Larken and Co switches from a stand-alone Digital Dictation system to BigHand’s SaaS solution BigHand Professional to enable cloud-based working.

The firm’s previous Digital Dictation provider was unsupported on the Cloud, urging Larken and Co to look elsewhere. Sally Smith, Practice Manager at Larken and Co, comments on the switch, “We had been using our old system for almost a decade, and it became more difficult to integrate into our new ways of working. We needed a solution that could enable our Fee Earners to easily work across our offices in Newark and West Bridgford. BigHand Professional suited our requirement to move all of our data to the Cloud, something that we wouldn’t have been able to do if we stayed with our old system.”

BigHand Professional is a secure hosted solution giving firms access to enterprise-quality voice productivity technology without any infrastructure or support requirements - and without the need for a large upfront investment.

The introduction of BigHand Professional has been met with positivity in the team, and Larken and Co have already seen some great benefits. Sally explains, “We were an early adopter of Digital Dictation technology so we are familiar with the concept. However, BigHand Professional is so easy to use. 

For example, the recorder window is bigger and more intuitive than other systems, and the navigation buttons are self-explanatory, which is not always the case with other platforms. These little things are important as it’s frustrating for time-pressured legal professionals to battle with technology that’s difficult to understand.”

The ease of use is just one of the benefits experienced by the team. The quick administration is also a key driver to the technology uptake in both
offices. Sally explains, “If a secretary is off-sick or on holiday I can quickly link up another secretary to the solicitor who needs assistance. It’s very easy to do, requires no training and it’s instant. This means that the solicitor isn’t going to lose any valuable time and any outstanding Dictations will automatically appear in the new secretary’s work-in-progress folder.”

The installation process was an important part of the project for Sally, and the new system needed to be straightforward to implement. Sally comments, “You can simply download it and install it on any Windows computer. It’s important for us that we have a standardised system across both offices so users get used to just one system. With BigHand Professional, they are looking up the same information, from different locations but the technology still looks the same and all their work appears how they left it.

Larken and Co currently have 28 users of BigHand Professional and are looking to adopt the Speech Recognition functionality soon.