Orlando, FL – Waterfield Technologies, a leading provider of customer service solutions, and Voxeo, the Unlocked Communications™ market leader, have partnered to address the unique customer care and communication challenges facing today’s financial institutions (FIs). This partnership will revolutionize the way banks and credit unions interact with their customers in five major areas to improve customer retention, competitive positioning and profitability.

“Focusing on customer loyalty and engagement has always been key to successful revenue growth for companies; however, the current economic pressures facing banks and credit unions across the country has amplified the importance of these initiatives,” said Anne Bowman, chief customer officer at Voxeo. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans’ loyalty to their primary banks fell to 23 percent in November 2011 from 32 percent in September 2010. “Banking customers are more likely than ever to switch their primary bank, creating a huge need for the industry to hone communications efforts that lead to increased loyalty,” she said.

Voxeo optimizes the way companies communicate with their customers using Interactive Voice Response (IVR), text, mobile web and social media. Waterfield has joined the Voxeo Connect partner program as a Certified Partner to offer deep expertise building and deploying solutions for financial institutions.
Together, the companies will deliver advantages in the following key areas:

1. Customer Experience Improvements. By leveraging the latest technologies and best practices, financial institutions can better balance the conflicting goals of improving customer loyalty while lowering costs. Many financial institutions haven’t updated their voice customer service channels in years. Waterfield and Voxeo enable personalized self-service capabilities that dynamically adapt to individual customer preferences, streamlining common requests for a better user experience and resulting in fewer overall transfers to a representative. The solution is also “multi-channel ready,” for a unified customer experience across voice, text, chat, mobile web, and native mobile platforms such as iOS and Android.

2. Proactive Customer Care. The most progressive financial institutions are using outbound IVR and SMS to offer customers the information they need, when they need it–and even before they know they need it. For example, outbound efforts can provide payment reminders, notifications and low-balance alerts to improve customer loyalty while reducing overall support costs. The solution easily integrates with common core banking platforms and utilizes existing business intelligence systems to enable personalized up-sell and cross-sell offers that drive revenue and increase Customer Lifetime Value.

3. Integrated Business Intelligence. IVR systems are a frequent source of customer as well as organizational frustration. When self-service is done properly, it’s a win for the customer and the business. The Voxeo and Waterfield solution offers built-in, actionable analytics and reports to eliminate the “black box” aspect of legacy voice platforms thus enabling customer-focused teams to easily pinpoint issues in real-time, better understand customer behaviors, and identify opportunities to enhance the overall service experience. This baseline understanding will empower organizations of all sizes to adapt and evolve their customer strategies to compete in today emerging financial marketplace.

4. Self-Service Administration. Unlike legacy IVR systems, Voxeo and Waterfield offer a solution built on known web standards for flexibility, control and ease of management. This standards-based platform enables FIs to utilize their existing IT staff to make routine changes and update self-service menus as dictated by the business. This capability represents a fundamental shift for FIs who have historically been captive to black box legacy IVR vendors for maintenance and upkeep of critical customer-facing voice channels.

5. Simplified Security and Regulatory Compliance. Banks are facing increased regulatory pressure to protect the privacy of customer data. With a 100 percent standards-based, certified-compliant solution and capabilities such as two-factor authentication and in-queue PIN validation, Voxeo and Waterfield ease the complexities of ensuring automated customer interactions are secure.

John Marino, president at Waterfield Technologies, said, “Industry analysts acknowledge Voxeo as a leading provider of IVR and multi-channel self-service. To that, Waterfield adds many years of financial services experience and pre-built interfaces to most of the common core platforms utilized throughout the industry. The combined solution positions our customers to take advantage of the latest technologies to build stronger, more profitable relationships with their customers and better compete for new customers.”

“Institutions that view their contact centers and services as a cost of doing business will struggle in a market where the source of differentiation has shifted to the customer experience,” said Denny Adams, director of channel sales at Voxeo. “We’re partnering with Waterfield to help financial institutions uncover opportunities to improve customer loyalty, drive more revenue and achieve bottom-line costs savings.”

Learn more and read our whitepaper, “Slashing Costs and Improving Customer Care in Financial Institutions” at www.waterfieldtechnologies.com/solutions/financial-services/

About Waterfield Technologies
Waterfield Technologies is a leading provider of multi-channel customer service solutions for financial services and enterprise organizations worldwide. The company’s suite of solutions provides our customers the opportunity to improve the speed, quality and efficiency of customer, business partner and stakeholder interactions while reducing their overall assisted-service operating costs. Learn more at www.waterfieldtechnologies.com

About Voxeo
Voxeo unlocks communications. We loathe the locks that make voice, SMS, instant messaging, Twitter, web chat, and mobile web, unified communication and self-service applications difficult to create, manage, analyze, optimize and afford. Every day we work to unlock the neglected value of these communications solutions with open standards, disruptive innovation and a passion for problem solving–fueled by a company-wide obsession with customer success. We do so for more than 250,000 developers, 45,000 companies and half of the Fortune 100 from our headquarters in Orlando, Beijing, Cologne, and London. Visit us or join our conversations on the web at www.voxeo.com, blogs.voxeo.com or twitter.com/voxeo

ECCU, a full-service financial institution and banking resource for churches, Christian schools, missionaries, and other evangelical ministries, selected WT to both streamline their new account opening process and improve their existing IVR.

Online Enrollment & Account Opening

Waterfield’s Online Enrollment & Account Opening solution allows ECCU customers to open and fund new accounts in a simple online process, turning the online environment into a highly profitable sales channel. Built upon Outsystems .NET Agile Development Platform, WT’s solution includes industry-leading risk management, reporting, compliance, and configurability, as well as initial funding via transfers over the ACH network. The new solution provides ECCU with a secure, convenient method to serve their growing membership base within the US as well as missionaries serving throughout the world.

WT’s solution features real-time integration with FIS/eFunds ID Verification to protect against identity fraud and comply with the PATRIOT Act Section 326, 314 (a) and OFAC regulations. In addition to verification, the solution also validates, verifies and authenticates an applicant’s identity at new account opening with ID Authentication. Incorporating all aspects of the membership enrollment and account opening process into one solution, will allow ECCU and members to instantly open and fund new accounts.

IVR

WT was also selected to upgrade, service, and make modifications to ECCU’s existing IVR. WT upgraded ECCU to the most current Convergys/Edify Voice Interaction Platform (EVIP). The new solution provides customers with anytime, anywhere access to account information. WT also built a development environment for ECCU to ensure all changes and modifications are throughly approved and tested prior to deploying in a production environment.

About ECCU

ECCU is the banking resource for churches, Christian schools, and other evangelical ministries nationwide. They also serve missionaries in more than 100 countries around the world. While its business focus is providing financial services to evangelical organizations, the credit union does provide personal banking services such as savings and checking accounts to individual members and their families. For more than 45 years ECCU’s members and employees have shared a commitment to the mission of making evangelical Christian ministries more effective.

In collaboration with Consent Media, Waterfield Technologies designed and developed a mobile campground/RV application for Woodall’s, a leading provider of information about RVing and family camping for over 70 years.

Woodall’s RV & Camping Copilot

The Woodall’s RV & Camping Copilot iPhone app provides complete campground information that details the amenities, services, types of campsites for over 12,000 campgrounds and RV parks across North America. It also details many camping discounts offered at parks. Private campgrounds also include Woodall’s 5W/5W Rating System, which is the most trusted consumer campground rating.

Click here to learn more about the iPhone app and Woodall’s.

About ConsentMedia

Consent Media has been delivering results-driven digital media and marketing solutions long before it was consensual or defined as “digital”. Since 2001, the Consent Media executive and account management team has strategically lived, used and leveraged the digital media technologies of wireless, mobile, voice marketing, interactive voice response (IVR), e-mail marketing, broadcast, video, and social media to cost-effectively acquire new customers and enhance loyalty by extending the lifecycle value profitability chain of existing customers.

By delivering innovative lead generation, new customer acquisition and ongoing retention and loyalty marketing programs, the Consent Media team has assisted many of the world’s leading retailers, healthcare, financial services and insurance companies measurably drive down costs while growing incremental revenue.

Kiboo™ isn’t an online bank; it’s a place where you learn about your money and your money learns about you. We’re here to help young people and their parents learn the right way to become financially responsible by offering the best, safest, and most secure tools to help you manage your money and reach your goals.

Kiboo™ helps you budget, spend, save, and give in ways that are all customized around you, and what makes you happy.

Getting the things you want, making sure you have the things you need, helping your community, and a more fulfilled financial life are all part of the Kiboo package.

Learn more about Kiboo™ at kiboo.com

Finovate is a unique conference series that showcases financial and banking technology innovation.

Waterfield Technologies solutions allow BOFI to open and fund new accounts in a simple online process, turning the online environment into a highly profitable sales channel. The technology includes industry-leading risk management, reporting, compliance, cross selling, and configurability, as well as initial funding via transfers over the ACH network. WT provided solutions will also integrate with BOFI’s existing online banking system so they can easily open and fund new accounts from the online banking environment without re-authenticating their credentials or re-keying their personal information.

In addition to the account opening and funding solutions, WT will also provide an overhaul to the existing BOFI telephony architecture and customer service platforms.

About Bank of Internet
FDIC insured and publicly traded (NASDAQ:BOFI), Bank of Internet offers traditional banking and loan services entirely over the Internet, without making you pay for the cost of a branch network.

Headquartered in San Diego, California, Bank of Internet has been providing service to customers throughout the United States since 1999.

Tulsa, OK – August 4, 2010 – Waterfield Energy is pleased to announce the appointment of Mark Davis as Vice President – Transportation Products and Services, effective August 2, 2010. Mr. Davis takes over responsibility for gas gathering, intrastate and interstate gas transportation products, services, clients, and staff.

Mr. Davis is an energy and transportation industry executive with over 27 years of experience in software, consulting and the energy business. Prior to joining Waterfield Energy, Mr. Davis was Director of Natural Gas Solutions at SolArc Inc., and was instrumental in the building of Quorum Business Solutions’ transportation products. Mr. Davis also worked at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Tennessee Gas Pipeline, Tenneco, ARKLA Gas, Louisiana Intrastate Gas, and Columbia Gulf serving in various roles. Mr. Davis has a bachelor’s degree & MBA from Our Lady of the Lake University.

“Bringing Mark Davis to the executive team was a key component of our growth strategy for Waterfield Energy,” said John Marino, President of Waterfield Technologies. “The rest of the board and I wholeheartedly endorsed bringing Mark in to lead our transportation practice. Waterfield Technologies is extremely pleased at the growth and success of our energy software affiliate, and adding Mark Davis solidifies our long-term strategy in midstream transportation.”

Pete Waldroop, CEO and President of Waterfield Energy, added, “Mark Davis is a tremendous addition to my executive team. His knowledge of the transportation business and his commitment to customer service are unequaled. Feedback from our clients has already been extremely positive.”

About Waterfield Energy Software
Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Waterfield Energy provides software to the energy upstream, midstream, and transportation markets. Its employees are a mix of experienced energy and technical development resources, brought together to create world-class software for the dynamic energy industry. For more details, please visit www.waterfieldenergysoftware.com.

Waldroop is an energy expert with more than 16 years of experience in the full-system lifecycle of software, process design/analysis and project management. He has worked extensively in upstream energy, midstream energy and in the transportation and marketing sectors. His client list has included Fortune 500 energy and utility companies from across the country.

Waldroop was previously a founding partner with Capitalize Consulting, a professional consulting services firm focused on the energy, pipeline, and utilities industries. He also previously was a founder and executive vice president of Quorum Business Solutions, an energy industry software provider. Formerly, Waldroop also was a consulting manager in Accenture’s Energy Solutions Group. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University.

“We are extremely pleased to have Pete leading the energy software company. His deep experience in energy consulting and software are a great match for our team and product suite, and we expect Pete to grow the company significantly in coming years,” said John Marino, president of Waterfield Technologies. “The Waterfield family is committed to the growth of the energy software company, and bringing Pete to the company is just one of the many substantial investments we’ve made in this business.”

Waldroop echoed the sentiments, saying: “Waterfield Energy Software is providing an exciting opportunity for me to use my skills and background in a new way. I’m looking forward to this challenge.”

About Waterfield Energy Software
Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Waterfield Energy provides software to the energy upstream, midstream, and transportation markets. Its employees are a mix of experienced energy and technical development resources, brought together to create world-class software for the dynamic energy industry. For more details, please visit waterfieldenergysoftware.com.

For more information, see Waterfield Energy Software at waterfieldenergysoftware.com

SAN RAMON, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–OutSystems:

OutSystems, provider of the industry-leading Agile Platform application development environment, announced today three new winners of the Outsystems’ Agility Award, recognizing accomplishments for projects that were delivered following an Agile process and exhibited real business benefit.

The winning companies are Waterfield Technologies, TNT Express and their systems integrator COOLProfs, and Turismo de Portugal and their systems integrator Normatica.

The Agility Award program was launched at the end of May 2009. The awards are submission-based and recognize teams and organizations who have fully embraced Agile methodologies and iterative, user-oriented development to deliver application projects on time, on budget and with 100 percent user adoption.

In the spirit of Agile, the Agility Awards will be given on an on-going, monthly basis. For a list of all award winners visit http://www.outsystems.com/goto/agilityaward.

Agility Award Winning Projects and Supporting Quotes

Waterfield Technologies, Online Banking Real Time Account Creation & Funding Project: Waterfield Technologies used the OutSystems Agile Platform to develop an application for the real time collection, vetting, funding and opening of accounts for a bank, credit union or other financial services provider. The system interfaces with five external databases and systems for immediate online processing of bank accounts as a result of online or direct mail marketing. The application allows the bank to quickly convert interested prospects into bank customers by simplifying the traditional application process used by many banks which often results in hours of offline processing and review and days of customer delay. Delivered in 12 weeks in 4 sprints.

“Utilizing OutSystems’ Agile Platform and the agile methodology allowed a broader range of participants from the bank’s perspective to be involved in the development process, thereby creating a more effective application once it reached production. Being able to rapidly respond to unforeseen obstacles and the rapidly evolving fraud landscape was essential in the development of this system. Our ability to continue to evolve the application and respond to business change is a testament to the overall effectiveness of the Agile Platform.” – John Marino, President of Waterfield Technologies

TNT Express and their systems integrator, COOLProfs, for the GARD project: The GARD project provides a structured working environment that streamlines and enhances business retention and the development of TNT’s portfolio of global customers. GARD will play a key role in securing TNT’s Global Accounts revenue, which accounts for around 20 percent of the total TNT Express revenue. GARD will also ensure that the global resource pool of contract managers shares best practices and focuses its efforts on the most important issues. Delivered in 7 weeks in 3 sprints.

“The Agile methodology, employed by COOLProfs to build GARD, allowed they system’s key stakeholders, Contract Managers at TNT Global Account Management, to fully participate in the development of a tool which enables them to pool their extensive knowledge and experience towards supporting the key business processes; facilitating account retention and development.” – Hugo Koppelaars, solutions and commercial global account management director at TNT Express.

Turismo de Portugal and their systems integrator, Normatica, for the School Management System project: The SIMPLEX School Management System is a next generation school management solution providing an interactive community portal for stakeholders (management, administration, teachers and students) to enhance the efficiency of school administration and improve resource optimization. The platform covers a school’s diverse operations including Student Management, Class Management, Trainer Management, Course Management, School Facility Management, Meal Plan Management, Scholarship Management and Student Application Management. Delivered in 20 weeks in 6 sprints.

“The agile methodology has enabled great stakeholder alignment and has reduced the traditional distrust that exists in technology projects following a waterfall model. The new School Platform has simplified the administration processes at 17 different Schools of Hospitality and Tourism allowing the staff to focus on excellent education.” – Hugo Sousa, IT Director at Turismo de Portugal.

OutSystems Supporting Quote

“This quarter’s winning applications show the speed and agility that can be obtained using the Agile Platform,” said Mike Jones, agile evangelist and vice president of marketing at OutSystems.

About OutSystems

OutSystems’ Agile Platform is used by IT teams around the world to rapidly develop and manage flexible web applications and business processes using agile methodologies. The integrated platform unifies the two life-cycles of application development and business process management within a single, powerful environment—enabling the automation of business processes and delivery of flexible web applications that are built for continuous change.

Companies use the Agile Platform to integrate, develop, deploy, monitor and change web apps and business processes—delivering business value in weeks rather than months or years.

Introduced in 2001, with over 6,500 installations, OutSystems’ Agile Platform has been honored with multiple CODiE and JOLT awards and is supported by an active community of more than 1,700 developers, 500 certified practitioners and over 50 implementation partners. Its free Community Edition is also available at http://www.outsystems.com/download.

By empowering healthcare organizations to “unlock” unstructured clinical documentation, sometimes referred to as the “narrative blob,” Nuance’s NLP solutions will enable the extraction of clinically relevant data that would otherwise be impossible to access, unless done manually by humans. With this access, healthcare organizations will increase the amount of meaningful data that can be used for clinical decision making, leading to improved patient care and a reduction in overall healthcare costs. Furthermore, by helping collect and report on various diagnostic, quality and safety measures, Nuance will help healthcare organizations advance efforts to qualify for Meaningful Use reimbursements associated with certified electronic health record (EHR) technology, as outlined in the HITECH Act.

In addition to significant internal NLP research and development investments, Nuance has acquired key technologies and researchers from Language and Computing, Inc. (L&C), a pioneering developer of clinical narrative processing technology. Nuance has also formed a strategic partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), which will enable Nuance to incorporate MGH’s proven NLP solution, Smart Dictation, into its own solution portfolio for the healthcare market.

“Natural Language Processing adds meaning to the clinical narrative, so that clinicians’ spoken words are not simply transformed into text, but can be used to create meaningful clinical data that can be inserted into an EHR or other data repositories without forcing doctors to document via time consuming and restrictive point-and-click templates,” said John Shagoury, executive vice president for Healthcare, Nuance. “By adding these new Natural Language Processing technologies and capabilities, Nuance has advanced its commitment to improve the clinical documentation process for healthcare organizations by extending the power of our speech-driven solutions that cater to both to clinicians’ documentation preferences and provider organizations’ need to create structured data within their EHRs.”

By integrating L&C’s NLP technologies into its healthcare portfolio, Nuance will enhance its ability to address the structured data management challenges in healthcare with its award winning line of clinical documentation solutions including Dragon Medical, eScription and Dictaphone Enterprise Speech System. With these integrated technologies, Nuance will provide solutions to the healthcare market that enable advanced clinical data warehousing, clinical decision support, data mining, coding for billing and disease management. L&C’s powerful technologies include a comprehensive medical knowledge base that is specifically designed to extract clinically relevant and discrete data from unstructured medical documentation. L&C technology is currently deployed at major healthcare institutions, including Kaiser Permanente and Ochsner.

As part of Nuance’s broad partnership with MGH, Nuance will exclusively license Smart Dictation NLP, a pioneering system that was developed by the MGH Lab of Computer Science, which is currently being used by MGH physicians to automatically extract key data elements from narrative dictations and populate the EHR. Nuance will leverage key capabilities of this technology alongside its full portfolio of NLP and speech-driven clinical documentation solutions to help healthcare organizations convert unstructured text into a structured, digital and interoperable format that contains extracted data elements for a variety of applications.

To further support its mission associated with NLP development and its goal of maintaining the important clinician narrative in EHRs, Nuance has joined the Health Story Project, a collaboration of healthcare vendors, providers and associations. The Health Story Project believes clinical documentation that includes the physician narrative is crucial to facilitate the electronic exchange of comprehensive health information and should be defined as part of Meaningful Use criteria. Additionally, with this group, which holds an Associate Charter Agreement with Health Level Seven (HL7), Nuance will contribute to the development and support of the HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) standards to enhance the flow of clinical information between narrative dictations and the EHR.