Thinking Australia Pty Ltd and Watchfire Team to Provide Website Compliance Software and Services
Agreement to Address Compliance with Australia's Disability Discrimination Act, Privacy Act, Trade Practices Act and Other International Standards
Melbourne, Australia, August, 2003 - Thinking Australia Pty Ltd today announced a reseller agreement with Watchfire Corporation to address key Website quality, privacy and accessibility compliance issues. Thinking Australia Pty Ltd and Watchfire have teamed to deliver Watchfire's Website Management software to Australian organizations, enabling them to improve website effectiveness and enhance their ability to comply with government regulations and brand standards.
More than 50 percent of the Fortune 500, such as HP and Dell, rely on Watchfire to optimize their website investments and to help them gain competitive advantage. The company maintains dual North American headquarters in Ottawa, Canada and Waltham, Mass
“Watchfire's solutions is the perfect complement to organizations who have significant web investments and require an automated solution to address key Website brand and compliance issues,” said Carey Stanton, vice president, business development, Watchfire. “Increasing concerns over global legislation and regulatory focus has made it mandatory for organizations to comply with a growing list of requirements. We are pleased that Thinking Australia Pty Ltd is introducing Watchfire to their market and feel the combination of our software with their consulting services adds significant value for their customers.”
As part of the agreement, Thinking will have the opportunity to resell Watchfire's entire family of software solutions including WebQA™, a website quality testing tool for small, medium, and departmental websites, Bobby™, a website accessibility testing tool and WebXM™, the company's enterprise platform. WebXM helps protect an organization's online brand and enables regulatory compliance by automating the manual process of identifying and managing website content quality, privacy and accessibility issues. WebXM identifies key issues affecting website content and is invaluable to improving a company's business process.
“The appointment of Thinking as Watchfire's Australian partner augments our future direction in the enterprise services market,” said Mark Bergin, Managing Director of Thinking Australia Pty Ltd. “With Watchfire, we will bring our customers increased value and help them improve the overall quality of their sites and reduce the online risks by helping them to comply with mandatory global regulations.”
This combination of software and services will help address current website compliance challenges surrounding:
- Accessibility Standards including Australia's Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and other worldwide accessibility standards. As a good business practice, it's important to make websites accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Accessible websites are far more usable and offer the capacity to reach a broader audience.
- Privacy Management Standards to enable organizations to identify and manage privacy-related website issues such as data collection practices, insecure forms, privacy statement linking, data spillage risks, visitor tracking practices through the use of cookies and web beacons, and P3P compliance. The software provides the ability to help mitigate the risk of online privacy glitches, enable effective compliance with various privacy laws and create a higher degree of trust among website visitors.
- Brand Management and Quality Standards that help organizations address Australia's Trade Practices Act by helping to baseline the brand management and quality of their sites. This prioritizes the website repairs and changes that need to occur including Website brand and link management, broken forms, slow loading pages, faulty purchase checkouts, poor searchability, and usability problems.
“The Web Squad (a Division of Thinking Australia Pty Ltd), is focused on providing clients with site maintenance and compliance capabilities in order to maximise site effectiveness and reduce non-compliance risks. Watchfire's enterprise solutions take us to the next level and we are now able to help companies with large and complex site auditing jobs. Together with our consulting, advice and content publishing services, we have a very powerful offering,” added Mr. Bergin.
About Thinking Australia Pty Ltd
Thinking Australia Pty Ltd, located in Melbourne and established in 1991, is a wholly owned Australian communications and Internet management company comprising of 3 distinct but related service divisions. The Web Squad provides clients with web publishing solutions based on their marketing and communication objectives. Key services include the ongoing upkeep and maintenance of sites, backed up by a content management team available on request.
With federal and state legislation now covering web sites, companies need to be mindful of the potential legal and commercial risks associated with owning a site. Via, the Web Squad, the company conducts site scans which can unveil potential risk factors that can then be remediated before any potential legal proceeds are instigated against the company. The Next Gen provides clients with consulting and advice. Further information on Thinking can be found online at www.thinking.com.au
About Watchfire
Watchfire provides software and services to manage brand, risk and cost effectiveness of online business. Our sophisticated reports put detailed, actionable information into the hands of the people who need it, when they need it. More than 50 percent of the Fortune 500, such as HP and Dell rely on Watchfire to optimize their online business investments and to help them gain competitive advantage. Watchfire maintains dual headquarters in Waltham, MA and Ottawa, Canada. For more information, please visit www.watchfire.com.
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For further information email mark.bergin@thinking.com.au or phone Thinking Australia Pty Ltd on +61 3 9821 5055.