Ringrose Law provides legal advice and services throughout Lincolnshire and Newark. With five offices spanning the county, they provide personal and commercial law in various legal areas.
Current Limitations
Although the company was already using a legacy cloud dictation system with a mobile app, some distinct limitations led them to seek a more effective solution. This included not having a document audit trail and visibility of progress on the mobile device.
Adrian Crowson Head of IT for Ringrose Law explains…
“The problem with the old mobile app was that once a dictation had been sent to the secretary, there was no way of tracking the outcome or next stage of the work. The fee earner had no idea whether the work had even been received, let alone worked on.”
If the fee earner wanted to see the finished dictation, they had to e-mail the document. This was far from ideal as most dictations were customer letters, so having these completed in a timely and efficient manner was essential to the overall performance of the business.
The Move to SpeechWrite
Adrian comments “One of the main reasons for engaging with SpeechWrite was the willingness to collaborate and the flexibility they demonstrated with us throughout the whole project. I cannot emphasize this point enough – especially as we find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic – it matters even more.”
Other critical success factors included the high level of ongoing support that comes as standard with any SpeechWrite solution. A planned roll-out enabled a swift and easy deployment of the new solution for all of the users. A train the trainer scheme was set up across all nine departments to ensure a speedy onboarding process for fee earners, secretaries and paralegals. Users have on-going access to the UK based support team whenever they need them – whether that be a simple training need or a question they need to ask.
“We switched over 100 staff to the new 360 solution in 5 days! It was all pretty seamless.” Adrian adds.
The 360 app deployed, allows the fee earners to work anywhere in the world at anytime. The added functionality of reviewing, editing, and approving all from the mobile device is a significant advantage for the users giving them visibility and control of the entire document workflow no matter where it is in the company. This means that fee earners no longer have to phone into the secretaries or paralegal teams to enquire on progress – this alone has created a significant time-saving efficiency for the company.
The management tools in 360 allow the company to access real-time data-driven metrics providing insight into organisational workflows. By keeping track of workflows in the 360 reporting dashboards, managers can track their live workflows while also delivering insights that help drive efficiency across the company.
“Ease of use, intuitiveness, and reliability of the 360 system were key success areas for this project.” Adrian adds.
It meant that the users came on board very quickly and easily and could access a system that had virtually no downtime. Having experienced disruption and downtime through legacy systems, this was a critical requirement of the new solution.
Working through the pandemic
As Adrian concludes “We will never go back to the way we used to work before Covid-19.”
“There has been a real mindset change at the company since the pandemic hit. We had already embarked on a paperlite journey, but the pandemic forced and accelerated a great deal of transformation for us overnight.”
The company had the foresight to choose cloud technology five years ago, with servers becoming increasingly expensive to run and maintain and the obvious benefits of allowing the staff to become more agile. This strategy paid off when the company switched to remote working at the start of the pandemic, and the transition was relatively seamless with cloud technology enabling mobile working.
The company has proven throughout the multiple lockdowns that productivity has increased due to more effective use of time and the positive effects on the well-being of employees from working remotely. The SpeechWrite 360 solution has been a critical enabler in the technology toolset for Ringrose Law’s users to work flexibly and efficiently from home or any other location they choose in the world.
