Voice recognition software was utilised by one borough council to
avoid the long-term expense of employing secretarial staff
A borough council is an ideal benchmark for the evaluation of
many office efficiency solutions. The basic equation remains the
same; employed personnel = continuous expense. Speech recognition
software was identified by Runnymede Borough Council as a way of
avoiding the unnecessary long term expense of hiring secretarial
staff for council officers who can't type.
The council had kept an eye on the technology for some time. The
advent of continuous speech recognition, early in 1998, was the
trigger to actively evaluate the technology. Sensibly, the council
chose to trial the technology with two key objectives - to
establish if speech recognition could indeed improve the efficiency
of their staff and, if so, who would benefit the most.Although the
cost of speech recognition software has fallen as fast as the
technology has become more effective, Runnymede Council was able to
use its trial to gauge the true cost of speech technology,
including training and equipment costs. Underlying costs proved to
be considerably higher than thought. However, compared with
secretarial salaries, the mostly one-off cost of implementing
speech technology looked attractive in the long term. In their
case, the trial was successful and Runnymede Council has gained
enough trust in the technology to roll speech recognition out to
carefully selected users in its organisation in the near future. If
Runnymede Council can make speech technology pay, so can the
hundreds of others around the country.
Background Nigel
Watson, information systems manager, together with other senior
executives, had been keeping an eye on the company's technology for
some time, and felt, in early 1998, that the time had come to
formally evaluate it. They decided to look for a system that would
investigate whether speech recognition software would enable
managerial staff to work more effectively and to identify the type
of managerial staff who could benefit most. It was with this aim in
mind that he contacted The Speech Recognition Company, specialists
in providing speech products and services for such projects. The
Speech Recognition Company provided advice on the best way to meet
these objectives as well as providing training and support
services. Runnymede provided six senior managerial staff with IBM
ViaVoice 98 Executive speech recognition software and hand-held
microphones to evaluate. The company also assembled an additional
vocabulary that contained many of the terms and words that were
specific to Runnymede Council's requirements.
Results
Commenting on the results of the evaluation, Watson says: "We
deliberately chose a variety of users from different departments
for the evaluation. We found that those who benefited most were
those who could not touch-type but were PC literate and had to
produce typed work. If secretarial assistance was available, the
users tended to restrict use of the system to times when the typing
support was over-stretched or outside hours of normal secretarial
support. "It is very important with this technology that users get
a good first impression of the software. It is essential to have
the system properly set up, on sufficiently powerful computers, and
that users are trained how to use the software. In some cases, we
found that poor first impressions lead to users not seeing the
benefits sufficiently fast enough and giving up. My advice to
others considering this technology is not to skimp on the set up
and training costs - they make the difference between a project
succeeding and failing." Properly integrated for the right type of
user, Runnymede found that speech recognition technology provided
significant improvements in managerial effectiveness and reduced
the typing element of those managers' support staff. This was of
obvious benefit to both parties. It is likely to cost approximately
£700-£900 per user for the software, training, microphone and
telephone support, and vocabulary building. Also: "Do not think of
trailing just one system with one user," Watson counsels. According
to Anthony Buxton, director of The Speech Recognition Company, "In
order to get any meaningful results as to whether the system has
wider applications, six systems is the minimum number worthwhile.
Total project cost is therefore likely to cost from £5,000-£10,000.
This is in addition to any costs involved in upgrading the
computers to the necessary specification.
The
futureFollowing the completion of the pilot and building on the
lessons learned from this first use of speech recognition,
Runnymede Council will look to roll out speech technology to one or
two larger work areas, covering 15-20 users as the next stage of
the evaluation. For chosen users, they are also considering
evaluating new technology that allows hand-held digital recorders
to be automatically transcribed by speech recognition software.
"Used in the right circumstances this technology can make users
more efficient, save secretarial time and produce a net financial
benefit to the Council. There is no doubt in my mind that it could
benefit many government organisations," Watson
concludes.
Compiled by Geoff Marshall