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Companies to Jointly Market Workforce Management Tools
Tuesday, April 19, 2005

ATLANTA, April 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Instructional Systems Co., Inc. (ISC) today announced that BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) will use its workforce management software. ISC's Irene(R) Enterprise software offers BellSouth a robust and flexible solution to help manage Operator Services call centers across the southeastern United States.

After a successful trial, BellSouth is now implementing ISC's Irene Enterprise software in its Operator Services organization. Among other functions, the software solution will manage call volume forecasting and workforce scheduling across BellSouth's region, generate detailed management reports, and ensure continuous force management across all BellSouth Operator Services call centers.

"Using the new workforce management software supports one of our imperatives -- to provide leading-edge tools to our management team that allows them to continue to aggressively focus on operations and service excellence," said Gloria Reese, president of Operator Services for BellSouth.

Based on their success with the solutions, the two companies are also collaborating in the development and future remarketing of two additional modules designed for large workforce management implementations. They include:

Long Range Force Planning -- a tool that creates workforce plans for multiple call centers, forecasting workload and workforce plans by month, year or multiple years.
An Employee History Module that provides detailed accounting of employee attendance by type of paid/unpaid activity, schedule compliance based on ACD logins and individual agent performance.

"We are particularly delighted and proud that BellSouth, one of the most sophisticated and discerning corporate users of workforce management tools, has chosen our Irene workforce management solution for this complex project," said ISC President Irene Mungiu. "This success further validates the approach we take in teaming experienced corporate workforce managers with our innovative and talented information technology professionals to create true state-of-the-art force management implementations."

BellSouth continues to place the highest importance on delivering excellent customer service to the businesses it serves. BellSouth has consistently received high customer satisfaction awards for local service in rankings such as J.D. Power and Associates', Yankee Group and American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and in The Paisley Group LTD. National Directory Assistance Performance Index.

About BellSouth Corporation

BellSouth Corporation is a Fortune 100 communications company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and a parent company of Cingular Wireless, the nation's largest wireless voice and data provider.

Backed by award winning customer service, BellSouth offers the most comprehensive and innovative package of voice and data services available in the market. Through BellSouth Answers(R), residential and small business customers can bundle their local and long distance service with dial up and high speed DSL Internet access, satellite television and Cingular(R) Wireless service. For businesses, BellSouth provides secure, reliable local and long distance voice and data networking solutions. BellSouth also offers online and directory advertising through BellSouth(R) RealPages.com(R) and The Real Yellow Pages(R).

More information about BellSouth can be found at http://www.bellsouth.com.

About ISC

Instructional Systems Co., Inc. (ISC) is a leading provider of contact center workforce management software and consulting services. The New York City-based company was founded in 1973 to provide call center training services. In 1999 ISC introduced Irene, an advanced, scaleable contact center workforce management solution. Irene(R) Online, an easy-to-use ASP service available over the Internet for an affordable monthly fee, provides contact centers great schedules with zero risk and fast deployment. Irene(R) Enterprise, which is deployed on the customer's premises, provides state-of-the-art forecasts and schedules for the most demanding multi-site, multi-service, multi-media contact centers. ISC's management includes senior executives from leading technology businesses. For more information, visit http://www.isc.com or call 212-477-8800.