Released on = June 6, 2007, 6:18 am

Press Release Author = MeritTrac

Industry =

Press Release Summary = MeritTrac Services, India's Largest skills assessment
company, today announced a strategic partnership with Carnegie Speech, US to bring
the world-renowned Carnegie Speech AssessmentTM automated voice evaluation
technology to India. On the occasion, MeritTrac also formally unveiled a thought
paper on voice evaluation which throws new light on benefits that can accrue to the
voice-based BPO players by adopting a different philosophy on assessments

Press Release Body = Bangalore, June 6, 2007: MeritTrac Services, India's Largest
skills assessment company, today announced a strategic partnership with Carnegie
Speech, US to bring the world-renowned Carnegie Speech AssessmentTM automated voice
evaluation technology to India. On the occasion, MeritTrac also formally unveiled a
thought paper on voice evaluation which throws new light on benefits that can accrue
to the voice-based BPO players by adopting a different philosophy on assessments. To
familiarize the Indian businesses on the new tools and technology, there will be a
series of workshops starting with Delhi and moving to Bangalore & Pune.
The new automated speech testing technology/tool is superior to existing tools,
which usually grade users against a general benchmark of English fluency and goes
onto classify the quality of individual's speech providing a cost-effective,
objective assessment capability to BPO companies and educational institutions that
need to assess large number of applicants.
Commenting on the partnership, Angela Kennedy, CEO, Carnegie Speech, said,"We are
extremely pleased to partner with MeritTrac in bringing this tool to India. India
has been a hub for the voice- based BPO industry with an acute need to recruit the
best talent and provide world-class services. Voice evaluations have been the key
for BPO's in identifying quality talent, and Carnegie Speech AssessmentTM will prove
of immense benefit to recruiters. The Carnegie tool is a product of painstaking
research on spoken and linguistic patterns from across the world and provides
assessment of spoken English with remarkable accuracy. Carnegie Speech AssessmentTM
provides micro feedback on parameters such as vowel sounds which would help
companies make their training programs more effective." She also added that Carnegie
Speech would also venture into resource training for the voice based BPO industry on
its own.
Commenting on the tie up, Mohan Kannegal, Co-founder and Director, MeritTrac
Services said, "The partnership marks the shift of voice assessments from being a
rejection tool to being more a selection tool. The technology also plugs another key
gap in existing tools-the absence of inputs for training. The partnership is in sync
with our philosophy of knowledge-led offerings that bring a significant
value-addition."
Briefly sharing key highlights of the unveiled thought paper, Mohan said," Last year
when we unveiled the Communication skills index here in Delhi we highlighted the
challenges facing the talent pool. Post that we were keenly looking at ways to help
the industry address this challenge and we figured that if accurate inputs can be
generated for training in voice, it will lead to better yields - thus allowing the
industry to tap into more of the existing pool. This will be of immense help to the
voice-based BPO players and our thought paper has a case-study which just validates
this possibility."
The Carnegie tool owing to the inbuilt flexibility is highly useful for the BPO/call
centre environment. The tool uses classified customer data for customizing the
assessment to categorize the prospective agents in the most useful way for each
customer, which is unique to Carnegie Speech. The technology could also be
customized to focus on known regional speech difficulties which is of particular
relevance to India.
Carnegie Speech, US, is a speech assessment and tutoring Software Company focusing
on testing and improving English pronunciation for non-native speakers. Using
state-of-the-art speech recognition technology developed at Carnegie Mellon
University it markets applications that solve specific problems in the BPO and
education markets. Carnegie Speech uses speech recognition and pinpointing
technology to listen to a user's speech and to pinpoint exactly what was correct and
incorrect in the sound, rhythm and pitch of the speech. This product is also based
on a targeted embodiment of the linguistics and second-language learning literature
and would automatically adapt to explicit assessment classifications.

Founded in 2000, MeritTrac is India\'s Largest Skills Assessment Company, having
assessed over 2 million candidates for over 170 customers. A neutral organization
that provides quantitative inputs on the talent pool and measures competencies for
specific roles, MeritTrac designs & delivers assessments for corporate/individual
customers. MeritTrac currently tests around 80,000 candidates per month across IT,
BPO, BFSI, Retail, Engineering and Education verticals. Its' clientele includes ABB,
Accenture, Adobe, Aricent, Cognizant, Convergys, Google, HAL, HP, HSBC, IBM, ITC,
Microsoft, MindTree, SAP labs, TESCO, UTI Bank, Verizon etc. Through TracSkills,
its' Individual Certification program, MeritTrac partners academic institutions like
Bharathiar University and Visvesvaraya Technological University for assessing
students on industry-readiness. Bangalore-based MeritTrac has 450+ fulltime
employees and 1000+ certified test administrators on its rolls. Its pan-Indian
presence includes "MeritTrac Assessment Zones" in Bangalore, Hyderabad & New Delhi,
offices in Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata and Coimbatore.. Manipal Educational Group
(MEG) recently came onboard as Investors with a majority stake in MeritTrac.
For further details visit www.merittrac.com


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Web Site = www.merittrac.com

Contact Details = Saritha/ of PRHUB @ 080-22483007/8