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03 June 2008
Outsourced transcription provider, Voicepath, has strengthened its position as the UK's leading provider of transcription services to law firms with another successful year.
The legal DDS (digital dictation system) market may be plateauing but the transcription outsourcing market is decidedly buoyant as growing numbers of firms become aware of its benefits, and as integrations between outsourced providers' and DD suppliers' systems make it easier than ever for firms to outsource to an external company.
Voicepath has led the way with full integrations between its systems and those of both the hardware and software DD suppliers so that the outsourcing aspect of a DDS and subsequent return of a typed document are completely seamless. Consequently it has been in a prime position to offer its high quality service to the ever increasing number of firms that are seeing outsourcing as means of reducing costs whilst enhancing fee earner support; particularly advantageous in the current economic climate.
Richard Bate, Voicepath General Manager comments: "We've had an excellent year, not only measured in terms of new customers but also in the ways we've developed our service to match our customers' changing and diverse needs.
"Results for the past 12 months show that our user base increased by 34% and there are now more than 2000 individuals using our transcription service at approximately 150 UK customer sites.
"We pride ourselves on providing a fast, high quality service. Last year, on average, documents on our fast turnaround service were returned within 45 minutes, with each document checked for accuracy by our independent Quality Control team; accuracy levels for the year averaged 99.94%. What's more, we offer SLAs that guarantee document turnaround times."
Last August, Voicepath achieved ISO 2001:9000 certification. Not only does this demonstrate its compliance with external quality standards but it assures customers that the service they receive will be of an extremely high standard. No other UK outsourcer can offer this assurance. Furthermore, its selection in September 2007 as LawNet's - the UK & Ireland's leading network of independent law firms - preferred supplier for outsourcing is testament to this.
Richard continues: "In an increasingly competitive market it's vital to meet customers' requirements not only strategically but also at the user level. When you hear stories of outsourcing projects faltering or even failing as a result of inferior services it shows just how important it is to be able to give customers what they require."
Responding to more sophisticated customer demands, Voicepath developed integrations between Voicepath and customers' case, practice and document management systems so that users don't have to 'cut & paste' on receipt of a document, as well as growing the number of firms using the 'in-system' service, an increasingly popular concept, which removes the need for any work to be transferred outside of the firm.
Bate concludes: "It has been an excellent year for Voicepath both in terms of volumes of work and in refining our service to fully meet our customers' expectations. We will be building on these developments to strengthen our position in the future."
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12 May 2008
With difficult property and capital market conditions causing a downturn in some activity in the legal market, leading transcription provider Voicepath says it is a prime time to cut overheads and create a more efficient workflow through outsourcing. Richard Bate, Voicepath General Manager comments: “Clients use our transcription service on a pay as you go basis so fixed costs such as salaries, NI contributions and benefits are completely removed. Plus, as you only pay when you use the service you’re not paying for inefficiency, downtime, sick days or holidays. This makes it an extremely cost effective way of cutting secretarial overheads.
“Typically, in our experience, client firms can reduce their typing costs by as much as 60% whilst maintaining, and often enhancing, fee earner support both in terms of guaranteed document returns and quality of transcription.”
Not only does outsourcing allow firms to reduce their overheads but it also provides the opportunity to identify practice areas that are over utilised as well as under utilised.
Nottingham based firm Nelsons is one firm that has made significant savings by outsourcing their transcription to Voicepath.
Tim Hastings, Nelsons’ CEO comments: “In practice we discovered that the cost of Voicepath processing the package of dictation was less than half of the previous internal cost. In effect, outsourcing routine work and giving more complex and organisational tasks to existing staff has exposed capacity for work which we never knew existed. Moreover, we have found the quality and timeliness of outsourced work has matched internal standards.
Bate concludes: “Many firms will be feeling the effects of the credit crunch at this time and they will benefit by assessing the efficiency of their support structure; challenging the high secretary to fee earner model and reconsidering the recruitment of any additional or replacement secretaries. Those with flexible overheads, efficient workflow and restructuring capabilities will prosper.”
13 March 2008
We read with interest your article on the new competency standards for secretaries from the Institute of Paralegals. Traditional secretarial tasks such as audio typing ceasing to be cost effective, rising secretarial salaries and the rapidly changing role of the secretary within law firms are all contributing factors for the new standards and qualifications. Certainly, these are issues that we are increasingly hearing from our customers in the move to outsource their transcription requirements.
In our experience, when outsourcing transcription to a specialist provider, the up-skilling of legal secretaries has worked most effectively for both the secretary and the firm where there has been a clear commercial awareness and commitment to it from a senior partner combined with the appropriate HR and technical support. The adoption of the standards should be viewed by firms as an ideal opportunity to reassess their own workflow efficiencies as well as promoting career progression within the firm.
Richard Bate General Manager, Voicepath
29 January 2008
Anyone who has experienced an overseas call centre recently will have come across the shortcomings of offshore outsourcing, in terms of it being good for cost-cutting but bad for customer service.
This makes the concept of sending legal work abroad, however commoditised it may be, look shaky, particularly if the legal profession is to improve its well-publicised reputation for customer service. My company retains an experienced team of trained legal typists all based in the UK and many of our customers have switched to us following negative experiences with offshore outsourcing. Solicitors Vizards Tweedie selected an offshore outsourced transcription company as its principal supplier but soon found the service had limitations. A spokesperson from Vizards told us: "While there was a minimal time difference, we found that cultural factors still had an impact on the quality of transcriptions we received. Little things like typists not being able to spell 'Piccadilly' proved annoying, especially when we had paid the supplier a premium to give each document a second proofreading. More significantly, we also encountered a certain amount of internal resistance from fee earners, who had ethical reservations about sending work abroad. They felt that such work should be retained in the UK." Consequently, Vizards began looking into the transcription options available closer to home and now employs our services.
Sending sensitive information abroad comes with other risks. In the case of India, even its own legal profession is concerned by the country's inability to deal with data theft, highlighted by a number of recent fraud cases involving outsourced financial services workers. Another critical point made in the article was that outsourcing legal work abroad would result in significant cost and time savings for busy firms. There is a case for this, but an equally strong case for the same savings being made by outsourcing within the UK. Before firms take the potentially risky step of sending work to places where it appears cheaper but comes with a hidden price, perhaps they would do better to look at their onshore outsourcing options first?
Posted by: Richard Bate, Voicepath on 29 Jan 2008
14 January 2008
London, UK, Jan 14th 2008 -- BigHand has today announced that the Lancashire based Legal 500 firm Glaisyers has reported efficiency gains within its Legal Aid practice since implementing the BigHand Digital Dictation workflow system. The Carter Reform outlines the requirement for more efficient legal aid working practices and as a result of installing the BigHand system, Glaisyers has increased its fee earning capacity with zero growth in its support team. The firm is forecasting further fee earner growth for 2008, without an increase in support.
Chris Bryan, Partner, and head of the legal aid team championed the switch from tape equipment to the BigHand system.
Chris comments:
''The Carter Reform states that legal aid firms must become both leaner and more efficient: BigHand enables firms to work far more efficiently. The workflow aspect of the technology is very strong; many of our fee earners are now able to work remotely, either at home or at court, and submit dictations direct to our internal support staff or straight through to Voicepath. We will shortly be implementing BigHand's BlackBerry dictation to further enhance the provision for remote working.
BigHand has totally removed the need for temporary cover. We experienced what must be the true acid test recently, where a key secretary was off ill for 6 weeks; this combined with pre-planned holidays left the firm with only 2 secretaries in the family department. The ability to split work between our remaining secretaries and our outsourcing partner Voicepath, ensured that all dictations and work were completed on time; quite an achievement.
The firm now outsources all attendance notes through the BigHand system direct to Voicepath. The flexibility to split dictations, with internal secretaries completing the more urgent and important skill leveled work, has enabled the firm to invest in its support team and crucially 'skill-up' secretaries.''
-ENDS-
07 November 2007
Outsourced transcription specialist Voicepath has further cemented its position as market leader following its selection as a preferred supplier for LawNet, the UK and Ireland’s leading network of law firms.
LawNet, which is the largest member owned network in the country representing more than 3000 lawyers, provides its members with access to centralised tailored support services. It is committed to quality legal services and all firms must achieve ISO 9001:2000/LawNet Quality Standard accreditation. Therefore any supplier that it selects must demonstrate its own commitment to quality.
Voicepath general manager Richard Bate comments: “At Voicepath, our top priority is to provide our customers with a fast, high quality and secure service, and we work hard to achieve this. This is extremely important to us because any firm that decides to outsource needs to be confident that our work is of the same standard, if not higher, as anything completed internally.
Helen Simpson, director of member services at LawNet, adds: “Voicepath was a natural selection for us. Its ISO certification assures its customers of the provision of a high quality service and the fact that it has integrations with all the major digital dictation systems means that all of our members, irrespective of which system they use, are able to access the service simply and securely.”
Bate concludes: “We are delighted that LawNet has awarded us preferred supplier status. We already count a number of members as customers and we look forward to working with many more.”
11 October 2007
Outsourced transcription specialist, Voicepath, has demonstrated its commitment to providing legal firms with 'cast iron' outsourcing services following its ISO 9001:2000 certification.
ISO 9001 is an internationally recognised requirements standard for Quality Management Systems (QMS) and certification is awarded to companies that have shown that they can improve the efficiency of their internal processes and, through this, the quality of service they provide to customers. By implementing a formal framework for constantly monitoring and evaluating these processes they provide security and quality conscious customers such as law firms with a valuable benchmark when selecting suppliers.
Voicepath's outsourced transcription service, the success of which depends upon Voicepath securely transcribing confidential client documents on behalf of a rapidly growing number of law firms, already had stringent working practices in place. However, it was an important goal for Voicepath to formalise these in the context of ISO requirements.
Richard Bate, general manager of Voicepath, comments: "As Voicepath continues to grow it was important for us to put in place robust procedures that matched our customers' requirements. Our QMS ensures the continuing improvement of working practices and assures our customers that we provide a quality service. ISO recognition demonstrates that we comply with external quality standards and, what's more, are committed to improving on them. It's no longer enough to claim to have high standards - you now have to be able to back those claims up."
Richard concludes: "We are delighted that NQA, who audited our Quality System, has recognised our commitment towards improving customer satisfaction levels and internal efficiency and has awarded us ISO 9001:2000 status. We look forward to driving standards ever higher in the years to come."
06 September 2007
Outsourced legal transcription specialist, Voicepath, has completed a round of integrations with all of the UK's major digital dictation system and hardware providers. This move now enables more than 77,000 fee earners in the country's biggest law firms to send work to the company as easily as it would to their internal secretaries.
Voicepath has complete integrations with the market-leading systems offered by BigHand, Crescendo, nFlow, V7 Technology and WinScribe. This means that more than 98% of DDS-enabled firms can access Voicepath's service simply and securely. (Source LTI Top 250). Such integrations mean that Voicepath's sophisticated workflow processes and systems interact seamlessly with a firm's internal dictation platform and make outsourcing a dictation a 'one click' process that is as straightforward as using an internal resource.
An added advantage for law firms cautious about outsourcing is that the Voicepath service is highly secure. Dictations are transferred to Voicepath's secure server using HTTPS protocol (a technique which safeguards private information sent via the Internet) so there is no need for firms to allow Voicepath remote access through Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections. Completed documents are also returned via the same secure technology so firms can benefit from outsourcing while their IT managers can maintain tight control over their internal systems and data and are not burdened with extra work in managing any remote access.
Voicepath general manager, Richard Bate, comments: "With the top firms under constant pressure to show their mettle through improved PEP, any measure that allows fee earners to bill more, faster, has to be welcomed. Outsourcing and improvements in IT have always set out to make this happen but have been held back by the fact that sometimes they didn't make things easy enough for users.
"This is why we committed ourselves to helping clients work more efficiently by understanding the needs of all users whilst forging close links with the major digital dictation suppliers."
A typical Voicepath and DDS integration allows Voicepath to 'appear' within a firm's systems as an internal secretary, so no special procedures are required to send work outside the firm. The additional security it provides as a 'push' based system, which was conceived to prevent the creation of many VPN user accounts over which a firm cannot have overall control, is also a significant advantage to our end users."
Richard concludes: "Here at Voicepath we firmly believe that everyone can benefit from integrated thinking - from the secretaries who are freed from repetitive typing tasks and the IT teams who know that their systems are secure and robust through to the managing partners who see their support costs decrease and fee levels increase - and the experience of our clients only reinforces this position."
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