Itworks has chosen Nuance speech engines for a top-class voice solution. ASR and TTS from Nuance are embedded in vo-CE software to provide you with the most reliable voice recognition system.

Ancona, Italy, 18 December, 2006 – Itworks srl, a leading system developer in Italy, today announced that it has selected speech solutions from Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN), to speech-enable its logistic software applications vo-CE® in real multimodal way (i.e. voice and, if necessary, barcode reader or keyboard at the same time).

Today vo-CE software, the application to speech enable WMS/ERP systems, is powered by Nuance.

Itworks selected Nuance at the end of 2005 to design a new software application for Logistics in order to meet the increasing demand for voice-based solutions to improve supply chain performance. After the first systems were rolled out by Itworks and its partners, many suggestions for logistic adaptations arose. Voice technology inside the distribution centres has now seen tremendous advances as a result of the Itworks partnership with Nuance.

“We were confident that Nuance engines could support our vo-CE voice application, when we started the software selection during the second half of 2005,” said Maurizio Minossi, Itworks founder and CEO.

During the first vo-CE on field experiences, some particular features of RealSpeakTM Solo and VoCon® were thoroughly tested, in order to allow to non-native speakers to improve their picking performance. As a result, the Itworks R&D team has been able to release a top voice-based solution to WMS providers.

vo-CE software, in fact, is a highly robust speech recognition solution under continuous logistic adaptation and feature improvement in order to reduce system integration activity and to optimize speech experience for users.

“RealSpeak Solo and VoCon engines from Nuance gave to our Software Development the flexibility and the reliability to develop good solutions for noisy environments with non native operators,” said Francesco Pierpaoli, Itworks founder and CIO.

“There are many vo-CE successful pilot systems in Europe which are waiting to be activated, others already running,” says Mr Guillaume Luzé, sales manager of Speech Technologies at Nuance. He also adds: “The B2B strategy chosen by our partner allows us to get in touch with many international Aidc players. Nuance is pleased to remain a very active partner in supporting Itworks’ Tech Department and all the vo-CE sales partners around the world.”

Itworks R&D department will start a research collaboration with the Polytechnic University of the Marches to have a better insight in voice technology in order to develop further advanced features of vo-CE software application.