Goals of the strategic agreement with Poste Italiane to provide Certified e-mail and Electronic Postal Communication services announced

Milan, 28 April 2010 – Making available innovative services to increase the competitive edge of businesses, facilitating the relationship between the Public Administration and citizens and improving information support to users: these are the objectives behind the development route taken by Seat PG through integrating new technologies in its business processes and service offering.
A route — the guidelines of which have been illustrated today by CEO Alberto Cappellini and top managers during the Seat PG TransformAction Day — which is generating concrete advantages for company growth and development, and, at the same time, is encouraging innovation and competitiveness with all of Italy’s market players.
In a scenario showing huge potential for growth in Internet use (only one third of Italian businesses have their own website), SEAT PG, as a directory service, occupies a key player position for the strategic use of the Web in Italy, a role confirmed by the 85,000 company websites developed in 2009, by the number of accesses to its own portals — 128.5 million for Paginegialle.it, 164.4 million for Paginebianche.it and 30 million for Tuttocitta.it — and by the 250,000 downloads of mobile apps in just 8 months in the IPhone world alone.
The results show such an acceleration in online business that the level of business conducted traditionally is expected to be matched within the next 2/3 years.
TransformAction Day was the opportunity to announce new common initiatives with Poste Italiane aimed at reaching a strategic agreement. This collaboration arises from the common objective to foster accelerated innovation within the Italian economic environment, with particular regard to SMEs and the Public Administration, by digitalising processes and bringing public bodies and citizens closer together, providing online solutions and services as a common factor and generating, at the same time, benefits for both companies.
The agreement will refer to the development of a number of strategic projects and the implementation of a set of initiatives as part of e-commerce, fidelity programs, financial, postal and value added services.
The first two projects that are expected to be implemented and become available for SEAT PG customers by the end of May 2010 are the Certified E-Mail (PEC) and Electronic Postal Communication and Online Postal Payment Slip services.
Thanks to the agreement with Poste Italiane, the SEAT PG portals will be able to offer the option to make legally valid written communications as well as carry out transactions involved in the daily life of citizens and businesses.
Certified E-Mail (PEC) is a service that will be promoted with Italian SMEs and professionals and integrated in SEAT PG commercial offers, providing Seat customers with the option of receiving and sending legally valid e-mails. In the future, the PEC service will enable Seat to provide new value added services for Italian businesses and professionals in collaboration with Poste.
The Electronic Postal Communication and Online Postal Payment Slip services, dedicated to businesses and consumers, will allow all users of SEAT PG portals to connect with the Paginebianche.it and PagineGialle.it portals, directly create written communications on the portals (recorded delivery letters with advice of receipt, Priority Mail, faxes and telegrams) which will be converted to printed communications by Poste Italiane and then delivered. Both the Electronic Communication services and the premarked postal payment slip service will be available to Seat portal users simply by registering and using all the main payment systems normally used by Internet users.
“The constant improvement in the services offered to our users is one of the strengths of SEAT Pagine Gialle. The objective we are setting ourselves is to increase the opportunities for using our portals thanks to new communication services dedicated to businesses, citizens and the Public Administration”, emphasizes Alberto Cappellini, CEO, SEAT Pagine Gialle .
The objectives of the agreement with Poste Italiane are proof of the ability of Italian companies to work as a system and support the development and growth of the entire economic environment, in order to simplify the life of citizens and allow our country to fill the innovation gap with the more cutting-edge European countries. This direction will also be followed by the other initiatives we are planning to put in place in the near future. These will consist in developing a number of Internet services such as, for example, e-commerce and digital financial and banking services for businesses,” concluded Cappellini.

SEAT PG
The SEAT Pagine Gialle Group is one of the main operators at world level in the sector of multimedia profiled advertising, offering “print-voice-online” directories, as well as complementary communication services such as one-to-one marketing. SEAT Pagine Gialle has been engaged in information services and search and communications tools for over 80 years. It is a success story based on a brand that is familiar to everyone, a sales network employing over 2,000 persons, a technology that is constantly evolving and a database that includes 13 million households and 4 million businesses (2009 data), and a wide range of products guaranteeing a real integrated system of communications to about 500,000 Italian Customers: a total of 53 million volumes distributed to the homes and offices (2009 data), about 29 million enquiries through the directory assistance service (2009 data), and about 323 million hits on online directories (2009 data) connect people and businesses, bringing together needs and solutions and promoting economic exchanges.

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