Ness Technologies (News - Alert) has been awarded a contract from Bank Discount to deploy an IVR and speech recognition system at Israel's Bank Discount.

The communications division of Ness Technologies' Technologies and Systems Group, or "Ness TSG," is expected to provide the bank with an IVR solution based on the Genesys (News - Alert) Voice Platform, or "GVP." A software-based voice portal, GVP has been developed by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company, according to company officials.

Additionally, the speech recognition will be performed using a speech recognition engine developed by Nuance (News - Alert), said company officials.

Shay Vardi, CIO at Bank Discount, said that the advanced system that was proposed by Ness enables the right integration of the various technologies that exist in the bank and complements the bank's Genesys CTI (News - Alert) system.

"The system will allow us to deploy new services rapidly in a short time, and improve our service level," Vardi said.

Ness Technologies is a provider of IT and business services and solutions with specialization in software product engineering; and system integration, application development, consulting and software distribution. The company has years of experience in establishing contact centers and integrated solutions based on computer telephony integration, or "CTI," IVR and speech recognition.

For the company, this project is the fourth such system deployment in Israel in the recent years. Company officials said that the company has exclusive experience in deploying Genesys' GVP platform in Israel.

"The selection of Ness Technologies by Bank Discount is an expression of confidence in the solution and experience offered by Ness, as well as satisfaction from the professional, efficient and reliable service provided by us to Bank Discount during the years," said Michael Zinderman, president at Ness TSG.

The project is expected to last 18 months.

Earlier in April, the company announced the start of an Oracle (News - Alert) E-Business Suite implementation at Teva Czech Industries s.r.o., a provider of pharmaceutical products.