In praise of digital dictation

I suppose it's a sign of the times, but I seem to dictate fewer and fewer letters these days. Most communication with clients, and increasingly with HMRC, is by email.

Most of our routine correspondence is based on template letters, so one-off letters are becoming something of a rarity - which has become a bit of an issue.

The problem I have been running into is that I have been dictating the odd letter onto my dictatation machine and leaving it until it has enough to be worth typing up - which on occasions has taken a couple of weeks! Those letters that I dictated promptly end up going out slightly less promptly than I had intended.

I use an Olympus digital dictaphone, no tapes, everything is recorded onto an SD memory card and then using a USB connection to my laptop transferred to a folder on the server. The original intention was that several of us could upload dictatation from office or home for a single typist to handle centrally.

However, I have recently worked out that I can also plug the device into my laptop and use it as a microphone to dictate directly onto the server rather than saving it to the dictaphone. The neat thing is that the controls on the device also control the software, eg play, pause, rewind, etc so I can dictate away without having to reach for my computer mouse all the time.

From an efficiency point of view it means that my secretary gets each letter as I dictate them and can type them up almost immediately - well, at least the same day - without me having to remember to upload that day's dictation.

It may only be a small thing, and maybe I'm way behind everyone else on this, but it represents a big step forward for me. And it's also a big improvement in client service. If you're still using tapes, have a look at digital dictation and see what you're missing!