A.
Turner
- August
25, 2000
Event
Summary
On August 1, 2000, Locus Dialogue Inc. announced a solution developer
partnership with Great Plains. Through this partnership Locus Dialogue
will speech-enable access to solutions from Great Plains.
According
to the folks at Locus, the Locus Dialogue SpeechPortal platform provides
access to people, places and information from any telephone, anywhere
at anytime using human speech. Speech access enables enterprises to leverage
their investments in network infrastructures, business-to-business applications
and web content through wired, wireless, and Internet telephones.
The
integration of the Locus Dialogue SpeechPortal platform and Great Plains'
eEnterprise solution is intended to merge the cost-efficiency and universality
of the telephone with the power and convenience of an e-business solution.
The resulting speech-enabled products are planned to boost productivity
and provide unprecedented ease-of-use.
Market
Impact
The question is, how exactly do Locus and Great Plains plan on implementing
speech-enabled applications? It is easy to imagine a science fiction induced
dialogue between man and computer, but Locus and Great Plains plans are
a little less dramatic.
Steve
Altendorf, Great Plains solution developer relationship manager, reports
the partnership will most likely focus on employee self service applications
for human resource and/or service modules. For example an application
that allows users to change personal exemptions, schedule conference rooms,
or log a service call via voice instructions.
Locus
is not alone in its delivery of voice recognition software. Industry participants
such as IBM, Philips, Dragon Systems and Voice Express all offer a form
of speech software. Equal challenges among these participants include,
ease of use, adoption and performance. The Locus/Great Plains development
agreement is worth watching to discover the application adoption and usage
rate. If successful, perhaps voice integrated self service applications
will become standard.
User
Recommendations
If a unique feature set coupled with an ERP or CRM application is on your
requirement list, this is worth investigating. Otherwise, we suggest measuring
the applications on their own merit and allow the technologies to catch
up with each other.