PINNACLE Announces 2013 Business Service Managemen

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 17, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At its annual Users Training Conference in Washington DC, PINNACLE, a Windstream company, announced the winners of the 2013 PINNACLE Business Service Management (BSM) Innovator Awards.

The honor, which recognizes the most impactful improvements derived from using PINNACLE and professional services to manage the lifecycle of telecommunications service support and service delivery operations, was given to five organizations across five categories. This year's winners are: the City of Seattle, Citi, University of British Columbia, United States Postal Service and Oregon Health & Science University.

"These organizations, like many others, are challenged to operate more efficiently and to reduce costs by creatively applying their PINNACLE solutions to achieve innovative ways of addressing these issues," said Larry Foster, PINNACLE's vice president and general manager. "The PINNACLE application provides a centralized management repository of operational and financial data to help organizations gain visibility, efficiency and control. This year's winners have capitalized on these capabilities along with our managed services to make their organizations more effective, reduce errors, improve processes and create sustainable returns on their investment."

PINNACLE recognized winners in five categories:

• Compliance Management – City of Seattle: Challenged with providing 24 x 7 support and disaster preparedness, and optimizing recovery time, the City of Seattle employs PINNACLE's centralized database and management features to ensure it meets compliance guidelines through properly identifying critical services, report information and speed recovery with automated PBX programming.
• Self Service and Automation – Citi : To reduce delivery time, manage its global service inventory, enable access for users and ensure operational consistency, Citi leverages PINNACLE to automate lifecycles of provisioning and invoice processing, reporting and integration with other applications to optimize processes and oversee 700,000 services and transactions for 300,000 employees worldwide.
• Green IT Management – University of British Columbia : By focusing on "customer access" and "control" through PINNACLE, the university was able to reduce the consumption of key resources around order processing and billing, resulting in savings of roughly $1 million to date and significant reductions in paper waste.
• Business Intelligence – United States Postal Service (USPS) : To effectively manage communications services across 40,000 locations spanning multiple carriers, the USPS uses PINNACLE's invoice management, service desk and system integration features to create universal, centralized data that enables it to analyze rates, gain insight into their locations' usage and reduce their overall telecom expenses.
• Resource Management – Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) : During its transition to a VoIP environment, OHSU leveraged PINNACLE's service, inventory and infrastructure management capabilities to transition data, create a sustainable network inventory and automate processes to prioritize and resolve issues.

The BSM Innovator Awards were presented at the 19th annual PINNACLE Users Training Conference, which features best practices, how-to instructional sessions, PINNACLE updates and customer-driven insights into innovations realized through PINNACLE.

For more information about PINNACLE, visit www.pinnsoft.com .

About PINNACLE, a Windstream Company

PINNACLE develops IT service and telecommunications lifecycle management solutions. PINNACLE enables organizations from enterprise and financial services to healthcare, higher education and government to gain greater financial and operational control by leveraging real-time intelligence, leading to improved and sustainable ROI and efficiency. PINNACLE is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Windstream Corporation. For more information, visit www.pinnsoft.com .

About Windstream

Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN ), a FORTUNE 500 and S&P 500 company, is a leading provider of advanced network communications, including cloud computing and managed services, to businesses nationwide. The company also offers broadband, phone and digital TV services to consumers primarily in rural areas. For more information, visit www.windstream.com .

Windstream Contact: Tanja Jameson 501-748-7236