Issue 1 NEWSLETTER September 2003
Prologix introduces monthly newsletter Indian telecom is gathering momentum. Addition of 11 million new subscribers (for fixed as well as mobile services) in the financial year 2002-03 is indeed good news. At the same time competition between service providers is also getting intense with the first round of the Indian ‘telecom wars’ resulting in significant reductions in tariffs for both basic access and long distance telephony. Since raising tariffs seem implausible, Service Providers continue to look out for that elusive ‘killer application’ that can help increase the billed minutes thereby raising the AARPU (Average Annual Revenue per User). While the action on the field has the world’s attention, an interesting development is taking place on the sidelines. The Indian Contact Center market seems to be going through an inflexion point of sorts. With Pundits predicting consolidations and shake ups and at the same time ever higher rates of growth in the future, the nascent BPO industry in India seems to be at an interesting moment in time. While there is a focus on improving customer ‘stickiness’ by making the entire contact center experience more enjoyable for callers, increasing competition makes it critical to not do so at the expense of costs of operation. All over the world, as telecom markets have matured, more and more service providers have discovered the power of Speech as a means to drive higher revenues. Similarly, enterprises and contact centers around the world have accepted the efficiencies which natural interfaces such as speech can bring to them while offering callers a significantly improved experience. Will this development be reflected in India and other emerging telecom markets? What will be the future of Speech deployments around the world? What are the kinds of innovations being deployed by technology companies to harness the latent power of speech? And how do these developments affect my business? Prologix Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd. introduces a monthly news letter focused on latest happenings in the world of speech enabled applications, emerging telecommunication technologies, research and developments in speech solutions along with government and policy initiatives to equip our customers and clients with information which they can use to answer the above questions. Throughout this series we will continue to report interesting developments in the world of speech solutions along with initiatives at Prologix that can help our customers benefit from them. In case you would not like to receive any future copies of this newsletter, do let us know by sending a blank email with the words ‘Unsubscribe Me’ in the subject line to ‘newsletter@prologixsoft.com’ Any suggestions/ comments are also welcome and can also be sent at ‘newsletter@prologixsoft.com’ We hope that you will benefit from our efforts. ~Editor In this month’s issue:
IIT-Kanpur develops online system of translation AnglaHindi, the revolutionary software from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur which can automatically convert English text to Hindi…..more
Innovative Assisted ASR Call Centre Solution deployed at Shinsei Bank, Japan Prologix expertise takes it to high tech Tokyo for application development & consultancy…..more
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
IIT-K develops online system of translation By Mohit Dubey, Times News Network KANPUR: The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K) this week added yet another milestone to its list of successful research and development record as it web-enabled their 'machine aided system' for translation from English to Hindi on the Internet. Named 'AnglaHindi', it is the English to Hindi version of IIT-K's ambitious 'AnglaBharti' technology and is now available for free translation at URL http://anglahindi.iitk.ac.in According to IIT experts, this is for the first time that such a system has been built and web-enabled to provide reasonable translation from English to Hindi for unrestricted text. The success of the system can be gauged by the fact that within hours of its commissioning on the www there have been more than 36,000 hits on the site. It was sponsored by Union ministry of communications and information technology under the 'technology development for Indian languages' programme, informed Prof RMK Sinha, the man behind the project. Talking about the system, Ajai Jain, co-investigator of the project, elaborated that there is no pre-editing required on the input sentence. Also there are no restrictions on the nature or length of the sentence, added Dr Renu Jain of IET, Kanpur, who was consultant for the project. Another high point of the system is that it accepts unknown words not found in the dictionary or where there is a spelling error. Hindi (Devanagari) transliteration is possible to a great extent. The translation system has been interfaced with a text to speech system at the output using 'Vaachak' system developed by Prologixsoft, Lucknow, enables one to hear the translated output. This facility, Sinha pointed out, would come in handy for visually impaired persons and illiterates. Further, the translation system is also interfaced with an English OCR at the input by the help of which a user can insert a printed page in English which gets translated into Hindi. The 'AnglaHindi' System Technology has been transferred with non-exclusive rights to ER & DCI/ CDAC Noida and marketing arrangements have been made with Prologixsoft, Lucknow, and the system is available on Linux and Windows platforms. Further, AnglaUrdu system, translation from English to Urdu, has also been developed based on AnglaHindi and Urdu transliteration software of CDAC Pune.
Innovative Assisted ASR Call Centre Solution deployed at Shinsei Bank, Japan Shinsei Bank, (www.shinsei.co.jp) a large Consumer bank in Japan recently put into production an innovative Assisted ASR solution in it’s Customer Contact Center. The AASR solution is part of an ambitious strategy at Shinsei aimed at eliminating wasteful delays and caller inconveniences when the Speech Recognition Solution is not able to achieve a high confidence level in recognizing the spoken in put of the caller. The AASR server, working in sync with the ASR server routs the unrecognized spoken request of the caller to a specialized agent who uses human heuristics and intelligence to interpret the dialogue, inform the ASR and thereby helps the application to progress naturally to the next stage - all in the space of a few seconds. It is expected that deployment of this application will bring significant benefits to Shinsei – most of which would be reflected by increased customer satisfaction and lower percentages of dropped calls (abandoned calls due to customer frustration with unrecognized requests). Prologix Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd. in association with their Noida, India based partners – Nucleus Software Exports Ltd. worked in close coordination with the Technology development group at Shinsei to develop and deploy this application. Initial results of the deployment have been encouraging and are expected to form the basis for greater enhancements to this innovative idea in the future. Do continue to watch this space…	To receive this newsletter mail us at newsletter@prologixsoft.com with subject as ‘Subscribe’ or click below SUBSCRIBE To discontinue with this subscription mail us at newsletter@prologixsoft.com with “Unsubscribe’ in Subject line. UNSUBSCRIBE
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Vinamra Agarwal V.P. Business Development Prologix Software Soltions Pvt. Ltd. 8^th, KM, Faizabad Road, Ismailganj, Lucknow – 226016 India vinamra@prologixsoft.com www.prologixsoft.com Tel: - (+91-522) -2721387, 2721382/3/4