SOFTPRO: Ralph Maute and Ulrich Pantow define Product Strategy

Softpro GmbH, the world's leading vendor of systems for capture and verification of handwritten signatures, today announced the appointment of Ulrich Pantow as product manager for the Fraud Prevention Solutions portfolio. Mr. Pantow replaces Alain Sarraf who has taken over the position as Chief Technology Officer of the Softpro Group. Ralph Maute continues to manage Softpro's e-signing product suite.

Maute and Pantow are now defining the company's product strategy and are responsible for the company's product development definitions, roadmaps and release plans. A special focus of their activities will be to leverage existing, and build strong partnerships with technology leaders in the check fraud prevention and e-signing sector.

Strengthening the importance of a very experienced, and highly market-oriented product management is part of the "full focus on customer" activities that Heinz Reschke, CEO of the Softpro Group has started to implement in recent weeks. Reschke adds: "With Ulrich Pantow and Ralph Maute our customers, prospects and partners experience our dedication to providing the best e-signing and automated verification solutions in the market. Their keen senses for industry trends make them the perfect match to fill these important and strategic roles in our company. Both link excellent technological and analytical skills with the ability to communicate on each level of organizations to define working solutions with clear benefits." Ulrich and Ralph joined Softpro in 2000.

Ralph Maute has been influential within Softpro on many levels. Originally starting in the presales group, he has gained abundant experience in working with Softpro's customers world-wide. Since 2006 Ralph's experience is reflected in SOFTPRO's customer oriented e-signing solutions. Alain Sarraf, Softpro's CTO, adds: "Ralph is not only highly dedicated, but also extremely innovative. His ideas have already been a key to the success of several of our existing and new products. He has a very strategic approach and a clear perspective". One of the latest milestones which Ralph has set for Softpro was the launch of the LCD signature tablet SignPad eSignio - a joint development with long-time partner Wacom that was started in early 2006. Ralph has a degree in Medical Informatics and started his career as a software engineer and project manager working in these roles for companies in the field of sales force automation. Before joining Softpro he also gained experience in consulting and sales for US based companies.

Ulrich Pantow is one of the architects of Softpro's holistic check fraud detection and prevention suite (FraudOne) which was developed based on his extensive research and discussions with top US banks that now make up a large part of Softpro's customer base. "Ulrich's extensive knowledge of automated check verification systems and the banking industry as a whole is clearly outstanding." adds Heinz Reschke. Ulrich has worldwide experience as solutions architect, project manager and sales consultant for Softpro. In this role he has always been instrumental in finding the right configuration, customization and business process architecture for our customers to maximize their benefits of a deployment. Given his strong ability to deeply analyze system environments and business processes at customers, he often was the 'inventor' of tools, modules and features in that realm to optimize, streamline, or even enable new customer processes.

SOFTPRO GmbH
Joerg-M. Lenz
Manager PR
jle@softpro.de

Wilhelmstrasse 34
71034 Boeblingen
Germany
Phone: +49 7031 6606 0
Fax: +49 7031 6606 66

The SOFTPRO Group is the worldwide leading vendor of systems for capture and verification of handwritten signatures. The company is based in Boeblingen, Germany with local subsidiaries in North America (Wilmington, Delaware), the United Kingdom, and Asia-Pacific (Singapore).

The group currently employs an international staff of over 60 people, enabling more than 200 companies worldwide to streamline their document and transaction workflows.

With its Biometric product line, SOFTPRO provides solutions for securing the authenticity and integrity of documents within electronic processes, such as those required for legal contracts. For this purpose, a unique signature technology is used to extract and evaluate both the static and dynamic (biometric) characteristics of handwritten signatures.
SOFTPRO’s "Fraud Prevention Solutions" portfolio provides a holistic approach to detecting and preventing fraud in paper-based processes (such as payment transactions), as well as increasing operational efficiency using signature management and verification solutions.
Among SOFTPRO’s customers are American Express, Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Discover Financial, Ingolstadt Hospital, JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds TSB, SEB, Standard Bank of South Africa, TeleCash (First Data) and Wachovia.
Since 2002, the offer to secure electronic documents with handwritten signatures extended the customer portfolio of SOFTPRO to other industries such as banking and insurance, health/pharma, retail, government, automotive and logistics.

Frost & Sullivan, one of the leading growth consulting companies worldwide, presented SOFTPRO GmbH with its "Customer Service Leadership Award 2007" for having excelled in serving its customers and gaining superior customer satisfaction levels. This award recognizes the company that has gained the best insights into customer needs and product demands.

SOFTPRO's shareholders are GE Capital (since 1998), AdCapital (since 2001) founders and management.

SOFTPRO's partners include: A2iA, Adobe, BancTec, Beta Systems (Kleindienst), Carreker/CheckFree, DISOFT Pro, Fujitsu Siemens Computers / Fujitsu, Gateway, Gijima AST, HP, IBM, Interlink, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motion Computing, Toshiba, UNISYS and Wacom as well as APP Informatik Davos.

This release was published on openPR.