14th Feb 2006 09:00
Eckoh Technologies PLC14 February 2006 For Immediate Release 14 February 2006 BT AND ECKOH PROVIDE DEFRA WITH SPEECH DRIVEN DATA CAPTURE SERVICE FOR POULTRY REGISTER Round-the-clock automated service provided to DEFRA helps thousands of poultry owners register their details by February 28 deadline A round-the-clock, speech-driven data capture service provided by BT and EckohTechnologies is enabling poultry owners to register their details with theDepartment for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), helping to boostGovernment and industry ability to effectively tackle an outbreak of avian flu.All poultry owners who keep fifty birds or more on commercial premises arelegally required to register details of their poultry by February 28, 2006 onthe new Great Britain Poultry Register. Thousands of poultry owners will need to register their details with DEFRAbefore the deadline. To ensure all calls to the hotline - 0800 634 1112 - arehandled efficiently and to ease the pressure on daytime advisers, DEFRA aresupplementing their call centre staffing levels with the 24/7 automated datacapture solution provided by BT and Eckoh Technologies. The speech-driven service captures the name, address and contact details ofpoultry owners, fulfilling registration questionnaires and eliminating the needfor manual transcription and post-call follow up work. DEFRA required a service provider that had the necessary hosting capacity andwas robust enough to manage and process thousands of calls simultaneously. BTand Eckoh's highly scaleable call processing platform combined with their trackrecord of operating high volume speech applications for other government bodies,made them the natural choice. Gary Bullard, managing director of BT Global Services UK, said: "BT has beenworking with Eckoh for several years and in this time has helped a large numberof customers across the public and private sector to successfully transformtheir operations and rise to new challenges using speech recognition services.We are pleased to play our part in providing an effective and reliable solutionwhich will assist DEFRA in delivering this important project." Jim Hennigan, Eckoh's managing director, said: "The service has enabled us tofurther demonstrate to both DEFRA and indeed other government departments, theefficiencies, customer service benefits and operational rewards to be gained byautomating a high volume of routine call types. We are particularly delighted tobe working alongside DEFRA on a project of such national significance and lookforward to further developing our relationship with the Department over thecoming months." ENDS For further information about Eckoh Technologies Martin Turner, Chief Executive Officer Tel: 08701 100 700 Nik Philpot, Chief Operating OfficerBuchanan Communications Tel: 020 7466 5000Mark Edwards/Jeremy Garcia For further information on BTInquiries about this news release can also be made to the BT Group Newsroom onits 24-hour number: 020 7356 5369. From outside the UK, dial +44 20 7356 5369.All BT Group news releases can be accessed at our web site: www.bt.com/newscentre. For further information about DEFRAwww.defra.gov.uk About Eckoh TechnologiesEckoh Technologies plc designs, builds, hosts and manages Speech Solutions forlarge corporations and organisations using ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition) andIVR (Interactive Voice Response) technologies. It is a leading UK serviceprovider and infrastructure owner/operator, and intends to exploit theanticipated growth in demand for speech solutions across Europe. In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growingopportunity for speech technology in the corporate marketplace. Since 2003, bothparties have combined their core competencies to create an unparalleled customerservice offering in the provision of hosted speech solutions. The relationship with BT empowers Eckoh to leverage BT's World class IntelligentNetwork capability, their CRM expertise and their broader telephony serviceoffering whilst BT benefits from Eckoh's leading market expertise and technicalskill-set in the design and application of hosted speech solutions.The combined strengths of both parties have created an unrivalled andvalue-added speech proposition and clients of the alliance include: BarclaysStockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, UGC Cinemas, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, NationalRail Enquiries and Three Valleys Water. Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognitiontechnology making it the largest speech enabled call processing platform inEurope. Eckoh also operates the following businesses: •IVR - Eckoh is one of the largest providers of managed IVR and SMS services in the UK to media clients including ITV, BBC, Trinity Mirror, Channel 4, Endemol, IPC and EMAP. •Network Services - under the "Symphony" and "Anglia" brands, Eckoh supplies fixed line and mobile telephony products and services, to SMEs in the UK and Ireland. Network Services has an SME customer base of approximately 8,000. In the year to 31 March 2005 Eckoh Technologies plc generated a turnover of£79.7 million and had a cash balance of £13.3m. Further information can be foundat www.eckoh.com. About BTBT is one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions andservices operating in more than 160 Countries. Its principal activities includenetworked IT services, local, national and international telecommunicationsservices, and higher-value broadband and internet products and services. BTconsists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach,BT Retail and BT Wholesale. In the year ended 31 March 2005, BT Group's revenue was £18,623 million withprofit before taxation of £2,354 million. British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group andencompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc islisted on stock exchanges in London and New York. For more information, visit www.bt.com/aboutbt. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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