Buy SSL Certificate 2010 August | Document Direct

What does an air raid shelter and a beach hut have in common

August 25, 2010

remote-worker-tv
I suppose having your office in an old air raid shelter or a beach hut has more benefits than we can imagine, especially when the weather is good.  This article filmed by Meridian TV demonstrates how people are using technology to their advantage. 

There is a saying that necessity is the mother of invention.  Our current economic climate is forcing a lot of people to be more creative on how to get the best from their resources, the most precious of which is time.  Remote working certainly helps us make the most of that and with wireless technology and mobile communications a huge chunk of our precious time is saved just by working at home and not travelling to/from an office. 

We too are making the most of the latest secure internet technology and mobile communications as our own team of secretaries work from their own homes.  We’ve certainly see the benefit through the long hard winter of 2010 when we were delighted to report that every one of our team were able to turn up for work! 

There’s lots of ways to free oneself from an office and remote secretarial services is just part of it.  Consider posting letters from a computer anywhere in the world, online conferencing, intelligent telephone routing and sending dictation while on the move. 

Read about Blackberry dictation
Try remote services for free

Posted by Jayne Smith | Filed Under Digital Dictation for Business, Digital Dictation for Lawyers, General, digital dictation for solicitors | Leave a Comment 

Working smarter

August 16, 2010

The biggest difference with a good digital dictation system is that each separate document can be a separate dictation file on a computer network. new-structure

Imagine having hundreds of tapes, each containing one letter or one file note and each marked with the file name and order of priority.  Each item is clearly visible to anyone in the firm so it is very easy to prioritise and pick out the urgent work.  Jobs can be assigned to the most appropriate team member and work can be evenly distributed across the firm.

Add an additional team of outsourced secretaries to the structure and the workflow can be reorganised again.   There is no reason to pay employed secretaries an hourly rate of pay on  salary to type up non-urgent (but essential) file notes when they are easily identified, outsourced to an external resource and produced on a totally different cost basis which is far more efficient.  The file notes are produced at a much less cost,  there are no blockages in the dictation workflow, the files are kept updated much faster and all this means that when clients phone the office for information they are being dealt with in a much more responsive manner. 

Throw into the mix Blackberry dictation. This gives solicitors the freedom to dictate while away from their desks.  Dictation can be sent to either in-house or outsourced secretaries at any time of the day.  Once linked to outsourcing they can enjoy the benefit of out of hours and weekend services so they can work from any place at any time.  I can hear the groans now, ’why would anyone want to work at any place and in the middle of the night’.  But spare a thought for those hard working individuals to appreciate their work life balance and want to take time out during the day to go to their kid’s schoon play.  Now they can catch up working in the evening without having to travel to the office.  Of course, there will always be the seriously driven lawyers who    

All this means that solicitors can be more responsive to their clients. 

Read article: Working Harder
Read article: The lasting legacy of the Internet is speed

Posted by Jayne Smith | Filed Under General | 1 Comment 

Working harder

August 16, 2010

The diagram below shows a typical structure of a law firm. The dotted lines show the flow of work, that is dictation and transcription between the departments and secretaries. 

trad-structure

The problem with this diagram is that it is very difficult for the secretaries to share their workload. You might ask, why would they want to? Each secretary receives their tapes which holds a lot of work, urgent work can’t easily be prioritized and as only one person can work on the tape, the secretary has the burden of churning out as fast as she can all of the documents relating to each set of files on the tape.

It’s not visible what type of work is on the tape either. Not many people take the time to write a dictation list and itemize the documents required. After all, that takes time too. So a tape will quite often have lots of special instructions, “do the usual”, admin tasks as well as correspondence and documents which can suddenly become urgent.

Multiply this scenario for each secretary in each department and multiply again by the number of departments, and it’s easy to see how backlogs of work can occur.

Read article: Working Smarter
Read article: The lasting legacy of the Internet is speed

Posted by Jayne Smith | Filed Under General | 2 Comments 

The lasting legacy of the Internet is speed

August 16, 2010

What will determine our success is not how fast we receive information.  It will be how quickly we can respond to it.

We can find the information we need with a few clicks of a button, at any time and from any place with the increased usability of mobile technology. Life is certainly moving along at a pace. We can chat with our friends by email, text message and now Facebook. We can access our work systems from our own home PC using the internet. We have greater flexibility of the times that we can be available for work and the places we work.

Changes have been made in the office so that emails can be read on the move on Blackberrys, if the phone isn’t answered within three rings then a message is left with voicemail and solicitors now  type their own emails to provide a faster response to their clients.

In fact, we probably find that we’re forced to keep up, to keep moving with the times because failure to do so results in, well, failure.

But there is a greater impact on our psyche that this fast paced world is having. As we accept the fast flow of information as normal so do we think that a slow response is abnormal.  In fact it’s downright inconvenient and causes disruption.

Think about the last time you were put on hold on a telephone call. Perhaps you were told that you were in a queue and placed third. Did that information ease your anxiety levels? Probably not. After all, the reason for the phone call is usually a personal request for information, to make an appointment or query or pay a bill. We certainly don’t wait on hold to have a chit chat with our friends. So the delay causes an irritation which, if left unattended, then causes a massive inconvenience. That experience is well remembered too. The next time it’s necessary to phone that organization the expectation is to be put on hold. And as that has a detrimental effect on the perception of that company. One that is either far too busy handling lots of complaining phone calls, or not enough staff, or not enough staff working hard enough.

The speed of receiving information, being responsive to requests for information and customer service are all linked together.

How does a firm become more responsive to its clients?

Read article: Working Smarter
Read article: Working Harder

Posted by Jayne Smith | Filed Under General | 2 Comments 

Awards short listed

August 13, 2010

awards-shortlisted1We’re delighed to announce that, for the second year running, we have been short listed in the Remote Worker Awards. 

The Awards are unique as the only business awards recognising employers for their flexible working solutions and employees for showing that remote and home based working can improve business productivity, improve work life balance and help the environment.

We’re extremely proud to be recognised for our efforts in changing the way we, and our clients, work.

The category we have been shortlisted for is the Blackberry Remote Employer.

Posted by Jayne Smith | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment