Armstrong Watson are a leading firm of Accountants, Business and Financial Advisers with over 400 staff in 16 offices.

Always on the lookout for new technology that can help streamline internal processes, the firm had recently taken on a new Document Management System. The process of implementing this tool soon highlighted a gap in their current infrastructure that could potentially have damaging consequences.

Paul Cullen, IT Manager at Armstrong Watson, says: ‘We identified a gap in our internal processes for the timely transcription and recording of meeting notes. The method was very laborious, with the notes often never looked at again. In worst case scenarios, the meeting notes would not be recorded at all. We needed to find a way to improve this and make it easier for our staff to quickly transcribe meeting notes. The answer was BigHand Speech Recognition. The technology removes the need to type up meeting notes, they can simply be dictated and filed in the DMS thereby improving turnaround times and avoiding any potential legal implications where meetings have not been accurately recorded.

BigHand Speech Recognition automatically converts voice into text, so you can create whole documents with just your voice. It builds a highly accurate speech profile for each person, and short dictations are typically returned as text within minutes. Ultimately, BigHand Speech Recognition can be used to do any work that you would have traditionally had to manually type.

The implementation process went smoothly, as Paul reveals. "The BigHand team had our project thoroughly planned. The training team were superb, which ensured our user adoption rates were high."

The firm are experiencing significant efficiency gains, using pools of secretaries to increase flexibility and ease of workload delegation. Specific workflows have been set up for meeting note requests so these can be dealt with in a timely and efficient manner, with no need for proof-reading. The firm’s ultimate goal is to create bespoke workflows for each department.

Paul concludes: ‘BigHand has undoubtedly helped Armstrong Watson to streamline and improve our internal processes. The technology is very easy to use, and being able to dictate meeting notes, emails and larger documents frees up the time of both fee earners and support staff, allowing them to concentrate on more client-facing billable work.