Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service Adopts Facilitate.Com Collaboration Software to Bring Management and Union Groups Together.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- 04/15/03 – Facilitate.com, provider of collaborative meeting software for problem solving and decision making, today announced that the United Kingdom Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) has adopted Facilitate.com 7.5 as their software for dispute resolution. This move follows a successful pilot where ACAS helped Leeds City Council develop a new grievance policy with participation from over 25 different unions in an innovative partnership approach to problem-solving.

With the grievance policy in its final stages, ACAS brought the Leeds City Council management and union members together to resolve any remaining issues that would prevent members from supporting the policy. Using Facilitate.com 7.5, participants quickly brainstormed and prioritized a list of concerns and within an hour resolved them. "Despite nominal agreement within the group, we felt that some real issues remained,” said Gill McCarthy, Senior Advisor, ACAS. "Anonymous brainstorming with Facilitate.com 7.5 allowed us to bring out hidden concerns and address them. If we had not, the final policy might have been rejected and months of hard work wasted.”

Facilitate.com 7.5 accelerates idea generation, prioritization and action planning with web-based brainstorming, voting and surveying tools. The result is more effective collaboration and focused decision-making.

ACAS first observed Facilitate.com 7.5 at the U.S. Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), Facilitate.com clients since 1999. With successes like the Leeds Council, ACAS has expanded to multiple portable meeting set-ups and Internet licenses allowing them to support on-site and distributed clients all over the U.K. "We are pleased that ACAS chose to make Facilitate.com 7.5 a key part of their service offering,” said Julia Young, Vice President at Facilitate.com. "Our tools enhance the alternative dispute resolution and interest based bargaining approaches that ACAS and FMCS are spearheading."

About Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS)

ACAS is charged by the British parliament to promote the improvement of industrial relations by providing an independent and impartial service to prevent and resolve disputes and to build harmonious relationships at work. For more information visit www.acas.co.uk.

About Facilitate.com

Since 1992 Facilitate.com has specialized in facilitation and collaboration software tools and techniques that dramatically enhance meeting productivity. Facilitate 7.5 helps generate, capture and formalize ideas with tools for capturing, categorizing, voting, surveying and building instant documentation.