Property consultant dictation gets BigHand

Property consultancy, Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH) is in the midst of rolling out new digital dictation software to improve the efficiency of report production.

Before embarking on successful pilot in three of its 28 UK offices last year, LSH relied on physically sending tapes of property reports dictated by consultants while on location to its pool of secretaries.

Ben Hunter, associate director at Lambert Smith Hampton told IT PRO that, prior to deploying the new software from specialist BigHand, the company would rely on hiring temps to help transcribe and prepare reports to ease workloads when its secretaries were off sick or on holiday.

"We have not had the need to employ temps since the introduction of BigHand3, which will save us a considerable sum," he said. "I am certain that these savings, along with other cost eliminations, will be substantial at the end of this financial year and represent a visible return on our investment."

LSH consultants now use Olympus handheld digital recording devices to create audio files used in their reports. The files are uploaded to a central BigHand3 server via the internet when the device is docked and the consultant emails them to their secretary. And workflow provided by a central BigHand3 server automatically routes and uploads the files to the corresponding secretary's dedicated dictation folder.

Hunter said each office administrator, who has access to the central files, can then allocate excess work to other secretaries and other offices if needed, facilitating effective work sharing across different departments and enabling senior secretaries to focus on other, core business functions.

"We find that the system massively increases work sharing between secretaries, resulting in faster document turnaround," he said. "And, where it would have taken a week to turn a report around before, it now takes three days; which we can sometimes charge a premium for."

He added that the LSH IT team were particularly keen on the fact that data is compressed when uploaded from the dictation device to the central server, relieving extra loads on its network infrastructure.

And secretaries like the fact that they can download the files to their local drive for speedy and offline access, as well as for consistency's sake, because the files are locked centrally once allocated and accessed locally.

Hunter also said LSH has now, as a result, also signed a new contract with specialist, UK-based transcription service provider, Voicepath whose systems interface directly with the BigHand3 server facilitating even more cost-effective and speedier turnaround on reports than LSH's previous reliance on temporary staff.

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