idelis Information Systems Corp is announcing its plans to develop a dynamic web application for food manufacturers participating in the reprocessing of USDA commodities. The premise of the solution is to provide a software application platform from which school districts, food manufacturers and possibly commercial distributors can streamline the communication flow of industry data and dramatically improve the evaluation and ordering of products, the publication of account balances in donated food, orders and shipments and the accountability of donated food content for all parties involved in the process.

The Benefits
From the perspective of the school district, Fidelis' web application will enable school districts to gain important information on participating manufacturers' products and donated food allocations and balances, to more easily plan their menus around participating manufacturer's products with a few simple clicks of the mouse, to effortlessly order products online in a rich, graphical interface and, in the case of the hybrid or net off invoice, verify distributor sales of products with donated food value. Fidelis' web application will allow a user with appropriate security permissions to view all participating processors' products from a single view and effortlessly place orders for the desired products with minimal effort but with full accountability in a secure platform. School districts will receive monthly reports via email on their account statuses to maintain the constant touch between manufacturer and client. The benefits to the schools are obvious: efficiently utilize their entitlement dollars and order the products that are the most appealing in quality, taste and menu planning at any time day or night.

From the perspective of the manufacturer, Fidelis' web application will enable manufacturers to have their fingers on the pulse of their customers 24/7 with little effort. The application will include functionality for manufacturers to present extensive information on their products to efficiently and effectively market their products, develop product catalogs unique to each processing cooperative and/or state for online ordering by school districts, to harvest order information and order trends from the orders placed by the school districts that can be fed into their respective production systems and to satisfy sales verification requirements by state agencies and USDA. Each participating manufacturer will only be able to view data that relates to its organization.

Fidelis' Solution
Fidelis will provide this solution to interested manufacturers via its secure web site at an Internet Service Provider located in Austin, Texas. Manufacturers will pay Fidelis an initial fee plus a monthly subscription fee for participation in the web application platform. Additional services and offerings are available above and beyond the solution Fidelis plans to provide. If a manufacturer is interested in hosting the solution at its facilities and/or incorporating additional functionality outside the scope of this solution, Fidelis can discuss the requirements with each manufacturer individually. Fidelis is already working with a large food manufacturer in the development of an advanced enterprise solution that will be integrated into their production and planning platforms at their corporate site.

In May 2003 Fidelis conducted a survey of the needs and desires of food manufacturers for information technology solutions. The feedback from the survey validated the preconceptions Fidelis had of the information technology solutions that exist today. Due to the ever-changing requirements and opportunities in the processing of USDA commodities and the widespread acceptance of the Internet as a platform, many food manufacturers require new systems that can provide to their clients over the Internet more information than they currently receive. However, due to budgetary constraints, certain food manufacturers cannot afford the hardware, software and development costs to develop this solution on their own and they do not have the technical expertise to maintain the solution on their own. Consequently, Fidelis is offering a web application platform to meet this unfulfilled need among food manufacturers. Food manufacturers can focus on the tasks best suited to them such as creating and selling high quality food products and outsource specific aspects of the data collection and reporting to Fidelis.

From the results of this survey and its industry knowledge, Fidelis formulated the initial design of this solution.


Product Features
Fidelis' offering surpasses the other solutions currently available on the market or recently proposed. Fidelis goes to great lengths to make sure its solutions are:

Secure
Fidelis believes that your data and your customers' data are important to you. That's why all of Fidelis' solutions are designed with security in mind. E-mail is like a postcard: It is open for all to see while en-route to its final destination. This is why Fidelis never transmits your sensitive data via e-mail, especially passwords. You can rest assured that all communications with Fidelis' solutions are handled by the strongest encryption available on the web. In addition, Fidelis uses several custom mechanisms ensuring your data remains safe and sound.

Intuitive
Whenever your have a high volume of end users, ease-of-use is vital to keeping down costs, and making sure things run smoothly. Ensuring that schools can use our system without additional assistance results in freed up resources that would otherwise be used on technical support, and complex documentation. Fidelis modules have built-in help and step-by-step guidance to allow users to move ahead with confidence and minimal technical support.

Powerful
Fidelis knows the commodity business. Its solutions are engineered from the ground-up to maximize value received from utilizing them. Insightful design allows management and power-users to draw upon information Fidelis' solution collects to produce powerful reports, identify trends, and assist in many other aspects of your business.

Product Features (Non Inclusive)	Benefits
Add and track school contact information, including processing cooperative per year.	Fidelis' system tracks a variety of data elements for many purposes including future email and mail marketing campaigns, etc. Fidelis also tracks membership to a processing cooperative. This data element allows us to present only the products relevant to that school district, thus preventing ordering mistakes.
Allow multiple users per schools	Other systems only permit one account. Fidelis' system permits multiple accounts with different levels of permission. This feature allows greater access without compromising data accountability.
Import school district donated food allocations and track balances against both order and shipment transactions. Publish donated food allocations and balances to school district users throughout the system including the ordering process.	Make it easy for schools to understand how much donated food dollars/pounds they have left to 'spend' on ordering or the balance left to be shipped.
Maintain extensive product information on the system that school districts consume throughout the school year. School Districts view the product information in the Product Catalog.	Ensure that school districts utilize your company's data throughout the year by offering recipes, food preparation, etc, not just during the ordering process.
Create Product Catalogs for each processing cooperative and/or state so that each school district can only order the products that are approved and relevant to them.	Simplify the ordering experience and prevent data entry mistakes.
Enable school districts to view, add and update orders with your company from one screen	Fidelis offers this feature in an extremely intuitive manner.
Import company and/or commercial distributor shipment transactions on a periodic basis.	Fidelis is providing a mechanism to import shipment transactions that are needed for the Donated Food Balance Report, Sales Verification, etc.
Schools can provide immediate feedback when verifying a sale, automatically capturing shipment discrepancies.	Only one vendor is offering sales verification but we do not feel that clicking on a link in an email truly constitutes 'sales verification.' Fidelis will provide sales verification to each school securely and completely. If there are any discrepancies, Fidelis' solution will enable schools to type in the correct quantities. The manufacturer will be alerted of this discrepancy and can react timely.
Advanced audit tracking	There are many features Fidelis embeds in its software solutions. Advanced audit tracking feature captures for each data field change: who made the change and the date and time, the old value and the new value. It is the ultimate in accountability.
Reports	Fidelis will include numerous standard reports.

Contact Us
If you are interested in learning more about what Fidelis Information Systems Corp has to offer please contact us today.

Brian Donnellan
Fidelis Information Systems Corp.
President
512/343-0400 ext. 12
bdonnellan@fidelis-systems.com

About Fidelis Information Systems Corp
Fidelis Information Systems Corp is an Information Technology consulting firm providing clients innovative solutions to meet their unique set of business requirements. Focused on emerging Internet technologies, Fidelis offers consulting and contracting, custom application development, and project management, analysis and design. Having been established in 1997, Fidelis consultants have actually worked in creating powerful business solutions for the commodity business since 1995.

In regards to USDA commodities, Fidelis is currently working with a major processor in the development of a system that will provide its customers the tools and information to optimally utilize their entitlement dollars in purchasing processed end products and aid in the menu planning process, uncover and highlight opportunities for its sales staff and enable its company to increase its business volume and revenue without increasing its headcount. Fidelis is working with the state of Texas and the state of Illinois in the development and support of their Internet applications that pertain to all aspects of USDA commodities. Fidelis is also assisting in the deployment of a solution in Dallas, TX to be utilized by processing cooperatives and school districts to order products online.