Chartered surveyor Kirsop & Co has implemented the BigHand digital dictation application for BlackBerry smartphones, to enable surveyors to send their property overviews over the mobile network instead of having to use analogue tapes.
The new system helps both surveyors and office secretaries to manage their incoming document workloads, as dictations for property reports can now be managed on a case by case basis, instead of waiting for surveyors to drop off analogue tapes for transcription in batches.
There is also no time delay between returning tapes to the office and the work being actioned. All dictations are now sent direct from the surveyors' BlackBerry smartphones immediately as they are prepared.
Susan Kirsop, of Kirsop & Co, said, “Surveyors spend a lot time out of the office. With the use of tapes, secretaries had the issue of ‘all or nothing’. Tapes would not be available until the surveyor could deliver the tape back to the office to pass over to the secretaries. Many dictations would not be project specific on one tape, making prioritising and sharing workload difficult. Each dictation is now project specific and sent immediately."
Secretaries now have access to visible workloads detailed on screen, and more importantly report status updates, providing the secretaries with a greater control of incoming workloads.
