Level 8 Systems, Inc. today announced the appointment of Dr. Jon Anton, to the Level 8 Board of Directors. May 2, 2002, Santa Maria, California - Level 8 Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: LVEL - news) today announced the appointment of Dr. Jon Anton, to the Level 8 Board of Directors. In announcing the appointment, Tony Pizi, Chairman and CEO of Level 8 Systems, Inc., said "Dr. Jon Anton brings a wealth of technical experience and business insight to our company. His knowledge of the competitive CRM and call center landscape and his deep technology background are tremendous assets that will add a new dimension of insight into the market for our flagship product, Cicero. We are delighted to have such a distinguished leader in the field join our Board of Directors, said Tony Pizi."
Dr. Jon Anton's (also known as "Dr. Jon") reputation for achieving world-class business performance and bottom-line results led him to investigate Cicero's demonstrated benefits at Merrill Lynch's award winning call center. Dr. Jon was struck by the category-breaking capabilities of Cicero and its capacity to realize the vision of the future virtual contact center. That realization led him to join with Level 8 Systems, Inc. to shape the future of the Cicero product as a member of the Board of Directors.
New Board Member Offers Unique Call Center and CRM Market Perspective Widely credited with originating the term "Customer Relationship Management" (CRM), Dr. Jon Anton is a globally-recognized, leading authority in the industry and has assisted over 400 leading companies, across more than 25 key market sectors in improving their customer service strategy/delivery by the design and implementation of inbound and outbound call centers, as well as in the decision-making process of using teleservice providers for maximizing service levels while minimizing costs per call.
In August of 1996, Call Center Magazine honored Dr. Jon by selecting him as an Original Pioneer of the emerging call center industry. In October of 2000, Dr. Jon was named to the Call Center Hall of Fame. In January of 2001, Dr. Jon was selected for the industry's "Leaders and Legends" Award by Help Desk 2000. He is also a member of the National Committee for Quality Assurance. He consults to leading technology and solutions firms, including Genesys, Cisco, IBM, Compaq, KPMG, Seibel and many others.
Dr. Jon is the director of benchmark research at Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality. For the past six years, Dr. Anton has been the principal investigator of the Purdue University Call Center Benchmark Research. This rapidly growing database on more than 12,000 leading call centers worldwide is now collected and managed at the BenchmarkPortal.com website, where it contains over ten million data points on call center, CRM and enterprise-wide e-business center performance.
Based on rigorous and thoughtful analysis of this multi-industry data, Dr. Anton authors the following monthly publications: "The Purdue Page" in Customer Interaction Solutions, "Dr. Jon's Benchmarks" in Call Center News, "Dr. Jon's Industry Statistics" in Customer Interface Magazine, and "Dr. Jon's Business Intelligence" in the Call Center Manager's Report.
Lauded Strategic Leadership in the Enterprise Dr. Jon has guided corporate executives in strategically re-positioning their call centers as robust customer access centers through a combination of benchmarking, re-engineering, consolidation, outsourcing, and web-enablement. The resulting single point of contact for the customer allows business to be conducted anywhere, anytime, and in any form. By better understanding the customer lifetime value, Dr. Jon has developed techniques for calculating the ROI for customer service initiatives, with more than 75 published papers on customer service and call center methods in industry journals. In 1997, one of his papers on self-service was awarded the best article of the year by Customer Relationship Management Magazine.
Dr. Jon is the editor for a series of professional books entitled Customer Access Management, published by the Purdue University Press. In total, Dr. Jon has published thirteen professional books. In an upcoming book, Dr. Jon plans to devote a chapter to Cicero's unique capabilities to deliver on his vision of a state-of-the-art contact center and the benefits of its non-invasive technology to yield rapid, high-value results today.
Dr. Jon's formal education was in technology, including a Doctorate of Science and a Master of Science from Harvard University, a Master of Science from the University of Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Notre Dame. He also completed a three-summer intensive Executive Education program in Business at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
About Level 8 Systems Level 8 Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: LVEL - news) is a global provider of high- performance, application integration software that enables organizations to extend the life of their IT investments and maximize their IT portfolios. Level 8's technologies, products, and services serve the demanding needs of leaders in industries such as financial services, energy, telecommunications, utilities, transportation, government, travel and hospitality, and retail. For more information about Level 8 visit www.level8.com.
Level 8 Systems and Cicero are registered trademarks of Level 8 Systems, Inc. Level 8, the Level 8 logo, the Cicero logo, Cicero Technologies, Geneva, the Geneva logo, Geneva Enterprise Integrator, Geneva Business Process Automator and Geneva Integration Broker are trademarks of Level 8 Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All other product and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.
SOURCE: Level 8 Systems, Inc.
About BenchmarkPortal BenchmarkPortal is a source for customer relationship management (CRM) best practices information for call centers. Founded in 1995, BenchmarkPortal provides data to call center managers via a series of actionable reports. Through these reports, as well as leading-edge research, BenchmarkPortal aims to contribute to the continual improvement processes of individual customer call centers and ultimately to improve the performance of this vital sector worldwide. Visit the company's web site at www.benchmarkportal.com. Level 8 Systems Contact: John Sarazen, 908.771.9645 or jsarazen@level8.com BenchmarkPortal Contact: Michael Feinberg, 443.394.2500 or michaelfeinberg@benchmarkportal.com
