Company.

“The vast majority of interactions that humans have with ‘machines’ are initiated by humans: we go to an ATM, enter the web to do something (buy, obtain information, etc.). These are all transactions or interactions started by individuals. But we never have interactions started by ‘machines’… That does not exist and if it does, it is very poorly resolved because the experience is not as natural as it should be. This would be possible if the ‘machine’ could to talk to a person with the correct inflections and to listen and understand in such a manner that the person it called feels well with that experience… And that is why we designed T2Engine. T2Voice is the team of people that makes it all happen.”

T2Voice is a company dedicated to developing solutions (applications, systems, and services) that allow communication between individuals and information systems and individuals themselves in the most natural way: voice.

T2Voice allows for the processing of text in various forms (mail, SMS, databases, files, etc.) and its conversion to voice. This makes it possible to automate multiple services that connect information systems with customers/users through customized, personalized phone calls.

We are a high performance team obsessed with the ability to innovate in the field of communications among people and, more importantly, between information systems and people.

In the past 3 years we have combined, researched, developed, and tested a set of technologies that gave birth to T2Engine, a technological platform that constitutes the basis of T2Voice’s services.

We base our growth on :

1. 1. The obsession of delighting our customers with our solutions because they can increase their income, improve their efficiency, and achieve better customer satisfaction.
2. 2. The passion for innovating and developing solutions.
3. 3. The capacity of our Business Partners to add value to our solutions.

Our Vision

We want to be recognized as the company that understands an industry where the limits between media and content and the relationship between people and IT are becoming more diffuse, and we want to be the leaders by providing the best solutions to this problem at an affordable cost to any individual or company.

Our Mission

We develop innovative solutions (applications, systems, and services) that enable communications between people and between people and information systems in the most natural way. We empower the various players (telecommunications companies, firms/enterprises, institutions, individuals) for this to happen.

T2Engine: general.

In the past 3 years we have combined, researched, developed, and tested a set of technologies that gave birth to T2Engine, a technological platform that constitutes the basis of T2Voice’s services. T2Engine is capable of converting text to voice and voice to text to interact with common cellular phones and landlines, and connect to company/institutional applications to gather the necessary information to interact with customers/users. T2Voice offers its customers/users the possibility to interact by voice and/or SMS with the applications of their institution without the need to buy software or engage in complex developments.

The T2Engine platform allows for the implementation of multiple services for the interaction between information systems and people. These interactions can be initiated by customers/users for various purposes: inquiries, requests, transactions, etc. T2Engine also has the ability to make institutional/company systems initiate and complete operations to automate a wide range of communications with their clients or users (give alerts, notify, inform, obtain information, schedule and confirm appointments, etc.).

T2Engine provides a high level of availability, quality, confidentiality, and flexibility, indispensable to adapt to the changing realities of regulations, customs, and ways of implementation of different geographical regions. It currently operates in 12 different languages.

T2Engine: technical.

The capabilities developed for T2Engine form the core and differentiating element of T2Voice’s services. These capabilities can be summarized as:

A service infrastructure based on open technologies, industry standards, that include Provisioning, Account Management, and Billing. Thanks to the orchestration of services that simplify and standardize systems interactions, this infrastructure allows for the implementation of value added solutions regardless of system heterogeneity of the participating telephone companies.

Advanced short messaging management services that allow utilizing SMS and voice for the provision of various value added services, including SMS2Voice.

And more fundamental, an infrastructure for the integration of synthetic voices to messaging services and other information systems, thus enabling the transmission of information and confirmations to a determined user in an immediate and natural language. The extension of these services to voice recognition (currently in a testing phase) expands the scope of services to people who prefer not to use or cannot use keyboards and screens.

The modular and scalable design of these components is the product of an architecture that orchestrates web services, the utilization of open technologies in all components, and the compliance with industry standards.

It is for these reasons that T2Voice’s solutions are a unique proposal for the provision of value added services that require the integration of multimedia elements interacting with applications.

T2Voice for Telecommunications Companies.

T2Voice offers solutions for the interaction between people and between people and information systems through SMS text messaging and/or voice by using standard mobile phones or landlines. In order to do so, T2Voice designed T2Engine, a technological platform that allows for multiple applications that can significantly increase the traffic of SMS, SMS Premium, mobile and fixed telephony.

T2Engine opens a natural field of communication between individuals and information systems and between individuals themselves, by using a sophisticated voice digitalization application. Services like SMS2Voice or Calendar2Voice, among others, are particular cases of these new opportunities for telecommunications firms.

Additionally, T2Engine opens a new market for the telecommunications industry by allowing the automation of multiple interactions between information systems and individuals, initiated by the information systems in a completely personalized manner. This allows telecommunications companies to give their corporate customers a never before available service: to connect company applications/information systems with their clients through SMS, and more importantly, through personalized calls to mobile phones and landlines. T2Engine can access the company’s database/s, read the information, incorporate the message/s to be sent, make a call to the customer, and thanks to a sophisticated digital voice application that incorporates inflections and emotions, make the customer’s experience much more satisfactory, personal, and “human”.

Based on T2Engine, T2Voice gives telecommunications companies multiple applications and services currently available, that may be quickly implemented and have high impact in traffic. To better describe them we have divided them between Individual Market Applications and Corporate Applications.

A Few Applications for the Individual Market:

SMS2Voice
Sending an SMS that is converted from text to voice and arrives as a call to either a mobile or landline. SMS2Voice offers special effects in sending an SMS through a set of features (intonation, singing, whistling, etc.). One can choose to use a specific voice, male and female voices, and language as well. Within the SMS text message several commands may be embedded in order for the end client to listen to different sounds, exclamations, expressions, jokes, etc. All these features enhance the service and distinguish it significantly from other services that use digitalized voices in a more traditional way.

Calendar2SMS
Agenda inquiry through SMS; replying to the customer by SMS with the respective appointments for the day of the query.

Calendar2Voice
Agenda inquiry through voice by calling a telephone number. Appointments written in the calendar are read through T2Engine and are transmitted to the customer.

Another set of solutions currently under development but that can be released shortly include: VOICE2SMS, SMS2Skype, SMS2MSN, VOICE2Calendar, SMS2Video, T2Bus, etc.

Some of these applications are key to different segments of the market of individuals by allowing a significant increase in traffic. For example, in the case of SMS2Voice:

Targeting the entertainment market, the telecommunications company can increase traffic through the operation of commands, sounds, etc. that can be launched in a planned manner with a marketing plan to take advantage of holidays, popular events, sports, art, etc., or to simply explain the use of these commands to network users.

Traffic increases as the sending of SMS converted to voice to the visually impaired. Traffic can be increased by enabling a new service: anyone who does not want to receive SMS and prefer a voice call instead (generally the elderly and obviously the blind).

An finally, it provides a new SMS messaging solution for the illiterate.

A Few Applications for the Corporate Market:

T2Engine’s flexibility and our organization’s technical capabilities allow us to develop nearly any type of application where technologies linked to the processing and conversion of text messages (mail, SMS, etc.) to voice are required for the provision of massive services. Thanks to T2Engine platform’s “connectors” design, it is possible to develop applications that interact with legacy systems and databases of any installation. It is important to note that the conversion to voice is not the traditional digital conversion. T2Engine allows communication using inflections and emotions (including special messages, music, etc.) that the message might require.

The interactions can be classified into two types: 1) initiated b the user/client or 2) initiated by the applications of the company/institution. T2Engine offers a solution for both, allowing for the choice of interaction: text or voice.

The uses of this technology are endless and each company will find a use to enhance and improve communications, interactions, and services with their clients. These are some examples of “corporate” applications:

Cross Industry - Notifications
T2Engine allows, in a quick and easy manner, to generate notifications for customers/users/employees with a call that delivers a voice message (with all the inflections/emotions that are required). Expiration reminders, notifications about changes, special messages, payments, etc., may be delivered automatically via voice to a company’s/institution’s customers and users or to its employees, whether for the company’s own use or for the provision of value added services for its most important corporate clients.

Contact Centers
Outbound campaigns, IVR/CTI, voice surveys.

T2Banking
Through T2Engine a bank can implement services initiated by its applications to communicate with their customers. Following the rules defined by the bank, T2Engine can be parameterized in order to send notifications to its customers. Customers are notified automatically and in a personalized manner through SMS or a call to a mobile phone or landline. Overdraft notifications, checkbook and credit card availability, wire transfer and transaction notifications, expiration reminders, payment reminders, etc. Also, the system can interact with the customer to get confirmations, request specific information, etc. In turn, bank customers may also initiate interactions through SMS or voice in order to make transfers, request documents or checkbooks, inquire about balances, request currency exchanges, etc.

T2Parking
Service for priced parking via SMS or voice that allows for the management of parking zones, providing services to all stakeholders: owners, users, and inspectors. Other T2Engine characteristics and functions are used within this service, such as Provisioning, Billing, and Account Management.

Electronic Government
With T2Engine there are many new services that may be offered to citizens in a fully customized way, for instance: identity papers expiration reminders, status of procedures, payment dates, billing, etc. One particular case is the one of the Municipalities. To reduce costs, they can eliminate the printing and mass distribution of bills by notifying their citizens in a personalized way that their respective bill is available online or at the nearest local office. Another example is that the Municipality may implement a service of reminders regarding drivers’ licenses expiration dates. Using T2Engine the Municipality makes a personalized call (mobile phone or landline) and communicates to the individual the expiration date of the license, the requirements for renewal, the available times to schedule the procedure and, if desired, the ability to make appointments.

Public Health
With T2Engine institutions can send customized reminders regarding the use and monitoring of certain medications, control and inspection routines, etc. For example, an application has the ability to remind women the date of their next pap smear or the date of their doctor’s appointment for their child, their vaccination dates, etc.

(*) T2Voice is a company dedicated to the development of solutions (applications, systems and services) for the processing of text (mail, SMS, etc.), its conversion to voice (and viceversa) and the interaction with legacy applications to provide multiple services.

Clients.

Antel (Mobile Telephony) – Uruguay

Antel currently has 1.5 million customers in Uruguay. It has installed, as one of its value-added services, T2Voice’s SMS2Voice, a system that converts ordinary SMS text messages into a voice phone call. With merely two weeks of advertising, the service succeeded in reaching peaks of 50,000 SMS2Voice messages per day (with pent-up demand).

Intendencia Municipal de Florida (IMF) – Uruguay

The Municipality of Florida (Uruguay) and T2Voice made an agreement whereby the municipality will implement a new information system with its citizens. From April 2009, it will remind citizens the expiration of their driver’s license through a personalized phone call. Ten days before the expiration of the document, Florida drivers will receive a personalized phone call to their landlines or mobile phones with the appropriate message.

Ministerio de Salud Publica (MSP) – Uruguay

The Ministry of Public Health maintains a record of all citizens registered in the private sector medical institutions (mutualistas). During February 2009, a sector of the population was allowed to change their selection of mutualista. Once they have done so, the Ministry had to make sure that the patients´ records were moved to the chosen medical institution and communicate to the people that the change was done. Using T2Voice services, the Ministry was able to make a personalized call to all 20,000 people who decided to change, to confirm the completion of their filing.

Intendencia Municipal de Canelones (IMC) - Uruguay

As a part of its plan to reduce expenses, the Municipality of Canelones decided to stop issuing tax invoices since January 1st, 2009, thus avoiding the significant costs of printing and postage. This was possible thanks to the introduction of T2Voice’s service through which it is possible to call all taxpayers in a personalized manner to inform them about the date and amount of the invoice as well as to remind the respective payment locations. In this way, not only has the IMC reduced printing and delivering costs, but also improved its management of tax collection.

AIG - Uruguay

Through an agreement with T2Voice, AIG Uruguay has significantly improved communication with its clients and has done so in a much more efficient way. AIG is launching a new service of notifications that, through an automatic and customized telephone call, contacts its clients about expiration dates of policies, payments dates, reminders to defaulters, etc., among other things. The system accesses AIG’s database, incorporates the selected text, converts it to voice (with all the inflections of a human voice) and makes a completely customized phone call to the client, notifying him/her with the selected information. In this manner, AIG has reduced costs significantly and improved its customer service.

Discount Bank - Uruguay

Discount Bank hired T2Voice to develop its telephone and SMS HomeBanking. Through a conventional phone call or the sending of an SMS, a bank’s customer can perform various operations (money transfers, currency purchases, checkbook requests, etc.). Additionally, the system provides with automatic alerts that are originated y the bank’s central system. T2Voice automatically extracts the alerts (e.g. checkbook pick up, returned checks, etc.) and customer data (name, account number, etc.) from the bank’s database. The alert type, with its predetermined text and customer’s data, is converted to voice and finally communicated to the customer through an automatic and customized telephone call. T2Voice’s high quality synthetic voice notifies the customer. With this solution, Discount Bank can provide a new high quality service while increasing customer satisfaction.

TCC - Uruguay

TCC (cable television company in Montevideo, Uruguay) needs to quickly and efficiently communicate to its clients information regarding their services: planned cuts, new commercial packages, ads, etc. TCC’s need to notify its numerous customers in a short period of time was not feasible in the traditional way (e.g. through a battery of operators in a call center). T2Voice’s notification service, however, provides a fast and efficient service. The system accesses TCC’s database, reads the customer’s information (name, telephone, etc.) and incorporates the text that TCC defines. All this information is converted from text to voice by T2Engine’s speech conversion modules. In an automatic and customized way, the system itself makes a telephone call to the customer, who, through one of T2Voice’s synthetic voices, receives TCC’s information. The use of this technology has enabled TCC to keep its numerous customers informed, a task that would have been unworkable otherwise.

Companies.

The T2Engine platform allows for the implementation of multiple services for the interaction between information systems and people. These interactions can be initiated by customers/users for various purposes: inquiries, requests, transactions, etc. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the T2Engine platform is the ability to make institutional/company systems to initiate and complete operations to automate a wide range of communications with their clients or users (give alerts, notify, inform, obtain information, schedule and confirm appointments, etc.).

The interactions can be made through SMS text messaging (to and from any standard cellular phone) or through calls (to and from any standard cellular phone or a landline). T2Engine may automatically read database fields, initiate a call, customize it, and make the customer’s experience much more satisfying and human by using a sophisticated voice application that incorporates inflections and emotions. It may communicate product and service availability; it may indicate the amount of a bill and the nearest payment location; it can remind or re-schedule a doctor’s appointment; it can interact with customers through voice or by phone keyboard, etc.

T2Engine provides a high level of availability, quality, confidentiality, and flexibility, indispensable to adapt to the changing realities of regulations, customs, and ways of implementation of different geographical regions, presently managing 12 languages.

T2Voice for Governmental Institutions.

T2Voice offers solutions for the interaction between people and between people and information systems through SMS text messaging and/or voice by using standard mobile phones or landlines. In order to do so, T2Voice designed T2Engine, a technological platform that allows for multiple services that can significantly increase productivity while satisfying customer and users.

T2Engine opens a natural field of communication between individuals and information systems and between individuals themselves, by using a sophisticated voice digitalization application.

T2Engine allows for the automation of many applications and interactions between individuals. Interactions may be initiated by customers/users or by the applications in a completely personalized way. This allows government institutions to provide services to their users that have not been available until now, connect the institution’s applications with users through SMS or more importantly, through a personalized voice call to mobile phones and landlines.

T2Engine can automatically access the institution’s database/s, read the information, incorporate the message/s to be sent, make a call to the users, and thanks to a sophisticated digital voice application that incorporates inflections and emotions, make the users’ experience much more satisfactory, personal, and “human”.

Possible services are virtually unlimited and can be divided into two main categories: 1) if the operation is originated by an institution’s system, or 2) if the operation is initiated by the user.

Initiated by a system: in accordance with the rules defined by the institution, T2Engine can be parameterized to read the databases, collect information about each user, and send an SMS or make a call to a mobile phone or landline to notify, remind, confirm, etc., in a customized way. These notifications, reminders, confirmations, etc., may be immediate or deferred.

Some examples include: debt/credit notifications, payment reminders (payment date and amount to be paid), reminder of due date (e.g. renewing an identity card), notifications of scheduled analyses (pregnant women, children’s vaccinations, etc.), driver’s license expiration date reminders, etc. The system may also interact with the user by gathering information to confirm appointments, request information, etc.

The second category of services corresponds to the institution’s services that the user will use by making a phone call or sending an SMS. Some examples include: request for an appointment (renewing a driver’s license, scheduling a doctor’s appointment, etc.) or inquiring about a tax debt, or the status of a specific matter, etc

In summary, the automation of these interactions and their personalization through voice, enable important benefits for both the government institution and its users. Some of them are shown below.

Benefits.

For the user:

• Access 24 hours a day.
• The user can define the “caller-id” to be accepted for each service.
• The user selects which service to use.
• Voice and SMS interface for all functions. The flexible voice interface allows for a personalized, more successful, and “human” experience for the customer.
• Notifications provide an effective control and reminder to users allowing them to avoid oversights, which can involve, for instance, extra charges or fees to their bills or expiration of important documents.

For the institution:

• T2Voice makes the interaction using speech recognition and text, thus making it unnecessary to pre-record any of the fixed or variable data.
• T2Voice already possesses the lines and interfaces necessary for the interaction; the institution does not need sophisticated and lengthy tailored developments.
• Costs are significantly lowered due to the automation of many tasks that allow for the relocation of resources to other tasks that require higher value added.
• Higher productivity and effectiveness; for instance with debt collection: the system “does not forget” and “never gets tired” of calling or sending SMS.
• Improves the service and increases customer satisfaction.
• Provides a new communication tool with users (SMS or Voice).

References.

Intendencia Municipal de Florida (IMF) - Uruguay
The Municipality of Florida (Uruguay) and T2Voice made an agreement whereby the municipality will implement a new information system with its citizens. From April 2009, it will remind citizens the expiration of their driver’s license through a personalized phone call. Ten days before the expiration of the document, Florida drivers will receive a phone call to their landlines or mobile phones with the appropriate message.

Ministerio de Salud Pública (MSP) - Uruguay
The Ministry of Public Health maintains a record of all citizens registered in the private sector medical institutions (mutualistas). During February 2009, a sector of the population was allowed to change their selection of mutualista. Once they have done so, the Ministry had to make sure that the patients´ records were moved to the chosen medical institution and communicate to the people that the change was done. Using T2Voice services, the Ministry was able to make a personalized call to all 20,000 people who decided to change, to confirm the completion of their filing.

Intendencia Municipal de Canelones (IMC) - Uruguay
As a part of its plan to reduce expenses, the Municipality of Canelones decided to stop issuing tax invoices since January 1st, 2009, thus avoiding the significant costs of printing and postage. This was possible thanks to the introduction of T2Voice’s service through which it is possible to call all taxpayers in a personalized manner to inform them about the date and amount of the invoice as well as to remind the respective payment locations. In this way, not only has the IMC reduced printing and sending costs, but also improved its management of tax collection.

Contact.