01 Jun Madison voice transcription firm looks for strategic technology partner
Madison, Wis. – VoVision, a young Madison-based company that offers a Web-based voice transcription technology, is seeking to merge with a larger strategic partner that is interested in incorporating its technology into a unified communications platform.
Paul Hager, co-owner of Vo Vision, has accepted a business development position with the Global Technology Transfer Group, a patent asset management company based in Portland, Ore. Hager, who will represent GTT in the Midwest region, will remain with VoVision into the fall.
Hager said VoVision is not pursuing new business as it searches for a strategic partner – most likely a telecommunications provider.
Hager, a 2006 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the partnership option has become a company goal within the past six months. “We’re at the point now where it’s viable for the technology to be incorporated into another company’s platform,” he said.
VoVision stands for “from Voice to Vision.” Its technology, which is part of a patent application, is marketed as a more accurate, voice-independent option to voice recognition technology, especially for voice-mail files that have been stored in a digital format.
As Hager explained in a 2007 WTN article, Vo Vision has tried to gain traction in the voice recognition market with a hosted solution whose accuracy increases with the self-correction of users. The company decided, at the request of clients, to put the technology behind their firewalls in addition to offering a hosted solution.
In general, however, Hager said people have not wanted to approach a third-party company like VoVision. He declined to identify the large telecommunication providers that would consider VoVision an acquisition target, but he indicated that integration would not be an issue.
“I can say that we have proven integration and use with a number of the major VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol] telephone system providers,” he said. “I think we can say that we work and have tested with Avaya, Cisco, and a few of those other major providers.”
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