Avaya announces new communications applications

Avaya, the global provider of business communications software, systems and services, has announced new releases of its unified communication and contact centre solutions, which deliver self-service functionalities across an organisation through speech-enabled applications.

Avaya Unified Communication Centre - which enables users to initiate conference calls and manage e-mails, voicemails and calendars using speech - significantly extends its availability to a greater number of enterprise users. Avaya Interactive Response, an automated self-service solution for enterprises of all sizes, broadens its international reach with speech-recognition capabilities for an expanded number of languages.

The company also introduced a new set of software development tools and interfaces to develop and customise branded speech applications for Avaya Interactive Response. The new Avaya Speech Applications Builder lets developers rapidly and cost-effectively design speech automation services using open standards such as VoiceXML (VXML) - which uses Internet tools in the development of speech applications.

This software development toolkit will enable companies to integrate advanced speech applications into their business processes, improving employee productivity and customer satisfaction, while introducing new operational efficiencies.

One of the companies benefiting from Avaya`s speech-enabled communications is Healthpoint, a growing global pharmaceutical company that is using the new version of Avaya Unified Communication Centre to improve productivity of headquarters staff and field sales representatives. Healthpoint uses the application to let users have a single source where they can access e-mail, voicemail, calendars and other functions via speech. This greatly enhances mobility for workers in transit, who need their information rapidly and conveniently.

"Avaya`s speech access capabilities are a tremendous benefit, particularly for our field sales force, giving them the ability to maximise their productivity, even if they are in an airport waiting on a flight. With this application, an executive in transit doesn`t need to boot up their laptop to access e-mail, or press buttons to interact with business processes. Avaya Unified Communication Centre allows them to maintain a complete connection to operations, and when you are in sales, the more connected you are - the more you sell!" said Mark Shane, Healthpoint systems technician.

In addition to tapping the software`s abilities to allow Healthpoint`s workers to use a phone to check or schedule dates in an online calendar, the company`s sales force benefits from the "Reach Me" capabilities of Unified Communication Centre. This gives the sales team greater access to customers, enabling them to remain reachable through just one number that will seamlessly track down employees, wherever they may be.

Avaya Unified Communication Centre and Avaya Interactive Response are core solutions within the company`s portfolio of Internet protocol-based MultiVantage Communications Applications - which encompasses telephony, contact centres, messaging and unified communication.

With the introduction of Avaya Unified Communication Centre 2.0, Avaya significantly increases the scalability of unified communications, supporting up to 10 000 subscribers. Expanding upon user support helps large and growing organisations meet the needs of an increasingly mobile global workforce. Other new enhancements include integration with IBM Lotus Notes calendar and contacts.

Avaya Interactive Response 1.2 adds greater international support, expanding its speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities to more than 30 languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Italian. It also operates on higher-capacity servers, providing greater port density and more processing power for self-service applications.

With the new Avaya Speech Applications Builder, businesses have all of the tools and components required to create an open standards-based environment that accelerates the cost-effective design of speech automation services. Designed for the Avaya Interactive Response platform, the Speech Applications Builder incorporates the VoiceXML standard and contains an expansive library of more than 100 pre-built functionalities (ie user designs, prompts, retry logic, etc). This helps reduce the time and costs associated with the development, testing and maintenance of speech applications.

In a preliminary installation using the Avaya Speech Applications Builder, one financial services company was able to automate three services - transferring funds, checking balances and verification of identity - within half the typical deployment schedule required for development of a single application using traditional deployment methods.

"Avaya is focused on making it easier for businesses to design, deploy and benefit from communications solutions that expand efficiency and productivity in the most cost-effective way," says Alain Schram, managing director sub-Saharan Africa. "In today`s fast-paced world, speech applications can help enterprises gain a competitive-edge through enhanced customer service and improved organisational productivity. These solutions enable businesses to rapidly incorporate speech into the fabric of global enterprises - helping ensure high-quality access and service is delivered from any location."