The drive to use IP infrastructure for a broader variety of distributed applications is occurring simultaneously with a general move to use resources around the globe to support self-service. As a result, outsourced self-service is enjoying revenue growth that exceeds speech automation, in general. The factors driving that growth are the topic of Vox 2006, which will be held in NYC on August 7, the first day of SpeechTek 2006.

Opus Research organized Vox 2006 to surface the business and technology issues that are shaping the Voice ASP industry. We recognize that the decision to turn to outsourcers is not black-and-white. But it is more commonplace than many executives may think. Well-understood development tools, standard scripting languages and well understood APIs make the decision to outsource more ‘granular’ – as marketers can turn to outsiders for a single campaign, IT executives can “point” certain traffic to outside resources and the CFO may use procurement to use third-parties to bring predictability to customer support expenses.

VOX 2006 is a single place for all of these constituencies to share ideas about “what’s working now” in terms of services available, business objectives and technology and “Where it’s all headed” in terms of product roadmaps, pricing, adoption of standards and fostering cooperation among IT, IP and CC (customer care).

Avery Glasser will join me for an opening session that features recent research results concerning the “best practices” of ASP’s and our best understanding of the factors that influence enterprise decisionmakers to choose one self-service platform over another, including the decision to outsource.

Our findings will be followed by “views from the buy side,” where a senior executive from DirecTV will describe the real-life factors that led his company to turn to outsourcer West Interactive to host and manage voice self-service solutions. For the past four years, this session has been the most popular and we’ve featured leaders in the financial services, travel, retailing, publishing and government agencies as well as the top ‘pure play’ VoiceXML service providers, blended teleservices agencies and telco affiliates.

This year, in recognition of the increased importance of robust links to IT infrastructure, we’ve assembled a panel that includes the speech solutions and contact center specialists from IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya and Verizon Business to describe how they accommodate enterprise migration to the Service Oriented Architecture. Avery is going to moderate and encourage panelists to discuss what the SOA means for enterprises and service providers and why its adoption coincides with heightened interest in managed or hosted services.

Following Avery’s panel on architectural trends and technology roadmaps, I will chair a panel that looks specifically at the evolution and convergence of telco contact centers from special-purpose query handling (like Directory Assistance or ring-tone ordering) to more general purpose search and electronic commerce. Other focused sessions include a discussion of hosted or managed services that simplify migration and application delivery for small and medium sized businesses, followed by an investigation of innovative new approaches to application development and management that are consistent with the Web-based self-service model, but inclusive of telephones, wireless handsets and other devices with screens.

The day culminates with our highly-popular Leadership Panel which brings together the top executives from Gold Systems, Convergys’ Speech Self-Service Solutions Group, West Interactive, and Envox to provide a view from the top.

There remain many, many ways to deploy an application. While we are all specialists in automated handling of customer care, we all know that the human factor and face-to-face interactions are highly beneficial when discussing gnawing issues in real time. Come to VOX 2006 and SpeechTek. Click Here for details on both conferences and how to register.

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