Florida Department of Children and Families Standardizes on Dragon NaturallySpeaking Speech Recognition Software from Nuance

Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), the largest social service agency in Florida, has selected Nuance’s Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® software, the world’s most accurate and best-selling speech recognition application, to speed the process of creating field case reports throughout the agency. The Florida DCF will roll out Dragon Professional Edition configured specifically to support the field reporting needs of the department. When the rollout is complete, more than 1,600 employees will be able to quickly and accurately complete comprehensive field reports – entirely by voice. Today’s tough economic climate has led social service agencies such as the Florida DCF to find innovative ways to boost efficiencies within their organizations so that they can keep pace with ever-increasing case loads. The Nuance-designed solution brings together the best-selling Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional software with leading digital voice recorders to deliver the ultimate in mobile reporting tools for field agents. For years, employees at the Florida DCF have taken a traditional approach to reporting: agents met with clients and took detailed, hand-written notes summarizing their meetings and findings. These hand-written notes were then typed into final reports and filed. This was a time-consuming process that often kept agents mired in paperwork, and even limited the amount of time agents could spend actually interacting with their clients. Today, using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Florida DCF agents simply dictate their notes and findings into a digital voice recorder while they are still in the field, and their notes are automatically transcribed into final reports when they return to the their office and connect to their PC. This new approach with Dragon empowers Florida DCF employees in the field to quickly and accurately complete all of their reports entirely by voice, and stands to increase productivity by three times over manual typing. "As our case loads increase and budgets have tightened for social service organizations throughout the state, we’ve worked to leverage new technologies such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking to increase efficiencies and manage workflows,” said acting chief information officer at the Florida Department of Children and Families, Chris Pantaleon. "Using Dragon, our field staff will reclaim upwards of two hours each day – time previously spent in the office typing notes – and reallocate that time to more frequent, and longer, visits with clients. Being able to spend more time in the field – and less time in the office – helps us deliver the highest levels of service to our clients.” The Florida DCF joins other large organizations such as the FBI, the U.S. Attorneys Office and the U.S. Social Security Administration who have also benefited from Dragon software and from Nuance’s simple enterprise license programs. In all cases, Dragon NaturallySpeaking software can deliver productivity increases of up to 300 percent and allow for more detailed reporting by automating the manual document creation and editing process that has traditionally bound many organizations. People can dictate and edit interview notes, reports, emails and other documents all by voice, at up to 160 words per minute – more than three times faster than typing – and at accuracy levels up to 99 percent. In addition, users can create voice shortcuts to insert blocks of texts or bitmaps – such as client name, contact information and case number – with a single voice command, or macros to streamline repetitive workflows, saving even more time and increasing productivity. "The selection of Dragon NaturallySpeaking by the Florida DCF is proof positive that speech recognition is an invaluable productivity tool for anyone creating documents or reports,” said Peter Mahoney, vice president and general manager, Desktop Dictation Business Unit of Nuance. "Not only does Dragon make it faster for agencies such as the DCF to create and file reports, but it makes the reports themselves more comprehensive due to the ease with which additional detail can be added.” About Dragon NaturallySpeaking Dragon NaturallySpeaking software from Nuance is used by millions of people to create documents and emails up to three times faster than typing, and to use their PC simply by speaking. Dragon NaturallySpeaking delivers what matters most in speech recognition – the highest levels of accuracy, seamless integration with many popular PC applications, and unrivalled ease of use. Dragon NaturallySpeaking converts speech into text at up to 160 words per minute with up to 99 percent accuracy. Dragon is available in U.S. English, Australian English, Asian English, Indian English, UK English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish versions. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com/dragon. Nuance Communications, Inc. Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com. Nuance, the Nuance logo, Dragon and NaturallySpeaking are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.