Bates Wells and Braithwaite

Cutting temporary secretarial resources

Each of the firm's seven departments used to handle their respective documentation volumes independently. Now, thanks to DigiScribe-XL, work can be allocated and monitored across the firm as a whole. "The ability to share transcription work makes a huge difference" insists Bennett. "For starters, we already managed to cut 100% of temporary secretarial resource costs, which represents a £40,000 a year saving, and our float and night staff are much more efficient. This almost immediate saving was unexpected, but was not the only surprise brought along by DigiScribe-XL."

Remote work made easy

"Remote work was the other surprise. We were not expecting it to be so easy and secure.", notes Bennett. "We have to admit that the ability for both fee-earning and secretarial staff to work remotely, in a productive and confidential manner, is a significant improvement for our firm."

While the fee earners' voice files are uploaded to the central server in real-time, wherever they may be dictating from, secretaries can work from home as efficiently as if they were in the office. This is particularly important to the firm's team of night secretaries, who don't have to show up at the office in the middle of the night anymore. Urgent dictations are made available to them, in real-time, thanks to the Crescendo voice streaming technology, which also allows them to start transcribing a dictation prior to the complete file download. Finally, since DigiScribe-XL stores all files on a central server, the firm is confident that no confidential data ever sits on local PCs at any time.

Smooth implementation

As for the roll-out itself, all 60 fee-earners and 50 secretaries were amazed at how smooth the implementation went. "The entire firm was up-and-running within 4 weeks, without one single glitch or headache. That's what I call a smooth implementation; unbelievably smooth to be honest!"