Intelligent agent software specialist Edify Corp has teamed up with speech recognition software company Nuance Communications to add speech recognition interactive voice response (IVR) technology to its products. Edify is to integrate Nuance’s speech recognition software, Nuance 6, into its Electronic Workforce (EW) package. EW is an application development system that lets companies design and deploy agent-based applications through different media, including web browsers and telephones. Using EW, users can carry out their own transactions (buying goods, checking personnel records, updating account details). When integrated with Nuance 6 the system will enable developers to create applications that can be accessed via the web or by telephone. With nine times more people worldwide with access to the telephone, rather than the web, Nuance claims a huge potential market for what it has dubbed V-Commerce. Last year the two companies automated the 12,000-call-per-day call center of US retailer Sears, Roebuck and Co using speech-enabled IVR, with some success.
