How to choose a management system

When comparing systems for running your court reporting firm, it’s important that you are not comparing apples to oranges. What might initially sound like an advantage can actually be useless if it’s not appropriate for your business or an actual disadvantage if it eats into your time and money.

For example, how do-it-yourself do you want your management system to be? If you install your system yourself, what do you do about your existing calendar, clients, billing and reporters? Do you really want to re-key all of your vital business information into a new system?

With ReporterBase, we not only install your system, we also convert your existing data so you can get up and running with less work and worry on your part. And if you ever call with system questions, we can help quickly because we know where everything is.

You should also consider the future of your business. Do you plan to be in court reporting for the long term? If so, you probably want your office management system to have the same longevity.

ReporterBase celebrated its 20th birthday in 2005. We’ve seen management systems come and go — StenAccount being the most recent to fade away. And we know how hard it is on firms that used these systems when their software company folds — no more customer support, obsolete software, and lost ground in a competitive marketplace. We know because many of these firms are now RB clients.

We attribute our longevity to one thing: our clients’ support. And we earn that support by listening to our clients, incorporating their requests into our software, and providing top-notch customer support. We are not a court reporting firm selling a system we developed for our own unique needs — we are a specialized software company with years of experience helping court reporting firms run their firms efficiently and effectively.

A laundry list of features is only as valuable as the actual benefits you derive from those features. At ReporterBase, we’ve been incorporating features our clients requested for over two decades. As a result, the ReporterBase system is full of features with real-world applications for court reporting firms. We don’t put in features just because our engineers can create them easily.

We view our clients as a valued resource for improving our products. So we provide forums for them to interact with each other and us — to build a real ReporterBase team. We maintain a running wish list for future features based on client input from our online user community, our annual Team RB conference, people visiting our booth at NCRA conventions, and individual emails, phone calls and letters. And if our users point out a desirable feature in other software, we incorporate that too.

We do all of this because we are committed to providing our court reporting firm clients with the best system for running their businesses. So if you can’t decide which system is right for you, contact us. If we can’t help you decide, we’ll refer you to people who can: our clients.

NOVEMBER 2004–JANUARY 2005 FEATURE ARTICLE

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