is distributed throughout its organization, partners, and customer base. The software, written on the J2EE platform, provides a closed-looped system to assist employees and customers in finding answers to questions, helping sales professionals to sell more effectively and enabling customers to quickly find resolution to support issues. In a series of product updates, improvements have been made in these areas:

• Expertise Management System – Participate Enterprise’s flexible business process engine enables an administrator to manage and edit all business processes (e.g. routing, escalation, approval and notification) through an easy-to-use graphical interface. The processes can be uploaded to the application “on-they-fly” via XML, allowing unprecedented flexibility in managing the flow of knowledge while minimizing total cost of ownership.
  
  
• Natural Language Search – Participate Systems’ proprietary search engine features new language parsers in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, new “Concept Learning” capabilities, and consolidated search results across multiple internal systems and knowledge repositories.
  
  
• Auto-Categorization and Document Management – Improvements were made in the system’s ability to automatically categorize new content and contributors based on an editable expertise taxonomy, new WebDAV compliance to provide enhanced document versioning and rapid content population, and ability to index and retrieve 225 file formats.
  
  
• Administration and Reporting – Already recognized for its sophisticated administration console, Participate Enterprise 3.5 includes a revamped interface for Support Representatives, greater content publishing flexibility and improved identity authentication and security group management.
  
  
• Hosted Solution – In addition to an installed version, Participate Enterprise also is available as a hosted software solution that’s quick to launch (3 to 6 weeks), offers a guaranteed 99.5% uptime, includes comprehensive system redundancy and failovers, and improved clustering capabilities.

Describing the latest update, Participate Systems president and CEO Alan Warms said, “We are extremely excited to see that the marketplace is beginning to understand and embrace the tremendous value that expertise management and online collaboration can create within large organizations. We've been successfully deploying Participate Enterprise within several of the world's premier companies to solve specific business issues, deliver tangible results, and achieve measurable ROIs."

About Participate Systems
Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Chicago, Participate Systems is a leading provider of online sales effectiveness and customer support solutions. Participate Enterprise software is a J2EE application that combines advanced self-help features with a comprehensive community platform. Participate customers are leveraging this solution to decrease support costs through significant call avoidance, to increase customer satisfaction, and to capture critical customer feedback. The solution combines sophisticated software, reliable hosting services and ongoing Active Management Services for a monthly fee. Participate Systems' customers include Audi, Handspring, IBM, Logitech, Mercury Interactive, Microsoft and PalmOne and Thomson Higher Education.

Participate Systems’ Media Contacts:
Jason Sherman
Sherman Communications & Marketing, Inc.
Phone: 773.588.2950
Email: jason@shermancm.com

Brett Wangman
Participate Systems
Phone: 773.289.5035
Email: bwangman@participate.com