VisibleThread appoints Paul O’Dea as non-executive chairman

DUBLIN, IRELAND, June 1st, 2009 -VisibleThread today announced the appointment of Paul O’Dea as non-executive chairman. Paul is CEO of Select Strategies, a consulting and education company whose clients include Expedia, Hewlett Packard and a number of US quoted companies. He has been widely published in his area of interest; entrepreneurial sales and marketing. Paul is the author of two books; ‘Select Selling’ (Oak Tree Press 2004), ‘The Business Battlecard’ (Oak Tree Press 2009). Paul is a former Chairperson of the Irish Software Association and is on the Governing Board of ICT Ireland.

“We are very excited that Paul has agreed to join us at board level. His depth of experience in sales along with his deep experience of the technology sector will be an important asset to VisibleThread as we build the business” said VisibleThread founder Fergal McGovern.

About VisibleThread

VisibleThread (www.visiblethread.com) is a software product company delivering solutions that dramatically cut IT project waste for medium / large enterprises, government, system integrators and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors).

Today, despite sophisticated tooling, 90% of IT organizations still use Microsoft Word (‘The New Business Analyst’ – Forrester Research, April 2008) as the primary tool for business analysis activities. Understanding whether these documents are ‘fit for purpose’ is a highly manual, time consuming and error prone process.

The VisibleThread on-demand/on-premise solution is the first of its kind that uses industry Best Practice to analyze MS Word documents for gaps and inconsistencies in ‘real-time’. Using a series of web based ‘dashboards’ and MS Word ‘Add-ins’, VisibleThread fits seamlessly into any IT process approach (iterative or waterfall), dramatically raising document visibility, instantly highlighting ‘at risk’ and ‘on track’ projects. VisibleThread pinpoints risk levels for all concerned stakeholders including VP/CIO, Project/Program Managers, Business Analysts and QA/Test Leads.

For further press information contact: Media Relations: pr@visiblethread.com

VisibleThread for IT

2:48 minutes
This summary overview shows the business case for using VisibleThread for IT programs. It shows why up to 42% of IT project cost can be attributed to defective documentation and demonstrates how VisibleThread addresses this large business issue.

Red-flagging Bad Language

3:47 minutes
There are some words/phrases that you should avoid in a proposal. This short video shows how VisibleThread scans and red-flags 'bad language' in your RFP Responses.

Using Discovery to spot Gaps

2:28 minutes
Identification of key concepts in issued documents (RFP etc.) helps align the language of the response volumes. Discovery in VisibleThread can uncover mismatches and lack of alignment between issuer and response docs to support reviews and underpin a winning bid.

Validating Win Theme Language

4:43 minutes
Win themes articulate business differentiation. Too often, with multiple contributors and authors, it is hard to keep theme language consistent.

Here we see how VisibleThread validates response docs against win themes by:

Scanning for Compliance Requirements

4:30 minutes
Proposal Managers have to manually scan issued documents or pdfs to spot requirements prefaced with 'shall', 'must' etc. and track them in spreadsheets. This demo shows an 'obligation scan' run against a SOW. All instances of 'will', 'must', 'shall' are identified. It concludes by generating a first pass of an Excel Compliance Matrix.

Collaborations and Team Reviews with
Discussions

5:31 minutes
Managing inputs from multiple contributors and conducting efficient team reviews is critical to successful outcomes. This demo shows how VisibleThread supports collaboration using web based discussions.

Integrating with MS SharePoint

2:36 minutes
VisibleThread integrates seamlessly with MS SharePoint using an intuitive export/import capability. This short demo shows how the integration works in practical terms. We cover:

Plain Language Analysis

4:11 minutes
Plain Language Analysis drives clear documentation. This demo outlines how VisibleThread can identify long sentences, passive langauge and facilitate plain langauge audits.