Washington, DC December 16th 1996 -- Prospect Technologies was featured in the December 5th Issue of Electronic Commerce News. The Electronic Commerce News is a Phillip's publication featuring electronic commerce business strategies for the extended enterprise.

In an article entitled "COAST GUARD MOVES TO WORLD WIDE WEB" some of Prospect Technologies work with the Office of Boating Safety of the US Coast Guard is described.

"To improve boater safety in all 50 states, the Office of Boating Safety of the U.S. Coast Guard is using the World Wide Web to speed . . . report delivery, streamline incident analysis and widen distribution of federal safety rules. The lessons it learned are applicable to commercial as well as non-profit Web sites."

"Getting the information it needed . . . was difficult until the federal maritime unit turned to Prospect Technologies, of Washington, DC, for an electronic commerce (EC) solution."

"Every time a boating accident occurs, a state's boating authority is required to complete a detailed accident report [for the] Coast Guard," explains Bill Lewis, President of Prospect Technologies. "Unfortunately, the information was coming to the Coast Guard in a variety of formats."

"Some states faxed in the reports; others mailed diskettes or sent E-mails. A variety of computer operating systems (OS) also were being used, from Macintosh to UNIX, says Lewis."

"The Coast Guard was [being] forced to re-key the majority of accident reports into a format compatible with its own system," says Lewis. "That significantly slowed down the process. Errors in the data were frequent. Real-time analysis of the data was impossible." Until recently, they were analyzing accident data that was one or more years old."

"The Coast Guard needed an electronic system that could integrate each of the different OS used by the states. Early discussions revolved around designing a proprietary system that would give the states direct access to the Coast Guard. "But that would [have been] very costly and technically very complicated," Lewis says. "We recommended a simple, cost-effective approach -- an interactive site on the Web."

"Prospect Technologies leveraged the Internet's open protocols to design a secure site on the Web that states and other government agencies can access to transmit . . . data."

"According to Lewis, the Web is radically changing the way organizations should think about doing business. "Most people think of electronic commerce as a marketing and public relations tool, but it is much more than that," he says. " Electronic commerce [technologies] can provide cheap, quick and efficient solutions to a lot of different problems."

Excerpts taken from ELECTRONIC COMMERCE NEWS, Vol. 1, No. 43, p. 5, with the express permission of the publisher, Phillips Business Information, Inc., 1201 Seven Locks Road, Potomac, MD 20854; www.phillips.com;  Editorial, 301/340-1520. All rights reserved. For a free trial subscription to the newsletter, call 800/777-5006. Look at ELECTRONIC COMMERCE NEWS at their new site, www.ECToday.com