The Seven-Step Enterprise Communications Strategy; AVST Offers Businesses Advice on Building a Unified Communications Plan

Business Wire, Feb 28, 2005

FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. -- Today's business environment is fraught with highly mobile workers, demanding customers, constantly changing market conditions, multiple communications types and overwhelmed employees. According to Applied Voice & Speech Technologies (AVST), businesses cannot compete effectively or make the quick, informed decisions necessary to thrive without taking control of their communications methods. Therefore, AVST is providing businesses with advice on how to build an effective communications strategy in a new whitepaper that helps organizations plan for, implement and use unified communications (UC) to gain the competitive edge needed to stay ahead of the pack.

When considering a switch to unified communications, AVST encourages businesses to adhere to the following seven-step strategy:

--1. Consider the state of your business, identify the workforce dynamics for each segment of your workforce and evaluate your competitive position.

--2. Evaluate the state of your current voice and data network infrastructure including the costs of maintenance, administration, and so forth.

--3. Determine the next-generation features needed to help you maintain or enhance your competitive position.

--4. Research next-generation solutions that have most or all of those features.

--5. Compare a third-party system that works with all of your switches to a switch vendor's solution.

--6. Evaluate overall total cost of ownership of each solution.

--7. Test the top products as a final step in choosing a solution.

According to AVST, a leading provider of unified communications for the enterprise market, implementing a unified communications solution doesn't necessarily mean ripping out current phone systems and jumping headfirst into the new world of IP telephony. "The key point to remember is that the ideal next-generation solution will let a company evolve at its own pace," said AVST's Vice President of Marketing Denny Michael. "An effective UC solution allows the IT manager to layer a single solution across all existing office locations using both IP and legacy phone switches."

When deploying a next-generation enterprise communications solution, an organization should be able to upgrade its existing phone switches, or migrate to IP telephony, with virtually no disruption to employees and the organization, and no need for retraining. AVST's industry-leading unified communications solution, CallXpress(R), provides companies with this level of compatibility and flexibility.

CallXpress has a robust feature set that unifies e-mail, voice mail and fax inboxes, offers an advanced speech-enabled automated attendant and interactive voice response, and enables hands-free phone access to voice mail, e-mail, fax, calendar and contacts. Organizations can implement CallXpress across more than 250 different phone switches in multiple locations, providing the same features and interfaces to all users and the same corporate face to all callers while protecting and extending the life of past infrastructure investments.

For example, AVST helped global law firm Weil, Gotshal and Manges maintain a single, consistent corporate "face" by switching their Octel(R) voice mail system to CallXpress. With 18 offices all over the world, a quick and easy implementation rollout was the key to success.

"We did eight office conversions over four weekends. It was pretty much a cookie-cutter process and didn't take long at all," said Randy Burkart, director of IS programs for Weil, Gotshal. "Our lawyers make extensive use of BlackBerry(R) devices, which let them retrieve e-mail regardless of their location. With CallXpress, now they can get voice mail alerts on their BlackBerry screens as well, and use the built-in phone to dial right out."

AVST is working with Ziff Davis Media to provide a series of whitepapers and eSeminars aimed at enterprise-level CTOs, CIOs and IT managers like Burkart. The goal is to arm industry leaders with a deeper understanding of the need to replace outdated voice mail systems and the options available to them as they explore next-generation communications strategies.

The AVST whitepaper, titled "Building an Enterprise Communications Strategy Beyond Voice Mail," gives readers a deep understanding of the capabilities and benefits of UC solutions, offers advice on how to build and implement UC, and includes helpful tools such as case studies, evaluation surveys and a comprehensive strategy. The whitepaper is available through Ziff Davis Media at the following link: http://internet.ziffdavis.com/creatives/AVST/.> The next eSeminar titled "Seven Easy Steps to Develop an Enterprise Communications Strategy" will take place at 12:30 p.m. Eastern / 9:30 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday, March 2, 2005. To register for this free, online seminar, please visit: www.eSeminarslive.com.

About AVST

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of enterprise communications solutions for businesses of all sizes. Through its world-class unified communications platform, CallXpress(R), and its innovative speech applications module, Seneca(TM), AVST offers the industry's most powerful suite of enterprise communications solutions. AVST's solutions enable direct access to an enterprise's communications infrastructure including voice mail, e-mail and fax messaging from any voice or data device via a touch-tone, GUI or speech interface. Established in September 2003, AVST was formed from the combined businesses of Sound Advantage (established in 1997) and the CallXpress division (established in 1982) of Captaris Inc.