German ERP (enterprise resource planning) software giant, SAP AG, said yesterday it is working with SpeechWorks International to integrate its voice recognition technology into R/3. As part of the announcement, the two companies said SpeechWorks has received an equity investment from SAP, although neither would disclose the size of the offering. Stuart Patterson, CEO, said the announcement was indicative of the current dynamics in the ERP market. The back office vendors are all moving into the front office space offering customer service and sales and support-type applications. Specifically, he said SpeechWorks will work with SAP to develop dialog modules – software that sits between a call center application and the R3 system and speaks answers to users’ queries over the phone by interrogating the R3 application for the correct data. The call center software could be SAP’s own, or any other brand a company is using, Patterson said. He said speech recognition is increasingly being used as a way of answering incoming calls, for customers that want to check on the status of their orders, check shipping details and so on. People are tired of touch-tone technology where they have to sit and listen to an endless list of choices before they get to the one they want, Patterson said, It’s much simpler and faster to be able to ring up and ask your specific question and get a reply in a couple of minutes. Patterson said the technology uses natural language, and there’s also a special facility, called Barge In, which lets users familiar with the software interrupt the system and cut to the specific information they need. It’s like putting a web interface in front of an ERP system. But instead you use speech over the phone instead of a browser over the internet. It’s a much simpler interface. Users can get verbal answers to their questions or request to be put through to an operator if they need it, he added. The company has already shown a demonstration of the system at SAP’s user conference earlier this year. We’ve got the raw technology, now we’re working on building better prepackaged integration with R3 so there’s less custom code to write. The solution, which will be marketed as an extension of the company’s existing SpeechWorks and DialogModules products, will be available some time in the second quarter of next year. Other companies using the technology include United Airlines, Federal Express and E*Trade Inc.
