BigHand, the market leading voice productivity vendor in the global legal and professional services sector has today announced the largest UK law firm deployment of integrated Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software at Shoosmiths. Following a highly successful pilot with 10 authors, the first phase will see the firm deploying BigHand’s server-side speech recognition module to a further 100 authors in order to supplement secretarial support, increasing the volume of business undertaken without increasing costs. Dragon speech recognition technology is proven to be a viable proposition for firms looking to improve efficiency, and BigHand is leading the way in the supply of low-risk, highly effective speech recognition projects for law firms.
Deployment of speech recognition is a collaborative initiative between the HR and IT departments, Louise Hadland, HR Director at Shoosmiths comments:
‘’Like many firms coming through the recession, we are reviewing our processes to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Following consultation with secretaries and Practice Groups, and a subsequent trial of the software, we identified speech recognition as a tool that will help us grow the business constructively and positively without increasing costs. Dragon speech recognition lends itself to high volume note taking such as file notes, interviews, meeting notes and minutes. Removing this work from secretaries frees them to focus on client facing documentation; as a result we expect to increase the volume of work undertaken whilst maintaining our ratios.
Our user base is demand led, rather than forcing change which may have a negative impact, authors are hearing positive comments from their colleagues and requesting the software. Solicitors are now challenging the way they work; room to grow and think differently is an opportunity to question working practice. Just because work has always been done a certain way does not mean it should necessarily continue.’’
David Bason, IS Director for Shoosmiths adds:
‘’BigHand’s innovative voice productivity platform successfully delivers speech recognition technology that represents a significant opportunity for us to increase our productivity. Combined with a workflow review and BigHand for BlackBerry deployment for out of office working, we have very quickly started to prove that speech recognition delivers quantifiable results. Our experience of the implementation and training has been excellent and we are confident that usage will continue to increase.’’
Ben Mills, Managing Director, EMEA Legal & Professional Services, BigHand comments:
‘‘BigHand is once again leading the market by focusing on how a user works rather than what technology can do. Whether an author is fully assisted by a secretary, partially assisted or non-assisted, the BigHand voice productivity platform can deliver a solution that will help them get more done in their working day by using the most effective communication device they have, their voice.”