New Group Offers Extended Industry Expertise for Leveraging webMethods Fabric to Achieve Continuous Process Improvements; Hires Jim Gahagan and Richard Douglass to Lead the Group's Financial Services and High-Tech Manufacturing Teams. FAIRFAX, Va., Sept. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- webMethods Inc. (NASDAQ:WEBM), a leading business integration and optimization software company, today introduced its Global Strategic Business Solutions group, a dedicated team of industry experts assigned with creating targeted business solutions built on webMethods Fabric(TM), the company's flagship product suite for integrating, assembling and optimizing end-to-end business processes. The group has already played a central role in webMethods' recent introduction of a new series of Business Process Productivity solutions, which are being employed across various industries to help enterprises more readily realize continuous process improvements across their most critical operations. These solutions include webMethods Payments Monitoring(TM), which debuted yesterday for the wholesale banking sector. Through the development of reference architectures, business case analysis tools, and other resources, the group is also helping a number of customers and industry partners implement additional solutions for addressing a variety of process-related business requirements. "By defining processes and methodologies for implementing our technology to solve a variety of specific business challenges, webMethods is helping clients meet their unique requirements more completely, confidently and efficiently than previously possible," said Deborah Rosen, executive vice president, Worldwide Marketing, webMethods Inc. "The added insight and experience offered by our Global Strategic Business Solutions team is a significant differentiator for ensuring that customers maximize their return- on-investment from every initiative that they undertake using webMethods technology." One of the primary focuses of the Global Strategic Business Solutions group is to provide customers and partners with ready access to industry expertise for leveraging the extensive capabilities of webMethods Fabric to solve specific business challenges. Among the core industries covered by the group are consumer product goods & retail, financial services, high-tech manufacturing, media & telecommunications, and process manufacturing. In addition to developing pre-packaged solutions for specific business challenges, the group also conducts customized Business Process Productivity Assessments. These engagements typically commence with a gap analysis of existing business process requirements and architectural capabilities; followed by an audit used to quantify and substantiate the impact of recommended process improvements, along with the identification of specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track these improvements; and conclude with a comprehensive Business Case Analysis designed to outline potential costs, risk factors, and projected payback for each proposed initiative. "The orchestration of various systems, information repositories, workflows and people into end-to-end business processes can be quite complex. As the industry leader in this area, webMethods offers unique and proven methodologies for quickly roadmapping these requirements into comprehensive business solutions that consistently achieve the desired performance improvements," said Arnold Huffman, vice president, Global Strategic Business Solutions, webMethods Inc. "Through this approach, we've been able to help global enterprises report millions in savings and other benefits from streamlining key aspects of their business, such as their supply chain, order fulfillment, or call center operations." As a key component of these ongoing efforts, webMethods recently appointed Jim Gahagan and Richard Douglass to lead the group's financial services and high-tech manufacturing teams. They join Raman Flawn, Chris Kraus and Matt Willis, who lead the media & telecommunications, consumer product goods & retail, and process manufacturing teams respectively. Gahagan joins webMethods as Senior Director for Financial Services with specific responsibilities for supporting the company's 135 financial services customers. Prior to joining webMethods, he served with PeopleSoft as a vice president with the firm's Global Industry Executive Financial Services team. Previously, he was a vice president with both Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, overseeing diverse technology portfolios during the course of a twenty-year career with the two financial services giants. With twenty years of experience in supply chain management and operations, Douglass joins webMethods as a Director overseeing the high-tech manufacturing sector for the firm's Global Strategic Business Solutions group. Previously, he served as the Managing Partner for Manufacturing Associates, an advisory firm supporting high-tech manufacturers. Prior to joining Manufacturing Associates, Douglass was an Associate Partner at Accenture, a global consulting firm, where he served as a key member of the firm's Global Chemical Practice. His industry credentials include a Green Belt in Six Sigma and he is also APICS certified. About webMethods Inc. webMethods (NASDAQ:WEBM) provides business integration software to integrate, assemble and optimize available IT assets to drive business process productivity. webMethods delivers an innovative, enterprise-class business integration platform that incorporates proven integration technology with next generation capabilities into one interoperable set of tools that delivers a unique combination of efficiency, agility and control. webMethods combines industry leadership with a zealous commitment to customers to deliver tangible business value to more than 1,300 global customers. webMethods is headquartered in Fairfax, Va., with offices throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific and Japan. More information about the company can be found at http://www.webmethods.com/. The webMethods name and logo are registered trademarks, and webMethods Fabric and webMethods Payments Monitoring are trademarks, of webMethods, Inc. in the United States and certain other countries. All other marks mentioned are trademarks or service marks of their respective companies. DATASOURCE: webMethods, Inc. CONTACT: John Conley of webMethods Inc., +1-703-460-5996, or Web site: http://www.webmethods.com/

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