7 Headaches cured
September 7, 2009
What 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.
The latest solicitors to outsource dictation
November 18, 2008
Goodmans Solicitors are the latest law firm to use outsourcing to save overhead and increase the profitability of their work.
Lynn Evans, Practice Director, says “We’re making the most of our investment in the digital dictation system we have installed and outsourcing to Document Direct has helped the business run smoothly during times of staff shortage and heavy workloads.”
Law practices are making small changes can have huge savings, often slashing overhead by as much as 50%. Investing in a digital dictation system doesn’t have to be expensive as we can give our clients our dictation system free of charge.
Read more client testimonials here.
What’s your reason to outsource your typing?
August 14, 2008
Document Direct is here to provide you with the best outsource typing service that you want and need. We’ve found many reasons why businesses and individuals choose to outsource their dictation. Answer our poll and let us know your reason. If you choose “other” then please leave a comment in the box at the bottom of the page.
Loading ...Feasibility of outsource typing
August 2, 2008
A busy lawyer dictates 30 minutes per day. This costs £36 per day to outsource. Over a month (20 days) this equates to £720, that’s less than £9,000 a year. The average cost to employ a secretary is £20,000 a year when on-costs are taken into account. It’s possible to slash the secretarial overhead by 50% yet still have 100% efficiency.
Preparing a cost analysis for a business which is already using a digital dictation system is quite easy. A digital system with workflow management allows reports to be created so it’s easy to see the length of the recording, how long it’s taken to be typed and who by. Document Direct uses the reporting system from its dictation system to calculate the charges on per minute of recording basis so costs comparator between in-house typists and outsourcing can be given almost immediately.
For those businesses still using analogue tapes, it would be useful for the length of the dictation to be recorded manually (for at least a week) as the dictation is being completed. Otherwise, quite often the only comparator will be the number of typed pages and completed documents.
A useful guide will be to “see” how much dictation a busy personal injury lawyer produces each week and how many typed pages that equates to.
In the documents available below it can been seen that a busy personal injury lawyer has produced 3 hours 11 minutes dictation in one week in June, which has produced 142 typed pages of text. The costs for this, at our current charge of £1.30 per minute, equates to £248.30. The length of typing time is irrelevant as the cost is fixed to the dictation time. Needless to say, all deadlines for completion of the work were met in good time. What is interesting to note is that the dictation was received during the working hours of 8.30am and 6.00pm, Monday to Friday, so costs should be compared to the emloyment of a temporary or permanent secretary in-house for those hours.
There are many different reasons to outsource and just as many benefits. Don’t take our word for it - click on the links below to download case studies from Document Direct clients.
- Case Study from Parkin S Booth, Insolvency Practitioners
- Case Study from India Buildings Chambers, Barristers
- Case Study from Brown Turner Solicitors
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