Release of Astea Alliance 11.5 Delivers Breakthrough Functionality & Flexibility

HORSHAM, Pa., May 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Astea International Inc. (NASDAQ: ATEA), a global provider of service lifecycle management and mobility solutions, has introduced a new release of the industry's most robust service management and mobile workforce platform. As an industry leader in service management solutions, Astea continues to innovate and deliver the broadest and deepest set of capabilities that enable companies to connect, manage, optimize and transform all facets of their customer service delivery ecosystem. The new release incorporates fresh features throughout the solution suite that deliver innovation to every user. Whether on-premise or in the cloud, and seamlessly integrating with existing ERP/CRM solutions, Astea Alliance provides powerful features without adding layers of cost, ultimately enabling businesses to achieve superior customer service at a lower total cost of ownership.

Astea Alliance 11.5 delivers a number of significant product advancements that drive compelling and unprecedented benefits:

• Improved Productivity & Collaboration – One of the key areas that the majority of service organizations look to, when they want to improve service and reduce costs, is the field workforce. It isn't enough, anymore, to just connect the field worker to the back office, now companies are looking for mobile solutions that provide advanced tools and capabilities to their service engineers in order to elevate the level of customer service. With Astea's latest mobile release, organizations can stop looking. Whether you need to enable your engineers to create sales quotations, perform inventory cycle counts, support complex items with subcomponents, create and support different workflows/apps for different groups/types of work, and a lot more, Astea is the answer. Astea's mobile solution provides the level of flexibility necessary that makes it easy for organizations to modify and adapt the solution without needing development skill sets or adding additional costs.
  
  
• Your Service Platform, Your Way – With Astea's deep, rich functionality combined with state of the art technology and more advanced customization capabilities, users now have the best of both worlds. Out of the box, robust functionality combined with powerful and easy to use customization capabilities (without having to know code) to run their service business the way they want. Organizations can start with a smaller subset of functionality, processes, and workflows that meet their business needs today, but can quickly and easily add more complex processes and capabilities instantly and without added costs. What's more, organizations can build new modules, as well as import and export customizations to different environments if needed. All customizations easily carry over with upgrades, for both on premise and cloud models.
  
  
• Easily Manage and Support a Company's Entire Service Ecosystem – Further extending its existing Third Party Vendor Management Portal, Astea has just released a mobile app that makes it even easier for third party service providers/subcontractors to participate in the service delivery process. The third party vendor/subcontractor simply downloads the mobile app from Google's Play store or Apple's iTunes store, and they are instantly connected with your organization regardless of the mobile device being used. In a secure and controlled environment, the third party engineer is able to receive work orders, view asset and service history, request and record parts, capture customer signatures, work in a connected or disconnected mode, and much more. Additionally, by having the ability to manage and view both internal and external service engineers, with a single platform and dispatch console, companies can easily choose the best engineer, at the best cost, for every job while ensuring a consistent level of service and efficiency.
  
  
• Drive Proactive Support and Continuous Process Improvement – For years, Astea has been delivering tools and reporting capabilities that provide proactive service insight and intelligence at every level. Astea Alliance has been offering powerful dashboards, scorecards, operational heat maps, and visual reports that are relevant for every user that are pervasive throughout the user workflow. With Astea Alliance 11.5, they have expanded upon their existing reporting features as well as providing the ability for users to create reports and visual indicators that are viewable on mobile devices. Now service engineers in the field can get a snapshot view of how they are performing against their objectives to ensure the highest levels of productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction.

"Now more than ever, service organizations are looking for creative and innovative ways to accelerate revenue growth, move to a proactive service model, heighten customer satisfaction levels, and stand out from the crowd of competitors," said Zack Bergreen, CEO of Astea International. "Our customers have been able to dramatically reduce dispatcher to service engineer ratios, they have been able to increase the number of work orders completed per day, minimize or completely eliminate overtime costs, accelerate invoicing from weeks to days/hours, and provide their customers with the highest level of service. We continue to build upon our solution success, working in conjunction with our global customer base, to ensure we deliver features and functions that are going to have a strong benefit and drive compelling advantages for our customers. We are very excited to announce our latest release, and even more excited to see the tremendous impact it will have for our customers."

Astea is the only solution provider that offers all cornerstones of service lifecycle management: customer management; service management; asset management; forward and reverse logistics management; and mobile workforce management with enhanced scheduling optimization. Astea's solutions are seamlessly orchestrated to share and leverage information throughout the service lifecycle – removing the traditional barriers between the field and back office. With Astea Alliance's modularity, companies can introduce one module at a time or deploy a seamless information backbone across the entire service lifecycle continuum, thereby eliminating the patchwork of disparate systems that can hamper a company's ability to provide best-in-class.

About Astea International
Astea International (NASDAQ: ATEA) is a global provider of software solutions that offer all the cornerstones of service lifecycle management, including customer management, service management, asset management, forward and reverse logistics management and mobile workforce management and optimization. Astea's solutions link processes, people, parts, and data to empower companies and provide the agility they need to achieve sustainable value in less time, and successfully compete in a global economy. Since 1979, Astea has been helping more than 600 companies drive even higher levels of customer satisfaction with faster response times and proactive communication, creating a seamless, consistent and highly personalized experience at every customer relationship touch point.

www.astea.com.   Service Smart.  Enterprise Proven.

© 2014 Astea International Inc. Astea and Astea Alliance are trademarks of Astea International Inc. All other company and product names contained herein are trademarks of the respective holders.

SOURCE Astea International Inc.