Re Contract
Eckoh Technologies PLC
15 December 2003
15th December 2003
Eckoh's Speech Solutions division signs 4 contracts worth
over £6 million over the next three years
Eckoh Technologies plc ("Eckoh"), one of Europe's leading speech application
service providers, today announced that its specialist Speech Solutions division
has signed a series of significant contracts worth a minimum of £6 million over
the next three years.
The largest contract consists of a confidential 3-year agreement in the leisure
sector. In addition, a 3-year contract for a speech enabled product and "talking
books" ordering service for the Royal National Institute of the Blind ("RNIB")
has just been signed. These contracts together with two previously announced
contracts for Wire-e and TD Waterhouse in October represent a minimum of £6m of
revenues over the next three years.
Over a number of months Eckoh has been in discussions with a leading UK based
leisure franchise to offer a voice driven sales ordering platform. These
negotiations, which were generated by Eckoh's alliance with BT, are now complete
and the Company expects this contract to generate significant revenues over the
next three years. The service is due to fully commence in April 2004 and will be
one of the first mass market applications for a speech product.
The 3-year agreement with the RNIB will deliver two speech enabled ordering
services. The first service enables blind and partially sighted users to order
from over 900 specialist products, whilst the second is the full implementation
of the Talking Books ordering service covering 15,000 audio books, for which
Eckoh built a proof of concept in 2002. Both services are completely voice
driven and have to meet stringent performance criteria laid out by the RNIB for
their members.
Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer of Eckoh Technologies, commented:
"We have long been of the opinion that speech solutions, whether it be pure
speech recognition or a combination of speech and IVR, will deliver substantial
high margin revenues for the Group. Today's announcement demonstrates the value
of our product offering and gives credence to our view that complex speech
solutions offer the potential for significant revenue growth.
Eckoh's unique mix of sophisticated speech recognition technology combined with
the largest hosted call handling platform in Europe is central to our ability to
attract high margin premium corporate clients, in what is fast becoming a more
crowded market place."
For further enquiries, please contact
Eckoh Technologies plc Tel: 08701 100 700
Martin Turner, Chief Executive Officer
Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer
Brian McArthur Muscroft, Finance Director
Buchanan Communications Tel: 020 7466 5000
Mark Edwards/Jeremy Garcia
Notes to Editors
About Eckoh Technologies
Eckoh Technologies plc designs, builds, hosts and manages speech solutions for
large corporations and organisations using ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition)
and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technologies. It is a leading UK service
provider and infrastructure owner/operator, and intends to exploit the
anticipated growth in demand for Speech Solutions across Europe.
In January 2003, Eckoh signed a landmark deal to create an exclusive speech
alliance with BT to provide hosted speech recognition solutions to their
corporate client base over the next 2 years. A two-year contract with TD
Waterhouse for a speech recognition share check service was announced by BT and
Eckoh in October 2003.
In June 2003 Eckoh enlarged its call processing infrastructure to 7,000 lines
(capable of handling 500,000 calls an hour) by installing another platform into
a BT hosting facility. This created the largest speech enabled call processing
platform in Europe.
Eckoh has secured contracts to supply hosted Speech Solutions to clients
including Virgin Mobile, Centrica, William Hill, Wyevale Garden Centres and the
RNIB.
Eckoh also operates the following businesses:
• IVR - provides managed IVR and SMS services to media clients including
GWR, Channel 4, Chrysalis, Endemol, EMAP, Johnston Press and Cartoon
Network. Following the acquisition of Intelliplus Group plc in Sept 2003,
Eckoh's IVR operation is one of the largest providers in the UK.
• Network Services - under the "Symphony" and "Freecom" brands, Eckoh
supplies fixed line and mobile telephony services, broadband and data
services to SMEs in the UK and Ireland. Following the acquisition of
Intelliplus, Network Services now has an SME customer base of over 13,000.
To hear a demonstration of Eckoh Technologies' speech recognition product range,
dial 08701 100 600. Further information can be found at www.eckoh.com.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange