5 time saving tactics

The first tactic focuses on one of the key components in saving time across the organization – managing vast amounts of data. For example, law firms managing briefs, transcripts, statements, and other legal memoranda must be executed with consistency and accuracy. While many firms and medical practices utilize technology to support various areas of the business, many are not yet fully leveraging the power of dictation software, which can be an untapped area for workflow optimisation.

This is where technological innovations can help. By centralising the administration of dictation software, firms adn medical practices enable all workflow and user settings – including the settings on any hardware input devices – to be quickly and easily installed, configured, updated, and maintained for all users. This helps keep all staff within the firm or practice on the same page and reduces the cumbersome process of collaborating on projects with numerous contributors.

Another easy way to save hours in the day is simplifying document creation. Digitized and automated dictation and transcription workflow allows lawyers, doctors and other professionals to skip multi-step and multi-channel handoff processes to assistants and other support staff when creating documents. Analogue recorders, such as magnetic cassettes, are prone to damage and deterioration, they also make storage and preservation of raw data difficult and costly over time.

Nowadays, digital speech recording solutions are intuitive and user-friendly. Recordings can be sent by simply docking the dictation device to a laptop or sending their dictation files from their smartphones. Through a digital voice recorder or simply via a professional voice recorder app on their smartphones, they can easily prioritize recordings, eliminating the need for separate emails, calls, or handwritten notes. It also facilitates one-step file sharing within the document creation workflow, as in many situations multiple authors and reviewers need access to shared information.

Most busy professionals welcome any tips to do more with limited time in the day, and again, tactics around leveraging technology can be helpful. The time and energy it takes to type documents, give direction and guidance to support staff, and execute administrative tasks, are better spent dedicated to higher-value legal analysis and more profitable services for clients. Speech recognition technologies cut down on the amount of time spent on administrative tasks by mitigating manual processes.

When urgent client or patient needs arise, these technologies can also cut down on the scrambling and coordination in getting materials created quickly. This empowers legal, corporate and medical professionals to improve client and patient responsiveness and meet their needs with less friction.

An equally important tactic is to maximize mobility. Today’s workforces are increasingly mobile Being able to make the world their office allows legal and corporate professionals more flexibility in their schedules and enables them to make their time work better for their individual needs.

Whether they are used to prepare for client meetings while commuting or to quickly draft a document at home, secure smartphone apps with capabilities for instant transcription and data transfer to the office mean dictation becomes as accessible as email, text, and other commonly used applications. Using such robust tools directly from their smartphones, legal and corporate professionals are able to deliver the same work on-the-go as they do in the office.

Lastly, it’s important to consider tactics to increase data security. Legal firms and medical practices handle confidential information on a daily basis, and safeguarding client and patient data is paramount to maintain a professional reputation and remain in business. Physical records and transcripts are more vulnerable than digital files as it is easier for breach or theft to go undetected or untraced.

Here too, voice technology can protect both clients and firms with state-of-the-art data security. Digital voice recorders and professional smartphone apps can digitize recordings and store them in the cloud, where data is encrypted in real time using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) that has been approved for the most highly classified government information. In addition, PIN codes and other access-restricting features protect the voice recorder itself against unauthorized use. Capabilities like these help give legal and medical professionals greater peace of mind in keeping sensitive information safe.