March 2021 Summaries

The coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on various industries, with some experiencing negative effects while others have seen substantial positive impacts. Web conferencing transcription emerged as the voice technology use case that saw the biggest positive impact from COVID-19, with 58% of respondents citing its importance. The increased adoption of web conferencing platforms due to remote work has created a need for captions and transcription services. Other industries such as healthcare and life sciences, telecommunications, media and entertainment have also seen significant growth. The pandemic has accelerated the shift towards voice technology in business automation workflows, with many businesses recognizing the opportunities it presents. With the new norm of working from home, collaboration tools are expected to continue seeing increased demand into 2021 and beyond.

Speechmatics has launched its award-winning automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, making it easily accessible to businesses in the UK, USA, and EU. The launch enables organizations to utilize Speechmatics' leading ASR engine directly through Microsoft Azure, providing unparalleled accuracy, language coverage, and secure deployment flexibility. By automating mundane tasks such as transcription, businesses can streamline operations, improve efficiency, and gain actionable insights from structured and unstructured voice data. This integration allows companies to start using the technology quickly without barriers to adoption, making it a valuable solution for transforming high volumes of voice data into text. With Speechmatics' any-context speech recognition engine available on Microsoft Azure, businesses can now access reliable and accurate speech-to-text in over 30 languages.

The increasing need for RegTech automation in compliance workflows is driven by the growing volume and nuance of audio data, as well as regulatory scrutiny. Voice technology can provide a rich view of interactions between parties, offering insights into sentiment, intent, and inflexion to manage risk and derive business value. With the COVID-19 pandemic leading to decentralized operations, solutions that accurately process and understand speech-based content at scale are crucial. RegTech using accurate speech-to-text transcription can revolutionize compliance monitoring by automating review, monitoring, and flagging of compliance breaches within calls, reducing manual time spent on case reviews and costs associated with compliance monitoring. This streamlined approach enables organizations to become more compliant while also being more productive and efficient.