BY CAROL DRZEWIANOWSKI
Managing Editor, Communications SOLUTIONS™

Simply Speech

These days, with the unpredictable nature of the stock market, investors want to keep close watch on their stocks more than ever. Over the past year we witnessed the rise and fall of many dot-com companies, and plenty of people watched their profits, which had once skyrocketed, be razed to prices well under the IPO value.

With the word "recession" popping up in newspapers and on nightly newscasts, it makes sense to know how your stocks are doing so you can make intelligent decisions regarding your portfolio. Many different providers offer the availability of stock quotes with mobile phone plans, and if you have a Web-enabled palm-computing device, you can also get this information easily.

MORE THAN JUST QUOTES
Interactive Telesis and Nuance, however, have announced a new solution -- a voice-enabled version of InvestorREACH, Interactive Telesis' shareholder communication service. Yahoo! is the first company to beta test this system. Shareholders can access Yahoo! investor information from any phone using voice commands such as "Send me an investor package" or "What is the current stock price?"

During the beta test, the voice-enabled version of InvestorREACH is an option within the standard touch-tone InvestorREACH menu. Callers who select this option can request information on Yahoo! using only their voice - there is no need to utilize the alphanumeric keypad. Nuance's speech recognition software interprets the spoken commands, enabling InvestorREACH to deliver the requested information to the caller quickly and accurately. By using simple voice commands, InvestorREACH is an intuitive tool for delivering corporate information to mobile investors.

"In our continued efforts to provide an open communications platform, we are exploring convenient new ways to allow investors to access company information," said Andrea Klipfel, director of investor relations, Yahoo! "We believe this voice-enabled technology will provide them with a fast, flexible way to connect with all of our investor information, anytime."

"Interactive Telesis has proven the appeal of automated shareholder information, as demonstrated by the more than one million callers who have used the InvestorREACH service," said Ron Croen, president and CEO of Nuance. "We are proud to bring the power of speech to this application for Yahoo! and are confident that other leading companies will quickly embrace the speed and convenience of speech technology."

SPEECHWORKS MAKES SPEECH WORK
Interactive Telesys has also worked with companies like SpeechWorks to build and deploy other large-scale speech-enabled applications. To hear a demonstration of one of these solutions, click here.

SpeechWorks also had a recent announcement. Natural MicroSystems' HearSay telephony platform and the SpeechWorks 6.5 speech-recognition engine will be integrated at the Application Program Interface (API) level. The integrated platform will provide a feature-rich base for the ever-increasing number of speech-driven applications that allow a company's customers to do business using everyday language over the phone.

With this integration, platform development and deployment can be streamlined because developers will have access to speech as well as telephony functions through NMS' single API. What kinds of applications will benefit from this? Voice portals, auto-attendants, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), directory assistance, call center services, unified messaging, and telematic servers are all likely contenders.

NMS and SpeechWorks have been long-standing partners in the rapidly growing sector of voice-enabled applications. In October the companies partnered to allow Yahoo! Mail users to hear the content of their e-mail messages from any standard telephone using NMS' Alliance Generation (AG) 4000 telephony interface and SpeechWorks' Speechify Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine.

POWERED BY VOICE
The Kelsey Group expects that the market for voice-driven applications will reach $12 billion by 2005. More than $5 billion of this total is projected to come from services such as voice-enabled commerce and related applications that deliver instant connections to people, businesses, and personalized information via the telephone.

This is also an important consideration for the "road warrior." Many communities are passing legislation against using mobile phones while driving, unless you are using a hands-free device. Approximately 15 states have laws that restrict the use of headsets in cars. What's the penalty if you're caught? It's likely you'll pay a hefty fine. For example, in New York's Suffolk County a driver can be fined $150. Voice-driven applications allow you to still get the information you need, without the distraction of trying to punch your keypad while simultaneously keeping an eye on the road.

Voice-driven applications are playing larger roles in our everyday lives. After all, would you rather remember the ticker symbols of every stock in your portfolio so you can punch in strings of cryptic letters using your telephone keypad, or simply call a service such as InvestorREACH and speak the name of the company you want information on? Personally, I think it's more natural (and easier on my memory bank) to simply speak commands into my telephone.

Carol Drzewianowski welcomes your comments via e-mail.