Partner saves 150 hours per year and maximises secretarial efficiency with digital dictation software
London, UK - 1st July 2008 – Top-30 law firm Shoosmiths today acclaimed BigHand’s digital dictation software as having a profound impact on flexible working practices across the organisation, enabling lawyers and secretarial staff to collaborate seamlessly while on the move or at home, maximising efficiency and improving client service. The voice productivity solution allows users to dictate from many different locations and send dictations outlining document content and tasks as secure files using an intelligent workflow system.
Partner and head of the national finance team at Shoosmiths, Sean Wright, estimates that the solution has saved him up to 4 hours per week, totalling over 150 hours per year, because he can use the system while travelling between six regional offices and working from home. The workflow system has helped both lawyers and secretaries to be more efficient through BigHand’s easy-to-use interface.
Sean Wright comments: “The BigHand system is giving us significant commercial benefit by enabling us to communicate with our personal assistants instantly, wherever we are. Whether drafting memos, client correspondence or billing notes, working on general admin or carrying out management tasks, they all appear in our secretary’s BigHand work in progress dashboard instantly allowing them to start work straight away. Even before we finish passing work to secretaries via BigHand, finished documents can be simultaneously arriving in our inboxes. We can now dedicate the extra time that we save to business development, client relations or simply to maintain a healthy work life balance. Over the course of a year those time savings add up and naturally I would expect there is an accumulative impact on profitability.”
Jeanette Elderfield, personal assistant to Sean Wright at the firm, explains: “As a department head, Sean’s workload is large and varied, and he can be working any time of the day or night. Rather than experience a major peak of work after he returns to the office, his work filters through immediately regardless of where he is at any particular moment, removing any time delay. Since the dictations arrive in regular intervals, the secretaries can stay on top of workloads more easily especially as many also support other fee earners. The solution enables us to better manage our time and clients are getting the most responsive service possible.”
Shoosmiths has over 350 BigHand Digital Dictation users across offices in Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Nottingham, Reading and Solent.
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Tags: digital dictation, flexible working, home working, personal assistant, time saving
