Unisys and Periphonics offer natural language understanding in IVR systems

Business Wire, August 27, 1996

BOHEMIA, N.Y. and BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 27, 1996-- Periphonics and Unisys Computer Systems Group have formed a strategic alliance to provide natural language technology solutions for companies looking to automate their customer services processes through intelligent, cost-effective and time saving methods.

This collaborative effort will increase market adoption of the natural language understanding technology.

This strategic relationship has three components:

-- The first is a joint development agreement to integrate the Unisys Natural Language Understanding (NLU) product, the NL Assistant, into the Periphonics Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform creating a value added solution.

-- Next, a marketing alliance program has been designed to increase exposure of the Unisys NL Assistant in the Periphonics platform. Under this agreement, Unisys will recommend the Periphonics IVR platform depending on client's needs.

-- The third component is an OEM agreement, allowing Periphonics to embed the NL Assistant into the Periphonics platform and to sell the technology to third parties or end users.

Natural Language Understanding goes beyond mere speech recognition, providing rules-based, context-sensitive technology that enables an application to engage in an intelligent dialogue with a user. Applications can be built to understand a verbal conversation over the telephone, or a typed message over the Internet.

With this technology, the NL Assistant takes everyday conversational language, understands what it means, and translates it into computer language. The speech or text based input is converted into meaning, making interaction with complex computer applications much easier.

The result is increased customer satisfaction through a more natural user interface, as well as shorter calls which deliver cost savings to clients implementing these systems.

"Unisys has been built on a reputation of high quality, mission critical, business oriented products," said Rich Leonardi, business development manager for Periphonics. "The Unisys NL Assistant is extremely complementary to the type of business and product that Periphonics has to offer.

"The value added to the Periphonics IVR platform with Natural Language Understanding technology will further increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs. An inexperienced caller will get through services faster with NLU, reducing the length of the call."

Periphonics IVR systems automate access to customer services, allowing individuals to interact with information in a computer database using a telephone, through touch-tone input and speech recognition, or a computer via Internet access.

The Periphonics platform which is based on a standard open Unix operating system, and Periphonics software, is architecturally compatible with the Unisys NLU product, making this an ideal solution for customers looking to save time and money.

"Periphonics is very progressive," said Joe Yaworski, general manager, Unisys Natural Language Understanding Group. "Most IVR vendors claim to have speech recognition but can't deliver. Periphonics will deliver sophisticated natural language understanding with speech recognition of complete sentences.

"With the NL Assistant, the entire solution is a result of Unisys and Periphonics integrating the NLU technology into the Periphonics platform."

How It Works

This solution is a combination of speech recognition and natural language understanding. For example, if you call your bank today for information about your account, an automated attendant will prompt you to press No. 1 for checking, No. 2 for savings, and No. 3 to transfer funds.

With a natural language solution, you can tell the system "I'd like to receive my checking account balance" or, "checking account please" or, "checking account balance." The speech recognizer takes what is said, digitizes it and turns it into a sentence.

Unisys NL Assistant interprets the sentence through semantic parsing and selects out the nouns, pronouns and verbs to apply meaning. The intelligence of the natural language engine can detect the difference between "What's my checking account balance?" and "What is a checking account balance?" and process the correct transaction.

About Periphonics

Periphonics Corp., based in Bohemia, has been a leading worldwide supplier of voice processing technology for more than 26 years, and the company's systems serve millions of callers daily.

Periphonics technology automates telephone access to customer services, improving productivity and reducing overhead costs in industries such as telecommunications, financial services, government, higher education, utilities, transportation and health care.

About Unisys -- Computer Systems Group

Unisys Computer Systems Group (CSG) is the Unisys technology business. The people of CSG design, develop, produce and sell the advanced hardware, middleware and system software that serves as the building blocks for traditional and advanced information management solutions.