voice messages as part of ECM

This is a pretty cool story on a company integrating voice messages with e-mail. It's my opinion that eventually voice messages are going to be a very important part of ECM, just as e-mail is becoming now. Just wait until some savvy lawyer figures out how to sue someone because of a lost voicemail or something along those lines..

Franklin Announces Voice Mail to Email Product
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 07/14/2004 -- Franklin 800 Corp. has announced a new Email product for the Tempest Voice® product. This product converts voice messages into an Internet Protocol packet -- attaches it to an Email and sends it to the customer.

Franklin's President & CEO Frank Peters stated, "This new product introduction represents years of development and is the first of many new products envisioned for the growth of our company. This should allow us to capitalize on the expanding need of customers for high-end applications while offering a standard consumer phone number for future One Number Messaging. This product, (Tempest Voice) Voice Mail to Email presents us a chance to see our revenues move forward."

Peters continued: "The benefits of this service are that we create a record of the voice calling our customers like an answering machine. The major difference is that you now they have a permanent record of the message in machine readable form to redistribute, save or Broadcast as the customer sees fit. The Email is in IP format and can be sent to any Internet Protocol (IP) communications application. This is very powerful. The customer receives a Voice Mail Number and/or can call forward your unanswered calls to your Email Voice Mail number. eg. 805/601-xxxx. Franklin will also, at a later date offer 800 numbers for a per minute charge.

"The customer may use their existing Email account, or a new one to receive Voice Mail messages as attachments. Soon the Voice Mail can be delivered to several Email addresses. Employers can have a central Email mail box to copy all messages.

"The customer must have an Email service which will permit and forward attachments of any size up to 1MB. This could be a problem for some people with free Email accounts which strip off attachments."

Peters added, "This is NOT a voice recognitions system, the voice is recorded and converted in a codec which will, when attached to an Email or other media will play back the voice just like a tape recorder. The difference is that now your voice is in a machine readable form which will allow you to Forward and Broadcast messages you receive to any Email address or other Internet Protocol (IP) communications device. This is very powerful."

The incoming telephone call to a dedicated number is answered by Franklin which plays a custom greeting the customer records. The caller leaves a message (up to 1 minute). Franklin creates an Email and imbeds or attaches the voice to the Email. You actually hear the person's voice.

Franklin sends the mail to the customer Email account or accounts. The message is stored until the data capacity is reached, or downloaded, then erased. The customer may set up an automatic download of their messages each week to move the data to their computer and/or have Franklin transfer all messages to DVD and keep them at Franklin. This is off line and off site data storage.

Franklin 800 Corp. is a well-established company located in Westlake Village CA for the past 8 years. (24 years including the predecessor Franklin Telecommunications Corp.) The company designs, manufactures and leases Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) equipment and application software.

733 Lakefield Road Westlake Village CA 91361 805/373-8688 www.franklin800.com