BigHand has today announced that Top 100 law firm Thomas Eggar LLP has replaced its ‘standalone’ dictation system with BigHand’s award-winning digital dictation workflow technology. Replacement of the standalone digital system with BigHand’s 3-tier technology for 500 users across 6 offices has brought immediate benefits to the firm including the elimination of temporary cover costs; on this basis alone, the firm expects to return its investment within just 12 to 18 months.

Neil Renfrew, IT Director at Thomas Eggar commented: ‘‘The firm had been using a homemade digital dictation system for a number of years, however the aging system did not support modern devices and had increasingly become a burden on our support team. Additionally, the system did not allow for the sharing of work across the firm, forcing offices to operate as individual islands of activity and employ temporary cover when secretaries were on annual or sick leave.

It was important that we evaluated the leading providers within the digital dictation arena before investing in a firm-wide system. Thomas Eggar had recently acquired an office that was already using BigHand however it was vital that we investigated all options rather than simply rolling out the BigHand system. Our criteria were simple: we needed to move to a system that offered resiliency and was technologically future proof, and it was on this basis that I selected BigHand for the firm-wide implementation.

The implementation was seamless; the professionalism of BigHand’s project management team is a credit to their organisation. I have received very positive user feedback following completion and experienced a huge reduction in IT support calls which is indicative of the popular acceptance. We are also piloting BigHand’s BlackBerry application to enhance remote working functionality for partners, and in due course, I anticipate integrating BigHand with our Interwoven WorkSite system.’’