H W Fisher & Company Slashes Document Turnaround Times with WinScribe Digital Dictation System

Top 25 chartered accountancy firm, H W Fisher & Company, has significantly improved document typing turnaround times and service to clients after rolling out the WinScribe digital dictation system to over 125 professional staff in its London office. SRC, the UK's exclusive WinScribe Platinum Partner, deployed the system which enables the firm's accountants to dictate documents electronically and replaces the previous analogue tape system. The system is being used across all main service groups including Business Advisory, Taxation and Trusts, Corporate Finance, and Audit.

London, February 16, 2007 -- Top 25 chartered accountancy firm, H W Fisher & Company, has significantly improved document typing turnaround times and service to clients after rolling out the WinScribe digital dictation system to over 125 professional staff in its London office. SRC, the UK's exclusive WinScribe Platinum Partner, deployed the system which enables the firm's accountants to dictate documents electronically and replaces the previous analogue tape system. The system is being used across all main service groups including Business Advisory, Taxation and Trusts, Corporate Finance, and Audit.

"Our experience using analogue tapes was typical of many accountancy firms. Not only was sound quality unsatisfactory, but tapes would go missing or break with no way of recovering lost work," said Tony Blonk, H W Fisher & Company IT Director. "In addition, because dictations were stored on a tape, our fee earners had to physically hand each tape to their secretary for transcription, typically once the tape was full of dictations. This meant we were experiencing problems with the length of time documents took to be completed."

H W Fisher decided to make the switch to digital dictation workflow after a successful trial of an Olympus-based system using email to distribute fee earners' dictations to secretaries. "We were already familiar with the concept of digital dictation from the Olympus trial and while this was certainly an improvement over analogue, we recognised that significant improvements could be achieved by introducing a more intelligent, server-based dictation workflow system."

Mr Blonk turned to WinScribe Platinum Partner SRC to provide a solution that would solve the problems associated with the analogue tape system and provide facilities to not only reduce costs, but also improve working efficiency.

The WinScribe-based solution provided by SRC allows H W Fisher's fee earners to dictate via a range of devices, including Olympus DS-4000 and DS-3300 handheld recorders and DR-2000 handheld microphones. WinScribe's Intelligent Work Management technology immediately routes dictations to the secretary or team of secretaries who are best suited and able to type the work. The solution also provides real-time management information on the status of work. The WinScribe system prioritises and reprioritises the firm's dictations to ensure target turnaround times are met and that documents are returned to clients as quickly as possible.

In addition to the WinScribe system and Olympus dictation devices, SRC provided a range of installation and training services to ensure the solution delivered immediate benefits to H W Fisher's business. "The positive response from our users was immediate, with both fee earners and secretaries finding the system very easy to use. Secretaries in particular say that sound quality is much clearer and they can now hear everything that's said. They also have much more information about a dictation and know that WinScribe will make sure that the most important, urgent work is always at the top of their list of jobs to complete," continued Mr Blonk.

"The most dramatic benefit has been a massive improvement in document turnaround times, from two days to just a few hours on average. But we've also gained much needed visibility of how much dictation is taking place and from which departments; this information is allowing us to more effectively manage and plan our resource requirements. This information will be invaluable as the firm's industry groups expand to meet the changing needs of our clients, enabling us to remain competitive."

Chris Hart CEO of SRC said, "Having implemented our dictation and document creation solutions in over 250 Professional Services firms we are seeing increased interest in the accountancy sector, as firms look to analyse and improve productivity of secretarial support staff, better support remote and home working, and provide customers with a better client service".


About H W Fisher & Company
H W Fisher & Company is a significant firm of Chartered Accountants comprising 24 partners and 300 staff. The wider Fisher Organisation is a multi-faceted group with specialist companies active in corporate finance, information technology, property, and mergers and acquisitions. Overall, we provide a breadth and quality of services rarely encountered outside the ranks of the largest international practices, combined with a commitment to personal service and value for money - qualities that are often associated with firms smaller than our own.

About SRC
SRC are the UK's leading document creation professionals. The company's mission is to ensure its customers achieve cost savings and productivity improvements through the delivery, implementation and support of leading edge document creation technologies. SRC provides consultancy for all elements of the professional document creation process together with high-quality delivery, implementation and support services. SRC's teams combine years of industry experience with the ability and commitment to deliver solutions that not only meet but exceed customers' objectives. SRC only partners with best-of-breed, global technology providers, including WinScribe, Nuance, Olympus, Philips, Grundig and Workshare. The company is the UK's exclusive WinScribe Platinum Partner and is the holder of several Dragon NaturallySpeaking Partner Awards recognising the high-quality of its speech recognition solutions. SRC is a Microsoft Certified Partner. SRC also sells document creation products via the SRC Direct website. SRC is privately owned and backed by leading financial institution, Esprit Capital Partners.

About WinScribe
WinScribe is a world-leading provider of digital dictation software supporting business requirements for digital dictation, transcription, voice recognition, and workflow management. First developed in 1995, WinScribe has offices in the USA, UK, New Zealand and Switzerland, with more than 100 sales partners in over 25 countries supporting more than 300,000 users worldwide. The WinScribe solution is built on Microsoft architecture, to ensure easy integration and maintenance. WinScribe also supports a wide range of manufacturer-independent dictation devices and is scaleable from small, single office locations up to large multinational corporations. WinScribe is fully customizable to meet the needs of a number of significant vertical markets including Legal, Law Enforcement, Healthcare, Transcription, Insurance and Government sectors. www.winscribe.com

Contact:
Chris Geoffrey
WinScribe, UK
+44 (0)118 984 2133
cgeoffrey@winscribeeurope.com