sponsored by

The rapid evolution of office technology is taking many professionals through a "forward to the past" experience when it comes to dictation. John Stokdyk presents an introduction to new wave of digital dictation.

Up until the 1980s, organisation man was not complete without his trusty secretary ready to take dictation in a spiral notebook. The advent of equal opportunities and new-fangled tape transcription machines changed the nature of that paternalistic stereotype, but the typing pool held sway until Bill Gates' vision of a computer on every desk started coming true. Ever since then, executives have spent more of their own time typing their letters and doing their own admin on a PC.

The mobile phone era has seen a resurgence of interest in traditional dictation. With a pocket sized device able to record your thoughts and send the file back to base, it is now possible to draft memos, advice and reports in almost any environment.

This article takes an introductory look at the new wave of digital dictation. With accountancy firms following the example of many legal practitioners, we will examine the technology involved and pros and cons of letting your mouth rather than fingers do the talking.

Digital dictation tools
Along with the 8-track and cassettes, magnetic tape dictation machines are becoming objects of historical curiosity. Manufacturers such as Philips, Grundig and Olympus have migrated to handheld digital devices, while almost any contemporary mobile phone will have a note-recording facility. Computers, too, are now equipped as standard with microphone inputs and recording software, so the tools for dictation are probably sitting in front of you as you read this article.

There are two obvious advantages to digital technology, and a few less obvious ones, according to nFlow's Rob Lancashire. First, there are no tapes, so it will be harder to lose the documents you dictate and digital storage is less prone to physical deterioration or abuse by your child or pet. With digital tools, the audio file you record can be sent immediately via email to colleagues for processing rather than having to be physically dispatched.

The less obvious advantages come from the nature of digital storage. Unlike tapes, you can quickly navigate through a sound file and delete or move sections of the document, or record new material into an existing document.

Handheld dictation machines may still look the same, the traditional footpedal controls used by audio typists have become much more streamlined, typically comprising a light headset and a small footpedal that both connect to a PC via USB cables.

Paul Scholes uses a Philips Pocket Memo 9360 with accompanying 7177 transcription kit, which basically amounts to a foot pedal and USB lead. "This looks and works in exactly the same way as standard tape machines - slide the control down to rewind and overwrite. And because it's digital, you can insert as well," he explained in Any Answers. "When you've done you just plug the handset into the USB port and can save or email the digital speech standard (DSS) file. My colleague then double-clicks on the file and the software fires up and she uses the foot peddle as before to stop start rewind etc."

Paul Johnston is an Olympus user and when he switched to digital dictation in 2007, "My secretary asked why it took so long!" he reported. "The quality is much better than tapes and should she not be able to come to the office, she can work from her laptop. Also when there is just too much work for a day she can again go home and work from there (as overtime). Finally you can keep copies on your office computers, which is useful if you want to record a meeting."

Johnston highlights the underlying premise that makes digital dictation particularly attractive for professional firms. Because digital audio files are portable, they can be stored and transported around the organisation as part of an automated paperless workflow. For example if a partner's usual secretary was unavailable, redirects could be put in place to send the files to a back-up typist or the firm's typing pool. The source audio files could also be connected to their companion documents and stored within client folders in practice and client management programs.

The future of digital dictation is speech recognition; programs such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking [1] represent the next natural step in taking the recorded file and converting it to text. Microsoft and other key IT players reckon that touch and speech interfaces will become the norm for computer users and are investing heavily in this area.

But for Ronnie Stanley, the future hasn't quite arrived. All the users on AccountingWEB confirmed that speech recognition requires a lot of RAM memory (2GB or more) and patience in training the program to recognise your voice. While it is good for longer documents, "For normal correspondence, you wouldn't want to send a Dragon dictated letter out to a client without checking it very, very carefully first," Stanley reported. For shorter standard documents, it was better to set up templates. For other letters, he suggested, either get a part-time typist, outsource digital files to a remote secretary or learn to type.

Assessing the benefits

Some see digital dictation as a retrograde step back to a bygone age, but nFlow's Rob Lancashire argues that digital dictation is more efficient than self-typing. Many professionals can achieve reasonably high speeds with two-fingered typing, but they cannot match properly trained touch typists for accuracy, the most important quality.

According to one study quoted by nFlow, those who dictated documents produced around 16 papers per day, amounting to a total of 23 A4 pages of text. This compared to an average of 21 A4 pages a day from those who typed the documents themselves. The annual cost saving within law firms over self typing was between €27,543.00 and €31,135.00 per lawyer.

Having targeted legal firms, nFlow and other providers are finding an increasingly receptive market among accountancy firms. Unlike office-bound lawyers, accountants leave their offices more often and rely more heavily on remote work tools such as smartphones and laptops. They are also under more pressure to streamline their operations, Lancashire notes: "Accountancy is being commoditised and things like Practice Assurance and fixed fee projects are driving efficiencies."

Mobile dictation tools make it possible for accountants to work on documents, memos and instructions while with clients and to send them for processing from the premises. "That means a faster response for the client and visibly demonstrates the efficiency of your efficient service. Digital dictation also encourages people to keep more regular and accessible notes," Lancashire says.

Compliance plays a strong part in the equation, he adds. "Practice Assurance and similar schemes are all about having process in place and making them stick. Getting documents typed up and stored quickly maintains good quality of information and gives added authority to advice."

Within the organisation, a well managed digital dictation regime improves the visibility of text-handling processes, which can be monitored and managed more easily. Typists around the organisation - an any location, in fact - can be assigned work as needed and smoother workflows lead to increases in average productivity and better team cohesion, he added.

Suppliers such as nFlow struggle to produce solid figures to quantify the returns that can be gained from these improvements, because so few organisations keep track of their typing and document-processing costs, Lancashire says. But the productivity gains do filter through to fee income and profits. The management information available from an automated workflow system such as nFlow's makes it possible to bill services more accurately and as Essex-based accountants Edmund Carr discovered, more efficient dictation practices freed up time for business development work.