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7 Headaches cured

September 7, 2009

Outsource Typing Case StudyWhat causes stress and disruption to your business operation? I’ve come up with a list of headaches commonly found in all businesses at some point. Are you in pain now when you don’t have to be?

1. WHO’S COVERING THE SICKNESS AND HOLIDAYS?
The holiday season (or the flu season) can be massively disrupting to your business if you don’t have skilled temporary staff to call on. If you work in a quieter rural area then chances are you will struggle finding a temp who’s available when you need them. And once you’ve got them trained up on your systems (often about 2 days) then it’s time for them to move on. You’ve probably wasted half a week of your time training the temp and you’re still left with a backlog of work by the time your usual secretary arrives back. Some larger firms don’t even use temps. They hire an additional secretary to provide the year round cover they need. What an expense! Your outsourcing company doesn’t require you to send a minimum amount of work or sign up for a specific contract period so you can make use of the service just when you need to. PAIN RELIEF CAN BE FOUND HERE

2. A BACKLOG OF WORK
If your dictation is taking 2 days to turn around then you have a backlog. And it’s costing you money. Files are not up to date leaving you at risk of negligence and, let’s face it, the faster you can work through the files, the faster cases are settled, and you get paid quicker. Why put up with it? PAIN RELIEF CAN BE FOUND HERE

3. NOT ENOUGH INTERNAL RESOURCES FOR A ONE OFF JOB
Dealing with an unusual heavy workload with limited resources can cause backlogs to your usual workflow. You need to have a database typed, perhaps a lenthy document which can take a secretary 2 days to reproduce, or lots of recordings but it’s too much for one secretary and you need it quickly. Making use of a team of outsourced secretaries for those one off jobs is a very cost effective way of keeping up to date with your workload. Document Direct has hundreds of registered secretaries and it’s a straight forward process for us to manage “bulk” transcription/copy typing and return it to you in the fastest time (usually the same day). PAIN RELIEF CAN BE FOUND HERE

4. ASKING PEOPLE TO WORK OVERTIME - AND PAYING THEM!
Managing people and overtime rates for “out of hours” work can leave you exasperated. There’s a reason why you need to work late in the night or at weekends — because you’re busy and have to deliver a quality service to your clients. So your staff should be helping you, not hindering you and making your job harder. But not everybody wants to work late, earn overtime and have their weekends disrupted. Document Direct’s outsource typing service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We’re non-threatening to your existing staff, we simply wait in the background for the day that you need to use us. PAIN RELIEF CAN BE FOUND HERE

5. RECRUITMENT, TRAINING AND RETAINING
Would you rather recruit a fee earner or a secretary? If we unravel the job specification and look at each task that we ask our employees to do and look at specific processes, it’s possible to see just how easy it is to take the typing part of a secretary’s job and outsource it. Once that’s done, putting your resources (people) to better use is easier. Secretaries are no longer just “typists”. They’re asked to be personal assistants, office manager and unqualified fee earners. Quite frankly, they’re too expensive to type. PAIN RELIEF CAN BE FOUND HERE

6. FINDING SKILLED STAFF
Love it or hate it, but none of us can live without it. Technology. It’s the most rapid changing industry and it affects us all. So when it comes to finding a secretary who has the skills to keep up to date with the last versions of software it can cause huge headaches. After all, unless you already employ an expert who knows what skills to recruit, how do you know what questions to ask? At least with outsourcing your documentation you’re assured that you can keep up with your competitors and work on their documents with the most up to date word processing techniques. Poor word processing and presentation of your documents to a competitor firm says a lot about the skillset of your workforce and speaks volumes. PAIN RELIEF CAN BE FOUND HERE

7. TOO MUCH WORK AND NOT ENOUGH HOURS
If you need more time why waste time travelling to the office? Why not work from home or on the train while commuting? Using a digital dictation system will give you valuable hours when you realise you don’t have to travel to the office to send work to your secretary. In fact, you can be anywhere and send your work from a mobile phone. And you can send your work at any time of the day when you’re accessing a 24/7 remote service. Would that give you the flexibility you need to use your time more effectively? PAIN RELIEF CAN BE FOUND HERE

So would you like to have one or two headaches removed? Ask for our Free Trial and give yourself some pain relief. 

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

BigHand systems are helping increase profitability

July 24, 2008

The current economic climate is an opportunity for firms to look at their systems and ways to improve profitability and save costs. 

Moving from stage 1 digital dictation, the simple transportation of dictation from fee earner to secretary, and onto stage 2, managing workflow, means firms can allocate their dictation to a larger pool of available secretaries.  The “Big Brother” type technology means all work is visible and gone of the days when a secretary would sit and twiddle fingers with nothing to do. The benefit of workflow systems means it is now possible to analyse the type of work being dictated by individual fee earners and how individual secretaries perform. 

BigHand’s recent press release gives some amazing statistics from some of their larger clients, for example, Venters Solicitors have saved £50,000 in only 12 months.

You can download BigHand’s press release by clicking here. 

Of course, it goes without saying that being able to outsource typing will bring a huge cost benefit to firms.  A good legal secretary is an unqualified fee earner and outsourcing the typing not only helps those secretaries be more productive but also improves services to client with faster turnaround times of documents. 

Click here to have your own free trial of outsourcing. 

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

Experts in digital transcription for lawyers

April 23, 2008

What do you think makes an expert, expert? I think it can be summarised into three categories:

  • Knowledge
  • Skills
  • Experience

Knowledge of lawyers’ needs must always come first. Document Direct’s team of typists are made up of experienced legal secretaries who have worked in the various areas of law, whether that is conveyancing, litigation, family or wills and trusts, etc. We speak the same language and have little difficulty with legal terminology.

We have knowledge of digital dictation software and devices (easy to use) to help the lawyers get their job done more efficiently. How to set up and install digital dictation software and devices on a home computer so a lawyer can work from home is a simple task we undertake regularly for our clients.

The obvious skills required are excellent audio typing skills, good word processing and computer skills. Less obvious skills for an outsourced typist will be how they problem solve for their clients. Remember, our typists don’t have access to files and papers and quite often their only resources are each other and the internet.

And experience of using all of the knowledge and skills together make for good problem solving skills and the ability to apply those skills to a wide range of situations and scenarios.

An outsourced secretary will have at her fingertips more knowledge, skills and experience makes an expert, expert.

Posted by Jayne Smith | Filed Under Digital Dictation for Lawyers | Leave a Comment