Vocollect and RedPrairie Form Strategic Integration and Reseller Agreement

WAUKESHA, WI and PITTSBURGH, PA - RedPrairie Corporation, a supply chain technology solutions company, and Vocollect, an integrated voice-directed distribution systems company, announced a strategic integration and reseller agreement. Under the agreement, RedPrairie will integrate and resell Vocollect's "hands-free, eyes-free(tm)" Talkman® solution with RedPrairie's DLx® Warehouse and DLx Labor supply chain execution solutions. The integration with Talkman will allow RedPrairie to offer customers a solution that is voice-enabled. "Voice technology has become a hot topic for our customers with case-pick and piece-pick operations because of the many advantages of hands-free, eyes-free processing, and we see real benefits from voice-enabling all of the primary warehouse operational activities in the near future," said John Jazwiec, RedPrairie company leader. "By providing our customers with standard integration to Vocollect, we can simplify implementation, reduce risk and provide a seamless user interface allowing them to realize the benefits sooner and reducing their total cost of ownership." Vocollect's voice system, in use today by over 50,000 distribution workers in hundreds of companies throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, is built on its industrial speech recognition technology, Talkman wearable voice terminal, and industry standard Microsoft Windows CE and 802.11b WLAN technologies. The solution enables warehouse workers to send and receive real-time information from the RedPrairie host applications through a naturally spoken dialog. "With the combined solution of RedPrairie's robust WMS and labor systems and Vocollect's configurable, extensible and easily scaled solution, our joint customers can easily add the accuracy and productivity of voice to their RedPrairie applications," said Jack LeVan, Vocollect president and CEO. "Then, they can proactively analyze information about warehouse labor performance down to the second an item is received, stored, picked and loaded, and make informed, productivity-boosting decisions based on accurate, real-time reporting." Also from Vocollect PITTSBURGH, PA - Nature's Best, a privately owned wholesaler/retailer in the natural products industry, is creating a product management operation in its warehouse by installing Vocollect's voice-directed distribution system at its 343,000 square-foot facility in Brea, Calif. The company is using Vocollect's Talkman® system for its piece and case picking operations, is currently extending voice to its line loading (building pallets for shipment) activities, and will be using voice to manage put-away in the warehouse within the next three months, according to Jerry Johnston, vice president of operations for Nature's Best. "Our company is totally focused on customer service," said Johnston. "We saw the potential for voice in our warehouse to significantly improve customer service by improving accuracy throughout the entire order filling and inventory process. Our goal is to get the right order to the right customer every single day without error. As we expand voice to other applications, closing the loop and further integrating it within our mechanized warehouse, I believe that level of achievement is realistic. Voice has really elevated our own expectations of what is possible.