Eckoh wins new contracts

21 Jan 2008 07:00

Eckoh PLC21 January 2008 21 January 2008 Eckoh wins new contracts with Trinity Mirror for Interactive Services Eckoh, the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services, todayannounced two new contracts with Trinity Mirror ("TM"), the UK's largestnewspaper publisher, for the provision of interactive services. Following the competitive tender process TM have appointed Eckoh as theirexclusive network operator for all premium telephone and SMS services and astheir service provider for a range of interactive services including votes,competitions, games and information lines to TM's portfolio of national andregional newspapers including the Daily Mirror, Daily Record, Sunday Mirror andThe People. Both contracts run until the end of 2009 and are in line with Eckoh's stated newstrategy of operating these services on a sustainable margin and with very clearlines of responsibility, reflecting the more stringent demands now placed ontelephone service providers. Under the exclusive network operator agreement all services for TM, includingthose provided by third parties, will operate through Eckoh's network. Eckohwill manage the provisioning and reporting of these services on an ongoingbasis. Nik Philpot, Eckoh's Chief Executive Officer commented: "We have spent much oflast year restructuring and tailoring our proposition to media companies tobecome a best practice supplier and to reflect the new and challenging demandsthat the industry now requires. Strict compliance, process, and above allquality are now the critical components of what a network operator and serviceprovider needs to supply. We are delighted that Trinity Mirror has concludedthat Eckoh are still the best supplier in the market to provide them with such aservice and we look forward to continuing what has been an excellent partnershipover the last 3 years." - ENDS - For further enquiries, please contact: Eckoh plcNik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer Tel: 01442 458 300Adam Moloney, Group Finance DirectorJim Hennigan, Executive Directorwww.eckoh.com Corfin CommunicationsHarry Chathli / Neil Thapar Tel: 020 7977 0020 Seymour PierceJonathan Wright / Parimal Kumar Tel: 020 7107 8000 About EckohEckoh is the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services andsets the standard for outsourced automated solutions across Europe. Eckohenables its clients to communicate more effectively and to enhance theirprofitability, while making life better for the people who use their services. Eckoh provides automated services in virtually every industry sector for clientsincluding TD Waterhouse, Vue Cinemas, William Hill, O2, Ideal Shopping Direct,DEFRA, The London Stock Exchange, the COI, National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPPhealthcare, BSkyB, Parcelforce Worldwide, BAA, Barclays Stockbrokers, UnitedUtilities and Scottish Power. Eckoh is also a market leader in providing interactive services to large mediaowners and has amongst its clients Trinity Mirror, the largest newspaperpublisher, IPC, the leading consumer magazines group and Bauer, the largestprivately owned publisher in Europe. In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growingopportunity for speech recognition services in the corporate marketplace. Thealliance, which was extended in July 2005 until 2010, has supplied speechservices to over 25 clients. The combined strengths of both parties have createdan unrivalled and value-added speech proposition and clients of the allianceinclude: National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, Parcelforce Worldwide,Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and ThreeValleys Water. Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognitiontechnology making it one of the largest speech enabled call processing platformsin Europe. In the first half of the financial year ending September 2007 Eckoh generated aturnover of £18 million and had cash balances of £5.7m. Further information canbe found at www.eckoh.com. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange