Airbus Contract Win

Embargoed Release: 07:00hrs Monday 19th April 2004

                                  Sopheon Plc

                                  ('Sopheon')                                  

                 Sopheon and Siemens Business Services Deliver
                   Compliance Management Solution to Airbus                    

MINNEAPOLIS and LONDON_April 26, 2004_Sopheon, the international software and
services company, and Siemens Business Services' Standardization Competence
Center announced today the introduction of Siemens Compliance Direct Service at
Airbus, the world's largest manufacturer of aircraft. The Siemens service is
powered by Sopheon's Compliance Monitor, a software component of the Sopheon
Accolade product life cycle management (PLM) suite that enables product
development teams to stay current and achieve proactive compliance with
internal and external standards and regulations. The solution also allows users
to execute continuous conformity assessment. The Compliance Direct Service is
being made available on a pilot basis to engineering teams in France, Germany,
Spain and the United Kingdom responsible for Airbus' pioneering development of
radio-frequency based identification (RFID) technology for tracking aircraft
parts.

Compliance with changing internal and external technical standards, industry
regulations and laws is a critical aspect of product life cycle management for
aviation companies. This challenge is heightened at Airbus whose engineering
groups, partners and suppliers operate in a decentralized global environment
subject to numerous national and international requirements. The Siemens
Compliance Direct Service replaces a difficult-to-manage, time-intensive manual
process of locating, updating and distributing information, enabling engineers
to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their analysis of complex
specifications and proposals. Initial users in the Engineering System
Development, Engineering Cabin, Engineering Structure, Engineering Engine,
Engineering Operations and Product Integrity teams handling the RFID project
will use Compliance Direct to evaluate proposals from various suppliers based
on relevant specifications and standards in aviation, semiconductors, wireless
data transmission and other areas.

'Ensuring the comfort and safety of the millions of people who fly all over the
world in our aircraft has always been our highest priority,' said Jens
Heitmann, senior manager, systems standardization, process and methods at
Airbus. 'Compliance Direct is a sophisticated knowledge management solution
that masks the complexity of staying up-to-date with the multitude of current
and evolving standards and regulations we use in developing innovative products
with the highest quality and reliability. The tool also enables us to perform
deep levels of conformity analysis and research in very short periods of time.
Coming from a long-standing and trusted partner such as Siemens, we are
confident the Service will help our engineers manage compliance in a simple,
efficient and transparent way and reduce the development costs of new aircraft
systems through shorter process times and more effective analysis and use of
information.'

Siemens Compliance Direct Service is built around Sopheon's Compliance Monitor
softwarethat features an advanced linguistic search engine, or 'reading
robot,'that monitors professional journals, news publications, Web sites,
internal libraries and other sources arranged by Siemens Business Services'
Standardization Competence Center. The Sopheon solution uses technology to
automatically handle tens of thousands of documents and related messages. It
filters and analyzes the conceptual content from auser's documents, generates
an interest profile, and alerts the user when it discovers information or
developments related to pertinent standards and regulations.

'Airbus has a well-deserved reputation for the innovative use of technology in
direct support of its commitment to safety and quality,'said Norbert
Zimmermann, manager of Siemens Business Services' Standardization Competence
Center. 'The company is continuing that tradition by adopting the Compliance
Direct Service to address the significant and unique challenges of compliance
in aviation manufacturing. Siemens and Sopheon are working closely together on
Compliance Direct to help Airbus realize its quality and cost goals by
empowering knowledge workers with a system that improves efficiency and
effectiveness.'

'Airbus' selection of Sopheon and Siemens to help it address its compliance
needs is notable for a couple of reasons,' said Andy Michuda, chief executive
officer of Sopheon. 'First, this transaction is important recognition by one of
the most advanced and successful transportation companies in the world that
Sopheon's innovative use of knowledge management capabilities tomanage complex
and critical aspectsof product life cycle management offers unique value. It
also demonstrates the success of our continuing efforts to work through
strategic partnerssuch as Siemens Business Services' Standardization Competence
Center to extend Sopheon's ability to capture PLM opportunities outside our
targeted client base of process manufacturers in new markets such as discrete
manufacturing. We're delighted to be associated with these two world-class
organizations.'

Sopheon Accolade® is a registered trademark of Sopheon plc.

All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the sole

property of their respective owners.

About Airbus

Headquartered in Toulouse, France, Airbus is a large, unified company whose
customer focus, commercial know-how, technological leadership and manufacturing
efficiency have propelled it to the forefront of the industry. With a turnover
of around 19.3 billion Euro in 2003, Airbus now consistently captures half of
all commercial airliner orders, delivering over half of the world's requirement
for large commercial aircraft in 2003. Airbus today is a truly global
enterprise of some 50,000 employees, with fully-fledged subsidiaries in the
United States, China and Japan, spare parts centres in Hamburg, Frankfurt,
Washington, Beijing, and Singapore, training centres in Toulouse, Miami, and
Beijing and 120 field service offices around the world. Airbus also relies on
industrial co-operation and partnerships with major companies all over the
world, and a network of some 1,500 suppliers in 30 countries. Airbus is an EADS
joint Company with BAE SYSTEMS. For more information, please visit
www.airbus.com.

About Siemens Business Services

Siemens Business Services is an internationally leading IT service provider.
This Siemens Group offers services all along the IT service chain from a single
source - from consulting to systems integration, right through to the
management of IT infrastructures. Thanks to comprehensive know-how and
sector-specific expertise, the company provides measurable added value for its
customers. With regard to outsourcing and IT maintenance, Siemens Business
Services is among the top ten providers worldwide. Sales in fiscal year 2003
(ending 30 September 2003) came to around 5.2 billion Euro, 76 percent of which
was achieved outside the Siemens organization. The company currently has
approximately 34,300 employees worldwide. For further information on SBS,
please visit www.siemens.com/sbs. For further information on Compliance Direct
Service, please visit http://www.standardisierung.de/index-e.html.

About Sopheon

Sopheon (LSE: SPE) is an international provider of software and services that
help organizations improve the business impact of product development. The
Sopheon Accolade® product development system automates gate- or phase-based
product development processes and provides strategic decision support that
allows companies to improve innovation, cut product development spending waste
and shorten time to market. Sopheon's Monitor software operates as a 'reading
robot' that automatically reviews, filters, analyzes and pushes relevant
content to healthcare and engineering professionals to enable effective
compliance with protocols, standards and regulations. Sopheon is listed on the
AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange and on the Euronext in the Netherlands.
For more information, please visit www.sopheon.com.

For further information contact:

Barry Mence, Chairman  Sopheon plc                  Tel : + 44 (0) 1483 685   
                                                    735                       
Arif Karimjee, CFO                                                            
                                                                              
Andrew Tan             Hansard Communications       Tel : + 44 (0) 207 245    
                                                    1100                      
                                                                              
Barbara Jansen         Citigate First Financial     Tel : + 31 (0) 205 754 010