H W Fisher & Company slashes document turnaround times with WinScribe Digital Dictation System
London, 14 February 2007 – Top 25 chartered accountancy firm, H W Fisher & Company, has significantly improved document typing turnaround times and service to clients after rolling out the WinScribe digital dictation system to over 125 professional staff in its London office. SRC, the UK’s exclusive WinScribe Platinum Partner, deployed the system which enables the firm’s accountants to dictate documents electronically and replaces the previous analogue tape system. The system is being used across all main service groups including Business Advisory, Taxation and Trusts, Corporate Finance, and Audit.
“Our experience using analogue tapes was typical of many accountancy firms. Not only was sound quality unsatisfactory, but tapes would go missing or break with no way of recovering lost work,” said Tony Blonk, H W Fisher & Company IT Director.
“In addition, because dictations were stored on a tape, our fee earners had to physically hand each tape to their secretary for transcription, typically once the tape was full of dictations. This meant we were experiencing problems with the length of time documents took to be completed.”
H W Fisher decided to make the switch to digital dictation workflow after a successful trial of an Olympus-based system using email to distribute fee earners’ dictations to secretaries.
“We were already familiar with the concept of digital dictation from the Olympus trial and while this was certainly an improvement over analogue, we recognised that significant improvements could be achieved by introducing a more intelligent, server-based dictation workflow system.”
Mr Blonk turned to WinScribe Platinum Partner SRC to provide a solution that would solve the problems associated with the analogue tape system and provide facilities to not only reduce costs, but also improve working efficiency.
The WinScribe-based solution provided by SRC allows H W Fisher’s fee earners to dictate via a range of devices, including Olympus DS-4000 and DS-3300 handheld recorders and DR-2000 handheld microphones. WinScribe’s Intelligent Work Management technology immediately routes dictations to the secretary or team of secretaries who are best suited and able to type the work. The solution also provides real-time management information on the status of work. The WinScribe system prioritises and reprioritises the firm’s dictations to ensure target turnaround times are met and that documents are returned to clients as quickly as possible.
In addition to the WinScribe system and Olympus dictation
devices, SRC provided a range of installation and training
services to ensure the solution delivered immediate benefits
to H W Fisher’s business.
“The positive response from our users was immediate,
with both fee earners and secretaries finding the system very
easy to use. Secretaries in particular say that sound quality
is much clearer and they can now hear everything that’s
said. They also have much more information about a dictation
and know that WinScribe will make sure that the most important,
urgent work is always at the top of their list of jobs to
complete,” continued Mr Blonk.
“The most dramatic benefit has been a massive improvement in document turnaround times, from two days to just a few hours on average. But we’ve also gained much needed visibility of how much dictation is taking place and from which departments; this information is allowing us to more effectively manage and plan our resource requirements. This information will be invaluable as the firm’s industry groups expand to meet the changing needs of our clients, enabling us to remain competitive.”
Chris Hart CEO of SRC said, “Having implemented our dictation and document creation solutions in over 250 Professional Services firms we are seeing increased interest in the accountancy sector, as firms look to analyse and improve productivity of secretarial support staff, better support remote and home working, and provide customers with a better client service”.
