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Keeping clients happy while increasing efficiency

Gloria Perry (General Manager, Associated Reporters, Las Vegas, NV), a long-time RB user (since its DOS days) presented her company’s story about converting their transcript production to RB PDF transcripts at this year’s Team RB conference. She is what we would call a sensible “early adopter”:

“At Associated Reporters, we’re constantly trying to find new ways to streamline, save time for our employees, and make the most of the resources we have,” she says. “And when RB comes out with a new service, I’m always excited to see if it will provide a more efficient solution for us.”

Her process of evaluating and implementing RB-PDF transcripts was typical of her combination of speedy implementation and caution.

The set-up

“We were using e-Tran[script] for transcripts, but it was slow compared to RB PDF. There was a lot of typing of information and not many archiving options through e-Tran. We couldn’t really store many transcripts in it, so we had to use something else for archiving. We were spending a lot of time not only creating the e-Transcript, but also jumping from application to application.”

In January 2007, OMTI released the free RB8 update that included the RB-PDF transcript creator.

“The second we got the update, I started testing it out,” Gloria said. “Within a day or two, I was able to come up with new procedures and gave them to our production department for implementation. Very quickly, we could see how much time it (RB RDF transcripts) would save us.

“After our archiving person used it for a short time and saw that it would save her so much time, she said, ‘I don’t want to go back to e-Tran. Please don’t make me’.”

The benefits

Gloria and her production team are sold on RB-PDF transcripts and RB8’s central repository: “There’s no typing, you can archive the PDF transcript and your ASCII in RB8 along with the job,” Gloria said. “We scan in worksheets, corrections from witnesses, letters to attorneys and witnesses, and copies of payment checks. Everything is there at our disposal.”

Gloria likes the efficiency of RB8’s central repository and uploads all job-related files to it, so they can be quickly and easily retrieved. In her presentation, she listed all the types of job-linked files she keeps in the repository:

• Notices/Captions
• ASCII
• Transcripts
• Exhibits
• Condensed transcripts
• Word indexes
• Delivery slips
• Correction pages
• Signature letters
• Copies of payment checks

In-house, RB’s interconnectivity speeds the entire job process: Job information is entered once — whether by a client requesting a job, a reporter turning in a job, or in-house staff processing a job — and it flows wherever it’s needed. In e-Transcript, they had to type in job information for each transcript. As Gloria pointed out, “Typing is slow, and you might make mistakes. With RB, we can create the PDF transcript with the click of the mouse, with no typing if the info was correctly entered earlier — the job information is already there.”

They have found that converting ASCII to RB PDF transcripts is twice as fast as to e-Transcripts.  And before RB PDF transcripts, they were creating transcripts in e-Tran, archiving the ASCII in another directory, creating signature letters in RB and billing in RB. Now they use one piece of software for converting, archiving, and managing transcripts and jobs instead, so they save time not having to jump between applications. Plus, the RB PDF Transcript creator is included free in RB8, versus e-Transcript’s on-going subscription cost.

They knew they had to get their clients to switch to PDF transcripts. “It really made a difference in our production department. It saved us so much time that we knew we to convince our clients to go with this instead of our clients convincing us to go back to what we had been using.”

To sell attorneys  on the benefits of RB-PDF transcripts, Gloria prepared a list of advantages, which she gave to her reporters to use when talking to clients. For example, the fact that with RB-PDF transcripts they wouldn’t need third-party software to load transcripts into trial presentation software, such as Sanction or Trial Director, is a huge advantage for attorneys at trial time.

The drawbacks

The first problem was simply getting attorneys to change. People in general don’t like change, but with the mandate coming down from the federal courts to use PDFs for electronic filings and archiving, there was already a reason to change. Giving attorneys a list of advantages helped persuade them to try PDFs.

The next problem was that, as an early adopter, Gloria and her team were using a version 1.0 application so they encountered bugs, which they had to work around. Their feedback was worked into newer versions of the transcript creator so now, “Someone could do this (convert production to PDF transcripts) overnight if they already used e-Tran & RB8,” Gloria said.

Some problems still exist. For example, even though RB-PDF transcripts offer exhibit linking, “We can’t use exhibit linking because it’s too time consuming,” Gloria said. “Although, we didn’t use it with e-Tran either. We could provide exhibit linking on a client-request basis, but we could not offer it as a free service. Realistically, it’s not possible to do with every transcript.”

Plus, RB PDF Transcript creator had problems creating condensed pages that contain single-spaced ASCII. Gloria’s solution was to create two ASCII files, then delete pages from the one she made condensed that contain single spacing and should not be condensed, such as the cover, title and appearance pages. She then condensed the file and added back in the full-size pages and attaches a full-sized word index. (This problem was resolved in a later update of RB8.)

The results

None of the problems Gloria encountered dimmed her enthusiasm for RB-PDF transcripts. Because much of Associated Reporters’ work involves complex litigation cases, involving multiple parties, lots of documents and numerous depos, PDF transcripts have a particularly strong appeal to their clients because 1) Associated Reporters can provide image files for importing directly into trial presentation software, and 2) attorneys can search across multiple files at once, saving considerable time over e-Transcripts in cases with high volumes of files.

So far Associated Reporters has converted all of their clients, except one. That one client still insists on getting e-Transcripts; however, with only one client seriously objecting, Associated Reporters has forged ahead with RB-PDF transcripts and has been able to significantly reduce the amount of time, money and errors previously incurred in preparing, distributing and archiving transcripts. And their production staff is very happy.

Promote your company’s PDF transcript service with the RB-PDF transcript flyer available in the Team RB section of our website. It includes Gloria’s list of benefits, explains RB-PDF transcripts to your clients, and provides instructions for using them.

NOVEMBER 2007–JANUARY 2008 FEATURE ARTICLE

Posted on May 4, 2012. Posted in OMTI.com articles.

Latest release includes exhibit linking

Posted on May 4, 2012. Posted in OMTI.com articles.

Free PDF transcript tool in RB8

RB8 users: Use the free PDF Transcript Creator to provide clients with universally accepted, secure, interactive PDF transcripts.

If you are not an RB8 user, now is a good time to make the switch, so you can also offer clients PDF transcripts with custom pagination, word indexes and cover pages with job and case information automatically included from your RB database.

PDF is rapidly becoming the format of choice for the courts and law firms due to its security, universal format and archival stability. In fact, 89% of the federal courts use PDF for file documents and electronic filings; and international and lower courts are setting up similar systems. You may have already encountered requests for PDF transcripts from your clients, as other RB users have.

If you have been experiencing issues with your current transcript solutions – whether it’s problems with proprietary formats, cost or usability issues – RB PDF Transcripts can solve those problems and more:

1. PDF is universally accessible. Unlike secret proprietary formats that many email programs don’t recognize, PDFs can be emailed without firewall, virus or other security issues. In addition, PDFs can be opened, read and searched using the free Adobe Reader and are compatible with many operating systems. In fact, Adobe’s Reader is one of the most widely distributed applications in the world.
2. PDFs retain the appearance of the original document. It won’t reformat your pages or change your page and line breaks.
3. The RB PDF Transcript Creator is included in RB8. There is no extra charge for the tool. So for as little as $100/month to subscribe to RB8 (single user), you can have the PDF transcript tool plus a coordinated system for calendaring, billing, receivables, payables and more. And the Adobe Reader is a free download for your clients.
4. DF is reliable, and RB’s PDF Transcript Creator is easy to use. The PDF format has been around since 1993 and is backed by Adobe, a NASDAQ-listed corporation with a worldwide presence. Its ubiquity testifies to its soundness and ease-of-use. We developed the PDF Transcript Creator with the same philosophy: provide the most useful transcript conversion features in a simple tool.

In addition, RB PDF Transcripts allow your clients who use the latest Adobe Acrobat Pro to incorporate its uniquely legal features such as adding Bates numbering and performing true redaction on transcripts. And whether they have Acrobat Pro or the free Reader, they can use Adobe’s powerful search tools and print condensed transcripts.

With RB8’s PDF Transcript Creator, you can convert page-image ASCII files into PDF transcripts with job and case information from your RB database automatically included. Your PDF transcripts can also include your custom cover page, headers and footers, word indexes, passwords, and attachments, such as the original ASCII. You can save your transcripts to your central RB repository plus make them automatically available to your clients and reporters over RB Web.

Story update

[May 2009] RB PDF transcripts continue to improve. They now include condensed versions, exhibit linking, master word indexes and digital signatures.

For more information about RB PDF Transcripts, read the next News article, download the latest brochure or contact RB Sales.

FEBRUARY-APRIL 2007 FEATURE ARTICLE

Posted on May 4, 2012. Posted in OMTI.com articles.

Adding value with web technologies

[Article reprint from STAR newsletter]

By Yong Lee, President & CEO, ReporterBase

Writing an article about the value of web technology for the Society for the Technological Advancement of Reporters might seem like preaching to the choir. And if you know the author is someone who develops technology products for the court reporting industry, you might be skeptical about his message. But if you, as a member of a technology-focused group, want to benefit from using the web in your business, you will probably find some food for thought, if not action, here.

Service +

In a crowded field like court reporting, the best way to stand out and have a chance at survival is to offer more than a transcript. Cutting prices is no way to grow your business long term, you have to add value to that transcript.

Value-added services is not a new concept, but web technology adds a myriad of ways to add value that are uniquely suited to court reporting and other legal support firms. And the beauty of most web technology is that you can add new services to your business without hiring new staff. Small firms can offer the same level of service as large firms, web technologies can level the playing field in this way.

So what are some of these technologies that can help you get more business and sustain your company? I’m going to discuss five: online offices, online order forms, online communities, webinars, and your corporate site.

Online: Always on

As a developer of online offices, I am a big proponent of them. Online offices are secure sites where your clients and reporters have access to information they would otherwise have to call you for or wait to be delivered. If a client wants to know the details of a scheduled depo or an outstanding invoice, or needs a copy of a transcript while away from the office, they can access this kind of information anytime, anywhere they have Internet access – without your intervention.

With automated online offices, you suddenly extend your customer support hours to around-the-clock, 365 days a year, without adding staff. And if you connect it directly to your in-house calendar, billing and repository system(s), then not only do your clients and reporters have always-on access, the information they access is always up-to-date. And again, technology means you can offer this without adding staff.

There are other benefits to offering online offices, such as file sharing between reporters, reducing the paper load in your office and in your clients’ offices, and more accurate communications; but if you remember just one thing, it’s the convenience you’re offering.

Making online better

Online order forms have the same promise of offering around-the-clock convenience, but the reality is often something else. Due to the nature of a deposition, online depo request forms present secretaries and paralegals with the daunting task of filling in numerous fields for a single depo. When that’s the case, it becomes more convenient to call you instead, so your online ordering service goes unused.

If this is your situation, you can improve it with technology. A simple start is to include directions on your form for using browser auto-fill capabilities. Using auto-fill options, your clients will have less to type because the browser will fill in some fields for them. And the less they have to type, the more likely it is they will use your form.

Of course, the more the form remembers, the better. If your form is also tied to your in-house calendar and client information, it can fill in every field, so all your client needs to do then is select the date and time. When you get to this level of convenience, the balance sways back from calling you to order a depo. Plus, this level of auto-fill significantly lessens typos and omissions on your client’s part, streamlining the process for the both of you.

Staying connected

My next suggestion for adding value to your business is aimed at strengthening your ties with your reporters and other service providers. The fact is that not only do you compete with other firms for clients, you also compete for quality court reporters. You need to offer services which reporters can benefit from. Online offices can offer valuable benefits: For example, reporters can turn in completed jobs without traveling to your office, they can manage their schedule and workload online, and they can see what their next paycheck will be.

Another way to make your company more desirable to reporters is to create a community for them. Online communities can strengthen your relationship with reporters by making them feel like they are a valued part of a common group.

A simple start can be a company news section on your corporate website, in which you post news about your reporters and other employees. Include personal news, wedding and birth announcements, who won the company fantasy football league; along with professional accomplishments, so that there’s a feeling that real people work here. You can also include news about reporters who have moved on. By keeping them part of your community, they are more likely to harbor good feelings about your company. And that can translate into them referring other good reporters to you and possibly returning themselves at some time.

You can also open up your online community more by adding a bulletin board to your website. Here, your reporters, both current and past, can talk amongst themselves online, building the community organically. There are many canned bulletin board systems available online now, and some are free. One caveat: I would recommend using one in conjunction with user IDs and passwords, so you do not have to constantly monitor the board for inappropriate use.

Teach online

You have expertise, or you know someone with expertise. Make it easy for others to learn from you by hosting a webinar. Webinars (web-based seminars) are interactive, online presentations. In contrast to a webcast, which is more like a TV show broadcast over the Internet, webinars allow a certain amount of back-and-forth between presenter and audience, which makes them an ideal teaching tool. The presentation is live, but no one has to travel to attend. All they need is their online connection and a phone.

You can use webinars to train attorneys, paralegals and reporters how to use your online services. Or, more ambitiously, you can educate them about current issues that affect them – for example, if a lot of your clients work on medical and insurance cases, bring in an expert on the new Medicare prescription drug legislation and problems surrounding it.

With some planning, you might be able to make your webinars even more valuable. Just like reporters need CEUs, lawyers have MCLE (mandatory continuing legal education) requirements. Everyone is looking to increase their knowledge and meet their certification requirements, so if you can offer a convenient way to earn credits, you’ve added some serious value to your services.

Improving your website

My final suggestion is to keep your company’s website current. And for this, you can use tried-and-true standard web technology. You don’t need to go wild incorporating every latest web fad on your site. Court reporting isn’t that kind of industry, and lawyers might be suspicious of a site that is too slick. But if your site still looks like it did when you first posted it, and you haven’t changed a word on it, then it isn’t adding any value to your business. It might actually be harming it.

So keep your site looking up to date and professional. Don’t look at other court reporting sites for inspiration; look at your clients’ sites (or the sites of law firms you want as clients), and be sure your site looks as good as or better than theirs. Do not copy or match the look of their sites, think “complimentary” instead.

Consider your site’s layout carefully: Make your contact information easy to find. Put the most useful information on the front page. And use the top left and right spots of each page, which are where people look the most, to your advantage.

Optimize your site for better placement in search engine returns (such as Google): Come up with a business description and key words that an attorney, paralegal or reporter might use to find a court reporting firm, such as a list of the services you provide and your service area along with industry terms like court reporting and court reporters. Have your web designer add them to your web site’s code.

And provide useful content that gets updated, so readers have a reason to check back. Include practical information like how to set auto-fill preferences for forms. Post articles you’ve written or transcripts of speeches you’ve given that relate to your audience. Announce upcoming events of interest to your clients, employees and reporters.

Your site’s content doesn’t have to be all business either. You could include something more personal, such as if you’re a golfer, you could write reviews of different courses around the U.S. you’ve played at. Or if health and fitness are your thing, post articles on office ergonomics, exercises to do at your desk, healthy snacks for the office, maybe reviews of hotel fitness centers and spas. Or post a calendar of upcoming cultural and social events if that’s where your passion lies.

You can invite readers to submit articles too. Nurturing this kind of participation is another way to build your community, which in turn adds value to your business.

Make your business stand out

The web technologies I’ve covered here can add valuable services to your business. Some of these technologies are tried-and-true, some are more unfamiliar; but each offers important benefits for your business. By incorporating some or all of them into your business and marketing plans, you could differentiate your business from the pack, and give clients and reporters plenty of reasons to choose you every time.

And with your foot in the door and your company in their hearts — through the intelligent use of the web — you’re ready to provide them with an even more valuable service: exceptional transcripts. Can I get an ‘Amen’?

NOTE: This article was written for the Society for the Technological Advancement for Reporters (STAR) newsletter to coincide with Yong’s appearance on the Xtreme Technology panel at their conference in Las Vegas in May 2006.

MAY-JULY 2006 FEATURE ARTICLE

Posted on May 4, 2012. Posted in OMTI.com articles.

An open letter from our president & CEO

During our 20th anniversary, I’ve had a lot of occasions to reflect on why we’ve succeeded when so many other court reporting firm software companies have not. And I think that beyond having software and services court reporting firms want, we offer some unique benefits that you don’t get with other companies:

 

1. Thirty-day money-back guarantee: If you don’t like an RB product after trying it for 30 days, we’ll give you a full refund of the product price.
2. Data conversion from RB: While you may already know that we will convert your existing data into your new RB system, you may not be aware that if you decide you want to change to a different, non-RB system, we’ll help convert your RB data to the new system.
3. We listen to you: The reason our products are so good is because our clients are so good at what they do, and we know it. So we listen to their suggestions, questions and complaints, and constantly work to improve ReporterBase. We are an open company and offer an online user community and live chat with our sales and support teams to facilitate communication with our clients.
4. Software company with reporting industry knowledge: We are not your competitor and never will be. We develop software and services for you and protect your data. We will never set up a network or reporting firm, or in any way use our specialized knowledge to compete with you.
5. Team RB: Our company and our clients together have grown into a community. We encourage our clients to discuss issues with us, plus we offer a yearly user conference for a chance to meet in person and a free RB job exchange group, where RB users can find other RB users to exchange jobs with. [We also now have a Facebook page & Twitter feed.]

I think that more than having a lot of functions or the latest technology in our products or being the biggest company, these five points represent ReporterBase’s core values and make us unique in our field. I think they are also compelling reasons for any firm looking for office management solutions to seriously consider ReporterBase.

In closing, I’d like to say it’s been a good 20 years for us and for our clients – some of whom have been with us the entire way. We look forward to many more years with all of you.

Sincerely,

Yong Lee
President & CEO, OMTI, Inc.

AUGUST-OCTOBER 2005 FEATURE ARTICLE

Posted on May 4, 2012. Posted in OMTI.com articles.

Yong presents Best Practices in web marketing

Do you market your services on the web? If so, how pleased are you with the results? Do you want to learn more about marketing to lawyers on the web?

With 20 years of developing software and services for court reporting firms, OMTI President Yong Lee has some insight into your market and the unique aspects of marketing your services to attorneys. On April 15, 2005, he shared some of his ideas and strategies for successfully marketing your business on the web with members of the National Network Reporting Company (NNRC).

NNRC is an organization of independent court reporting firms nationwide with an interest in technology and innovation in the court reporting business. At their meeting in Austin, Texas, Yong discussed marketing court reporting services on the web. He talked about the different markets court reporting firms have and what makes the legal market unique.

For example, precedence is an important legal concept. Ruling are often made based on precedence: Something was done before and accepted; therefore it’s more likely to be the legally correct thing to do.

Since lawyers use precedence as an argument in their work all the time, it turns out to be something they apply in other areas of their lives as well. Such as when deciding between two service providers. If one offers services that other attorneys use and the second one offers something new, you can count on most lawyers selecting the firm with the “attorney-approved” services — no matter how great the new service might be.

With that being the case, Yong showed the group RB Web, our “attorney-approved” online office product. Instead of developing your own proprietary online depo request form, depo calendar and transcript repository — and then trying to get some attorney to “go first,” he recommends that you get RB Web instead, the service lawyers ask for by name.

In addition to discussing other unique aspects of the legal market, Yong talked about what works (and doesn’t work) in web marketing. Then he demonstrated best practices for handling attorney requests and transcripts using RB Web.

Finally, he showed how ReporterBase helps its clients market their services to attorneys with free marketing materials, such as brochures and manuals.

Yong plans to give more industry talks in the future. If you have a group that would be interested in having Yong make a presentation on Best Practices in areas of the court reporting business, such as web marketing, please contact OMTI.

MAY–JULY 2005 FEATURE ARTICLE

Posted on May 4, 2012. Posted in OMTI.com articles.

Exchange jobs with fellow RB7 & RB8 users

[This article has been revised to include info for RB8 users.]

Are you using RB 7.9 or RB8? These versions of RB office management software make it easy to exchange job information between RB users via email without re-keying.

If you refer jobs to other court reporting firms or get job referrals yourself, you can save time and reduce errors when exchanging jobs with other firms who also use RB 7.9/RB8 with RB XChange.

The way it works is simple

If you have a job you want another court reporting firm to handle for you, you assign the job to them as you would assign a job to a reporter. Then, with the click of a button, you create a file attached to the Reporter Worksheet that contains all of the job’s RB data.

After receiving your email, the court reporting firm you are sending the job to imports the email attachment into their RB calendar — no re-keying, no misspellings, no lost information.

Join our free referral network

To make it easier for RB 7.9/RB8 users to take advantage of this time-saving feature, we’ve set up a list of registered users called the RB XChange Job Exchange Group. It’s free, but you have to join to be listed and to get access to the contact list of members.

Joining is easy: In the Team RB section of our website, follow the link to RB XChange and download the application form. Fill it in, sign it and return it to us. Complete instructions are included on the form. If you are an RB 7.9/RB8 user with a Standard or Premium software maintenance contract, or if you use RB Subscribe, you’re eligible to join.

Because we value our clients’ privacy, the Job Exchange Group is strictly an opt-in list. Once your application is processed, we’ll add you to the list and notify you. You can then access the list by clicking the RB XChange button on our website in the Team RB section.

Contact RB Sales if you have any questions.

FEBRUARY–APRIL 2005 FEATURE ARTICLE

Posted on May 4, 2012. Posted in OMTI.com articles.

Premium service offers priority call-back & after-hours support

[This article has been revised to include updated support benefits as of 5/2012.]

RB Premium plan subscribers have new services to take advantage of this year: guaranteed response times and extended service hours.

Premium clients who contact RB Support via voice mail, email or fax will receive a call-back within four hours during our regular office hours. Regular office hours are 9 am–7 pm Central time, Monday–Friday, excluding holidays.

After-hours by appointment

ReporterBase offers Premium plan subscribers extended support hours. Our support staff is available by appointment, 7-10 PM CT, Monday through Friday, and 12-8 PM CT, Saturday, excluding holidays.

Extended support hours are good for things that can’t be done during normal hours, such as updates, data transfers and server re-installations.

Extended support is fee-based and by appointment only. It costs $125/hour with a $250 minimum charge for any appointment.

No increase in annual support fees

Annual software maintenance plan charges did not increase with these new benefits. Premium costs $1,500/year. If you are not on Premium yet, but would like to have the convenience of extended service hours, contact RB Sales to sign up.

For more details and a complete breakdown of software maintenance contract features, download the RB Service Plans PDF. We will send complete details about Premium services to clients with their annual software maintenance contract renewal notices.

FEBRUARY–APRIL 2005 FEATURE ARTICLE

Posted on May 4, 2012. Posted in OMTI.com articles. ← Older posts Newer posts →

Sure you have a lot on your plate, but leave room for your salad.

 

A blog for owners & managers of court reporting firms, video production companies, interpreting agencies, and other litigation support businesses by an expert on using technology to improve your profitability, efficiency and effectiveness in a unique marketplace.