Finance Community Bullish on Business Graphics; Adds SmartDraw to its Portfolio

SmartDraw.com today announced new capabilities to its flagship product SmartDraw, aimed at finance professionals to meet the growing demand from this community. Increasing numbers of finance professionals are thinking outside of the spreadsheet and turning to business graphics to bring charts to life. SmartDraw, popular business graphics software downloaded by more than 2 million people each year, is helping financial planners and accountants create polished, presentation-quality flowcharts, forms, finance charts, data flow diagrams, project schedules, and much more.

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) April 1, 2008 -- SmartDraw.com today announced new capabilities to its flagship product SmartDraw, aimed at finance professionals to meet the growing demand from this community. Increasing numbers of finance professionals are thinking outside of the spreadsheet and turning to business graphics to bring charts to life. SmartDraw, popular business graphics software downloaded by more than 2 million people each year, is helping financial planners and accountants create polished, presentation-quality flowcharts, forms, finance charts, data flow diagrams, project schedules, and much more.

SmartDraw 2008 includes new features that allow finance professionals to present charts and display data in more powerful and memorable ways. For example, with the new ImageChart feature, instead of using ordinary bar graphs or pie charts to represent data, users can substitute real images--for example, a money bag scaled up or down to reflect revenue growth or asset allocation…just like USA Today. SmartDraw also includes the Express Charting feature that allows users to build charts and graphs without having to create a spreadsheet first. Users can also pick a chart and type their data directly into the bars, or simply drag them to represent the right values.

"We use SmartDraw's visual charts or graphics because it's easier for everyone to understand, and they're much more effective than reports that people don't read," said Jon Golding, CEO of Golding Consulting, an international financial consulting firm. "SmartDraw is easy to use and offers a great selection of templates that we can customize quickly. It takes us a quantum leap ahead."

Another feature popular with financial professionals is SmartDraw's new automatic flowcharting, which allows users to build flowcharts without ever touching a mouse. Lines are drawn automatically, and shapes are evenly spaced and perfectly aligned. In addition, the program delivers automatic graphic design, allowing users to select from professionally-designed graphics themes, specifying colors, lines and style type.

"I tried to create a data flow diagram in Visio®, and gave up in after an hour," said Peter McMahon, Consultant, Principal of Albicon Consulting. "With SmartDraw, I made my first data flow diagram in five minutes. SmartDraw is the best productivity tool I have come across for flowcharting. Zero-learning curve, affordable, and instant high-quality results."

SmartDraw--the first program to automate the task of creating business graphics for finance and accounting--includes hundreds of templates for every business diagram possible. Unlike other graphics programs that provide users with a blank screen and expect them to draw, such as Visio®, with SmartDraw users start with a template that is specifically designed to create the type of illustration they need. Users enter the information and SmartDraw does the rest: building the graphic automatically using built-in rules and professional design themes to guarantee polished, presentation-quality results in just a few minutes. The program features one-click export to Microsoft Office® programs, including Excel®, PowerPoint® and Word®, and also allows users to easily save to PDF and other graphic formats.

SmartDraw offers a variety of licensing options and programs, including educational pricing. A free trial is available at www.smartdraw.com and includes both online and telephone technical support.

About SmartDraw.com
SmartDraw.com is the creator of SmartDraw, the world's most popular business graphics software and the first program that makes it possible for ordinary computer users to create presentation-quality business graphics in minutes. Each year more than two million people install and use SmartDraw and the company counts more than half of the members of the Fortune 500 as loyal customers.

Founded in 1994, SmartDraw.com is privately-held and based in San Diego, CA. In addition to SmartDraw 2008 for general business and home use, the company also offers SmartDraw Healthcare and SmartDraw Legal editions which include graphics and applications unique to their respective fields. For more information on the company or to download a free trial of SmartDraw, please visit www.smartdraw.com.

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