VANCOUVER, B.C., Canada, July 15, 2005

	The Dashboard’s user-specific tabs, links and messages let users display information critical to their jobs and keep up with the day’s activity and transactions.

Progressive Solutions Inc. announces two new features for its industry-leading Lumber Track™ software:

1. Dashboard and Message Center
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The new features can be viewed at the upcoming NHLA, NAWLA and RTA association fall conferences/tradeshows, or by contacting Progressive Solutions.

The new Dashboard and Message Center help Lumber Track users keep a finger on the pulse of their business. Each user can customize their dashboard screen to display the business information and metrics critical to their jobs. Five customizable tabs can display any report, graph or chart created in Crystal Reports. Other favorite files can be linked directly from the dashboard.

The Message Center delivers system-generated and user-generated messages, and prompts users at their Dashboards. It is a key component of Lumber Track’s new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) feature. Lumber Track users can now centralize contact information to use for customer relations and account management. That way, all communication with prospects, suppliers and customers – whether by sales, purchasing, accounting or shipping staff – is coordinated and recorded centrally. Improved communication structures help increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.

“The Dashboard, Message Center and CRM are tremendous tools to help every Lumber Track user do their job more effectively, and improve the performance of the company overall,” says Geoff Douglas, VP Sales & Marketing for Progressive Solutions. “Users can see the big picture as it pertains to their area of responsibility. They are prompted with relevant new information as it is generated. It takes Lumber Track’s ability to deliver business intelligence to a whole new level.”

Users call Dashboard snapshots “a handy tool”
Lumber Track users attending the recent Users Group meeting got a sneak preview of the Dashboard and Message Center, and liked what they saw. Joe Kusar, VP & GM of Tolleson Lumber Co., said, “It’s a handy tool for managers to quickly get snapshot information of what’s going on.”

Marilyn Strange, the financial manager for Coastal Industrial Products Company, agrees: “Users can customize what they want to see when they log in. They don’t have to go through different screens; they already have it set up to display the information they want to look at. And it’s handy to be able to integrate Excel and Crystal Reports graphs to be right there displayed from the Dashboard.”

Blake Ozier, Gulf States Paper Corporation’s Business Systems Analyst, concurs that the Dashboard will be useful for managers to get an overview of operations. “They just want to come in each morning, fire up the Dashboard, and see everything in front of them. What we have in inventory, what was sold yesterday, what shipped last week. It’s easier on the eye to have it all in graphs rather than having to scour through five reports to see where we stand.”

Message Center improves communications and CRM
The key advantage of the Message Center is the instantaneous delivery of information as a part of Lumber Track’s automated workflow process. Be it information about sales orders, shipments, credit and collections, or other communications with a customer – Lumber Track can be set up so that the users who need the information receive it instantly, displayed prominently on their Dashboards.

“Our sales people don’t know which customers are having payment issues unless the credit person remembers to call them,” Coastal’s Marilyn Strange says of their current processes. “It will be really useful for Lumber Track to automatically send a message to the sales people whenever the credit person has called a customer, or plans to call.”

Gulf State’s Blake Ozier is excited about having CRM functionality tied to Lumber Track’s contact information so they don’t have to enter it a second time into a separate CRM package. “We want to keep track of our customers’ likes and dislikes, and to make sure we’re always dealing with the right person in a company. Having that as a part of Lumber Track will be awesome for us.”

About Progressive Solutions
Progressive Solutions Inc. is the international leader in business software solutions for the forest products industry. Founded in 1989, the company is headquartered in Richmond, BC, with sales offices across the US, UK and Canada. Its main products, Lumber Track™ and bisTrack™, address the procurement, sales, inventory and logistics management needs of wood products manufacturers and wholesale/distributors and building materials distributors/dealers with domestic and export markets.