Edify Corporation, a leading global total solutions provider for voice and speech, today announced that the Edify Voice Banking Application, a comprehensive, packaged speech solution received formal SALT certification from Microsoft Corporation.
A Microsoft Speech Partner for the past year, Edify is the first member to receive formal certification for a financial services packaged application. The Edify Voice Banking Application on SALT will be available in the second quarter timeframe.
"Microsoft is making significant investments to establish speech as a mainstream, pervasive technology that can deliver long-term business benefits to companies of all sizes within a wide variety of industries," said Richard Bray, general manager for the Speech Server product group at Microsoft. "To meet this goal we must also enable the delivery of robust packaged applications like Edify Voice Banking to transform the market."
Based on industry standards including SALT and VoiceXML, Edify Voice Banking eliminates concerns over application functionality and compatibility issues for retail banks and ensures that the Edify applications operate across platforms. It includes key features such as account information and history, stop pay, change PIN, funds transfer, as well as business enterprise features, such as, detail reporting and monitoring for easy, ongoing technical support and upgrades.
A significant enhancement to telephone banking, Edify Voice Banking enables bank customers to identify themselves and make transactions by speaking to a virtual attendant, without having to traverse complex touch-tone menus. Customers benefit from being able to interact with a friendly, conversational system that provides efficient access to the available banking information they might need. Banks are able to enhance and expand customer service and lower costs at the same time by reducing call times and increasing automation.
"Packaged applications are the breakthrough companies need to start using speech in a big way. Speech will cut deployment time and cost and provide their customers with an easy way to access their accounts in a time efficient manner," said Marie Jackson, vice president of marketing and alliances for Edify.