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PITTSBURGH: Building on earlier announcements this year that Vocollect reached $100 million (USD) in sales in 2006 (a voice industry first), opened an office in Japan and continued to expand Vocollect Voice for multiple manufacturers' devices throughout 2007, today Vocollect announced the kick-off of a yearlong celebration marking its 20th anniversary.

"Roger Byford and Larry Sweeney founded Vocollect with a vision of creating dedicated voice products to dramatically improve mobile work," said Chief Executive Officer Jack LeVan. "Two decades of continuous innovation and product improvement, honed by intense and extensive end user experience, have proven them right."

Vocollect has invested a minimum 15 percent of revenue in research and development on an annual basis since its inception in 1987. The private company is completely self-funded, investing nearly $20 million into product development activity in 2006 alone. Since 2001, Vocollect has enjoyed 23 consecutive quarters of profitability. And not at the expense of growth -- for the year ended June 30, revenues were up more than 20 percent over that of the previous year.

"Our product portfolio, application expertise and real-world experience through 20 years of providing Vocollect Voice to multiple industries are unparalleled in bringing the power of voice to mobile workers," said LeVan. "This year is exciting as we've extended the quality performance of Vocollect Voice onto several multi-function devices, one of our long-term strategic initiatives for opening and expanding our global market."

"This is an exciting time in the global supply chain arena, as companies find new approaches for voice beyond order selection that fully maximize their return on investment. Many of our end customers now look at Vocollect Voice as a fundamental element of lean distribution. And from there, we see a natural progression into lean manufacturing. Wherever mobile work depends upon accessing data easily and using it accurately, voice creates enormous value, as well as end user satisfaction and safety," LeVan said.