Pyxis, a leading provider of innovative wireless software that promotes asset growth for the investment industry, announced today that Manulife USA has chosen Pyxis’ mPlatform® wireless sales force solution, mWholesaler®, for its variable annuity wholesalers.

With this solution, Manulife is able to easily connect its mobile sales force with vital customer and corporate information, making both internal and external sales forces more productive and improving ROI for the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Currently, mWholesaler is used by more than 20% of all wholesalers in the United States, making it the leading wireless application within the financial industry.

“We are excited about the use of this technology,” said John Egbert, Executive Vice President of Manulife Wood Logan and National Sales Manager of the annuity sales force. “It provides a tremendous amount of information to the field wholesalers allowing them to provide greater levels of service and support to brokers. We are looking to increase the functionality over time.”

Manulife has initially rolled out mWholesaler via BlackBerry to support its variable annuity operations in the United States. To support this sales arm, Manulife had invested in powerful Siebel CRM software, but was still faced with the problem of getting CRM information, and up-to-date corporate and product information, to and from its field sales force. To solve this need, Manulife chose a combination of Pyxis’ mPlatform solution and the BlackBerry wireless platform from Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM).

"Pyxis has been a great solution for us and has given our sales force the ability to be more productive, especially between sales calls,” said Mark Rizza, CIO of Manulife USA. “As with any new technology, it took some time for everyone to fully embrace the move to mWholesaler. However once they saw the amount of branch and rep data they could retrieve on the fly, they embraced it and now are looking for even more information to be available on their BlackBerry devices.”

Through the rollout of Pyxis’ mPlatform and BlackBerry, Manulife’s mobile sales force has wireless and offline access to customer sales information, corporate product details and territory metrics, improving sales reps’ productivity and freeing up valuable internal sales and management time. Manulife managers and sales reps can more easily add up-to-date information back into Manulife CRM systems, using their BlackBerry handhelds.

“Pyxis is providing a valuable solution that leverages the power of the BlackBerry platform to allow customers to extend their wireless data strategies beyond email,” said Mark Guibert, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Research In Motion. “We are pleased that Manulife has selected BlackBerry and mPlatform to help keep their sales professionals connected and productive while in the field."

“Manulife is another great win for Pyxis and once again shows not only our dominance of the market, but also the trust and confidence that investment leaders have in Pyxis to improve their sales process,” said Shane Hughes, CEO, Pyxis. “Wireless solutions such as BlackBerry, together with software designed to specifically meet the unique needs of mobile financial professionals such as mPlatform are providing financial market leaders with a competitive advantage.”