REDMOND, Wash., May 7, 2001 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a $700,000 software donation to the Small Business Administration (SBA) in honor of National Small Business Week. This donation will provide Office XP software to more than 1.3 million small-business clients using the Small Business Administration’s Business Intelligence Centers (BICs) and One Stop Capital Shops, enabling them to discover how Office XP can help them improve their bottom line, remain competitive and enhance customer service and business management. A wide range of small-business customers, including Gregg’s Greenlake Cycle, Reed Wasden & Associates LLC (RWA) and Parents in a Pinch Inc., are already using Office XP to streamline their business and become more efficient.
“This donation significantly expands the resources we have available for small businesses, BICs and One Stop Capital Shops, and we are delighted to be working with Microsoft to ensure small businesses have the opportunity to learn about and use this great new product,”
said Gail McGrath, acting associate deputy administrator for entrepreneurial development for the SBA.
“The SBA is focused on ensuring that small businesses have the resources, training and information they need to be successful, and partnerships such as this one with Microsoft allow us to show how technology can incorporated into a small business’s operation.”
Small businesses have limited time and resources to devote to complex software implementations. They also require a cost-effective solution that addresses their day-to-day business needs. Office XP will help improve small businesses’ productivity through making everyday tasks easier to complete and improving product reliability. Office XP also will enable small-business employees to work more easily with other people through integrated communication services, a simpler document management and review process, and a new Web-based solution called SharePoint™ Team Services that makes it easy for anyone to share information with others. Office XP will enable small businesses to manage their business and customers more effectively through integrated smart tag services, easier customer and data management solutions, online services for simple content creation, and applications such as Publisher 2002 and the FrontPage® 2002 Web-site creation and management tool, which enable small businesses to promote themselves with professional materials in print or online.
Office XP also lets small businesses extend their business to the Web through tighter integration with hosted business applications from the Microsoft bCentral™
small-business portal ( http://www.bcentral.com/ ). A native bCentral add-in will let FrontPage users instantly commerce-enable their Web site. They can also easily track and respond to customer inquiries from their FrontPage site using the Customer Manager application in bCentral. Further integration with products such as the Microsoft Outlook® messaging and collaboration client and Excel will let small-business users easily import data for use in bCentral’s integrated e-commerce, customer management and accounting solutions.
Small Businesses Benefiting From Office XP
Several small businesses participated in the Office XP beta program and are some of the first customers to experience Office XP. Gregg’s Greenlake Cycle, a retail bicycle shop in Seattle, Wash., with 15 PCs, is using custom Office XP smart tags to easily track customer and supplier shipments, ultimately providing integration with their point of sale and accounting applications.
“Office XP enables our management team to complete their job more quickly and efficiently than before, whether it’s creating a company newsletter, an advertising plan or a monthly budget,”
said Jeremy McKinley, advertising and promotions manager of Gregg’s Greenlake Cycle.
“In order for our business to grow, we need to provide great customer service. Office XP helps our company stay competitive because we’re able to put accurate information into the right hands, enabling us to provide great customer service.”
In addition, other customers such as Reed Wasden & Associates, a global merchant bank with 27 employees, and Parents in a Pinch, a babysitting and nanny service, are relying on Office XP as a solution to better analyze data and improve customer service.
“We’re committed to providing a solution that presents small businesses with tools to streamline their business processes and stay ahead of their competition,”
said Joseph Krawczak, director of Office at Microsoft.
“Today’s donation to the Small Business Administration will enable more than 1 million small businesses to experience how Office XP can deliver tremendous value to their business.”
Microsoft’s Software Donation
Microsoft’s donation to the SBA of more than $700,000 in software includes Office XP, Publisher 2002, FrontPage 2002, the Windows® 2000 Professional operating system, Windows 2000 Server and Small Business Server 2000. The software will be used to train small businesses at the SBA’s Business Information Centers, One Stop Capital Shops and Women’s Business Centers.
About Office XP and Microsoft
Office XP provides a much smarter work experience for individuals, teams and organizations. Office XP makes productivity simple for individuals by helping them get the most out of Office and giving them tools they can rely on. Office XP enables collaboration for everyone by revolutionizing the way people work with others on documents and by introducing SharePoint Team Services to manage projects and activities via the Web. Office XP also provides a flexible way to meet business needs by offering a rich solutions platform, improved security and reliability, and tools businesses need to deploy and manage Office.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, SharePoint, FrontPage, bCentral, Outlook and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
For more information on Microsoft Office:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/
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