Australia's Child Support Agency (CSA), like many other Government Departments, has a critical need to accurately and efficiently authenticate the identity of callers to their call centres. Also like a number of other Government Departments, they have been looking at the application of voice authentication to improve proof-of-identity processes as well as increase the efficiency and convenience of their services. Specifically, CSA are also looking at using voice authentication to enhance proof of identity in their speech recognition, IVR and Internet self-service applications.

Before proceeding however, CSA need to better understand the financial impact from the introduction of this technology. Given 3SH's understand of the technology and the business requirements it was able to develop a financial model that would project the cost benefit from the introduction of the technology and the potential return on investment.

Financial modeling developed by 3SH not only projected costs savings; but also projected the short term increase in costs associated with the increased workload of call centre agents resulting from introducing callers to the technology and subsequent enrolment process.

The model therefore provides an accurate projection of expected cost benefits based on different usage patterns and take-up rates, enabling the Child Support Agency to assess the financial viability of voice authentication in its services and to set expectations around pricing for authentication services and solutions offered by vendors.