SoftSmiths Technology Leverages Existing Systems While Meeting New Business Demands

Houston, TX. – September 16, 2004 – SoftSmiths, Inc., a leader in energy transaction management solutions, today detailed its capabilities that help energy companies meet the demands for operational efficiency and optimization in the physical energy trading and delivery. With its Best-Fit application modules, SoftSmiths delivers the critical energy business solutions that allow easy upgrading of vulnerable components in customers’ aging system infrastructures.

To help its customers improve efficiency, manage their cost, and maximize value, SoftSmiths provides a rich set of modules that tightly integrate with existing applications in the transaction and scheduling infrastructure. In addition, as growth and changing markets outgrow current capabilities, customers can take advantage of the enhanced integration capabilities between SoftSmiths and 3rd party software to facilitate phased adoption of SoftSmiths applications into a fully integrated front-to-back system solution.

“Companies running their business on systems designed in the early 1990’s that were procured through substantial IT investments in the late 1990’s, are becoming increasingly aware of the risk in relying on weak components in their energy transaction and scheduling systems”, said Ishwar Saini, Solutions Manager.  “In order to optimize a physical asset based business environment, system functionality needs to be refitted to increase reliability, provide real-time visibility and institute sound controls to meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements”.

Industry Breadth and Depth

SoftSmiths Power provides Load Forecasting, Resource & Portfolio Management, Real-time and Term Trading, Multi-Commodity Deal Capture, Net Position and ”What-If” Impact Analysis, Volume and Mark-to-Market reporting, P&L reporting, Scheduling, Transmission Reservation and Electronic Tagging. In the Middle Office, SoftSmiths Power capabilities include Operational and resource constraints, Risk Measurement, Controls and Monitoring, while the Back-office provides financial settlement, invoicing, payment tracking and reporting.

Example: Automatic Scheduling

SoftSmiths Power includes the Trade Blotter for quick entry of common transactions, such as buying power for load or selling excess generation. Traders enter only a few unique values, such as counterparty, MW, and price, and the SoftSmiths Power application automatically creates schedules, reserves transmission, and creates an E-Tag – straightforward, quick and simple.

Example: Automatic Transmission Reservation

e-Reservation provides automatic real-time interaction with one or more OASIS nodes simultaneously and allows you with a SINGLE application to:

• Gather requests and reservations, and integrate these into the overall transmission inventory,
• Submit, withdraw, rebid, and confirm requests,
• Gather and display availability (ATC) and pricing information, and
• Download lists of points, products, and other administrative data.

Example: NERC E-Tag automation

Why enter deal and schedule data twice, when you can have a scheduling system tightly integrated with a tagging system, as SoftSmiths has done with its SoftSmiths Power and Transmission applications? SoftSmiths' Electronic Tagging Portal Suite (ETPS) software supports integration with your scheduling system or ours. This includes both automatic tag creation from your schedules when you are the author, and automatic schedule creation from tags authored by others, thereby streamlining your scheduling process, avoiding double entries and eliminating potential errors.

Example: Settlement and Reconciliation

Since there can be so many discrepancies (errors in schedules, dispatch instructions, delivered energy from transmission grids etc) you may leave money on the table if they are not in your favor. Without a system that can identify an error, you can never verify what the RTO/ISO tells you is correct. SoftSmiths Markets provides you a solution for this 'shadow settlement', to help you :

• Ensure the accuracy and validity of the RTO/ISO’s final settlement amount.
• Minimize time-consuming settlement reconciliation activities
• Produce backup documentation to support disputed settlements

About SoftSmiths

SoftSmiths is a leading provider of proven business critical Transaction Management Systems and services for Load Serving Entities, Generation Production Entities, Purchasing Selling Entities, and Transmission Providers who operate in physical markets to sell, purchase, trade, and deliver energy in the most efficient and cost- effective way. SoftSmiths’ seamlessly integrated, scalable, and adaptable solutions provide ready-to-deploy, out-of-the-box functionality that is highly configurable and customizable to meet companies' unique needs. SoftSmiths' proven solutions and in-depth knowledge of the industry's business practices allow its customers to automate manual processes, eliminate redundancies, and increase business visibility across the enterprise to allow faster decision making and more informed decisions, thereby improving profitability, operational efficiencies and cash flow. The company has been successfully delivering e-business solutions to energy service companies since 1997.

SoftSmiths is a registered trademark of SoftSmiths, Inc.

Contact Information:

Softsmiths Inc.
Hugo Stappers
Phone:    713.626.9184
Fax:          713.626.0186
Email:      mkt@softsmiths.com
Website:  www.softsmiths.com

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