The goal of the dictation and transcription process is to increase the speed of document creation and lower its cost. Today, with the advent of digital dictation, document creation speed has never been quicker.
Prior to the introduction of dictation equipment in the late 1800s, the traditional way of taking dictation would be to speak it out loud to a secretary. Dictators were mostly high-level business executives and high-level executives whose time was regarded as quite valuable. Instead of manually producing documents, it was much better to focus their time and attention on much more specialized and more profitable tasks. Exceptionally proficient transcriptionists utilized specialized stenography and typing skills to quickly produce documents. Due to this fact, highly compensated authors were more efficient, productive and profitable, while documents were created much more rapidly.
What's Digital Dictation with Workflow and What are the Advantages?
The earliest dictating equipment introduced by Thomas Edison in 1877 captured sound on physical recording media; originally tinfoil and wax. This physical capture media continued to evolve over time. In the 1970s, magnetic micro-cassette tape recording was introduced, and this type of physical voice-capture media is still prevalent in legal firms today.
Digital Dictation takes advantage of technologies to capture and send voice-recordings in a digital format and deliver them to a typist for document creation. Rather than capturing voice on physical media, voice to text software facilitates the capture of voice - digitally - on PCs and laptops and other digital devices such as hand-held digital recorders and Blackberry devices. Digital capture provides many advantages over tape-based capture:
Removal of physical delivery requirement: In today’s business environment, access to exceptionally fast internal networks and high speed web connections opens the doora lot speedier techniques of delivering voice files. Digital voice files are able to be instantaneously sent over LAN, WAN, broadband and wireless connections.
Utilizing magnetic tapes requires a very manually intensive delivery system. The participants in the workflow must expend time and effort on tasks which have nothing to do with their key responsibility in the workflow; authors dictating and typists typing.
Greater work distribution efficiency: Whilst only one transcriptionist can process numerous jobs on one tape, digital dictation creates a single job for each recording. These jobs are accessible to all transcriptionists.
- Superior quality audio files.
- Digital voice files are not susceptible to harm and loss; no tape replacement costs; no duplication of attorneys' efforts.
- Authors can easily identify priority jobs; insert and overwrite.
- Mobility; authors and typists can deliver and access work remotely.
Some firms make the transition from analog tape based dictation to digital dictation without utilizing a centralized dictation pprocess. In this scenario, attorneys and their personal secretaries (or occasionally small groups of attorneys and secretaries) work autonomously within the firm using e-mail or file transfers for delivery. While you will find definite improvements when simply moving from analog to digital, this decentralized digital process still entails a manually intensive user interaction. Authors and typist must manually open Windows Explorer, manually navigate to file locations, and manually copy files; with email, users should open mail clients, physically monitor inboxes, manually open mail and manually attach or download attached files. When sharing work, it is challenging or impossible to figure out which jobs have already been processed by an additional typist (e-mail), and attorneys and transcription managers have no insight into the present status of work.
The Outcomes of Digital Dictation with Workflow
Time - Digital Dictation Systems with Workflow take advantage of technologies to automate manual processes to ensure that attorneys only dictate and transcriptionists only type. As a result, the time formerly required to facilitate capture, delivery, and tracking of dictations is given back to the attorneys and administrative support staff. Accordingly, attorneys have much more time to provide more specialized legal services to more customers; legal or administrative assistants create more documents and/or have more time to provide other useful tasks for attorneys.
Profitability - As stated earlier, an attorney’s time is the firm’s most valuable commodity. By giving back time previously lost in analog and manual processes, attorneys are more productive and the firm is much more profitable.
Increased Customer Service - When attorneys have considerably more time to devote to more customers, customers are given quicker and more attentive service, while faster document production allows for expedited deliverables. As a result, customers receive the very best service at the best value.
Quality of Experience - Freeing attorneys to only dictate and typists to only type, removes frustrations and also the instances of user error that may disrupt the process and delay results. Accordingly, attorneys and administration personnel accomplish a higher level of job satisfaction with far less stress.
