Wainwright Ryan Eid Lawyers Decrease Document Turnaround by 50% and Eliminate the Document Back-Log with BigHand Speech Recognition

Sydney, Australia, 14^th March 2013 – BigHand, the leader in voice productivity and workflow digital dictation for the professional services sector, has today announced that Melbourne based law firm Wainwright Ryan Eid has rolled out BigHand’s voice productivity solution and speech recognition technology firm wide. The firm realised their previous analogue tape dictation system was restricting the firm’s growth potential and resulting in less than efficient work practices. The firm wanted to embrace the latest technology to overcome these issues and make the process of document creation as efficient and productive as possible, whilst improving staff utilisation. Troy Edwards, manager of the firm’s BigHand project explains, “At a time when the Australian economy is slow, we recognised that technology had to play an integral part in making sure we remain competitive and continue to provide our clients with a top level of service whilst keeping costs down. We did look at some standalone speech recognition software, but we quickly came to the conclusion that for it to be adopted and effective firm-wide we needed the advanced development and support that only BigHand could deliver.”

BigHand Speech Recognition allows users to convert voice to text easily and accurately and complete entire documents without even needing to touch the keyboard. Troy Edwards comments, “Our assistants used to spend about 80% of their day typing. We estimate that this has been reduced to around 65%. They are now able to pick up additional activities, enabling them to contribute to a wider variety of tasks which in turn improves their motivation, job satisfaction and ultimately, their productivity.”

BigHand has provided Wainwright Ryan Eid with a scalable and easily adopted solution that has made a significant impact on their business in a short period of time. Troy Edwards continues: “BigHand Speech Recognition has enabled us to free up time that we previously spent typing documents. This has enabled us to take on and complete more work within quicker timeframes without the need to take on additional staff and the associated overheads which come with that. Document turnaround times have decreased by 50% and freed up our lawyers’ time, allowing them to spend more face to face time with our clients, ultimately generating more profit and, importantly, a greater level of client satisfaction. We can now better manage the workflow so secretaries can pick up work as and when it comes in, even from an author’s smartphone. The back-log which was once up to 14 days long at busy times has now been reduced almost to zero. This has been facilitated by us being able to easily measure the work coming in and analyse who is doing the work. This transparency also acts as a motivation and performance management tool.”

BigHand has been easily adopted by all in the firm with most authors voluntarily handing back their old analogue tape devices after one week, a milestone the firm anticipated would take much longer to achieve. Troy Edwards concludes,” The authors were impressed with how accurate the speech recognition component was, with first-time accuracy increasing from 70% to an impressive 95% after just one week. The BigHand training was efficient and effective with minimal disruption. Authors’ initial profiles were trained by BigHand in just 30 minutes. Minimal impact on workload combined with efficiency gains and cost reduction has proved the investment to be a great success. We recommend that firms who are seeking new ways to give themselves a boost in a slowing economy look to BigHand to provide them with the technology and tools required to boost efficiency and cut costs. The return on investment is quickly realised and the results speak for themselves.”

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About BigHand

The BigHand Group supports over 170,000 professionals globally, across 1,600 organisations, and is based out of Sydney, Chicago, London, and Toronto. BigHand’s voice productivity technology combines workflow digital dictation, smartphone applications and speech recognition to offer the legal market a technology that allows professionals to use their voice to get more done while improving operational efficiencies and reducing overhead costs. Further info is available at www.bighand.com.au