Introduction and key questions
Speech recognition applications have been around for decades. Until recently however, outside of specialist areas such as warehousing, voice recognition hasn't seen a huge uptake by the small business community as a whole. With high accuracy rates and professional apps available for mobile devices, is voice recognition a service your business could make great use of today?
Many business users may have already experienced what voice recognition can offer. Apple's Siri may grab the headlines but Windows 10 users have Cortana, which moves the digital assistant to a whole new level of functionality. More importantly for today's businesses is the fact that Cortana is available on phones, tablets and desktop PCs offering a level of integration and familiarity across a number of devices being used across your company.
The power of voice recognition applications is that they can turn us all into high-speed typists. Being able to dictate at normal speaking speed and have your words accurately transcribed is a huge productivity bonus all businesses can benefit from.
And if your business has to endlessly type the same blocks of text into numerous documents, the leading speech recognition applications can have special voice commands defined that will enter these blocks of text for you. Think standard clauses in contracts or email signatures.
More than transcription
However, voice recognition can go further than being used as an accurate transcription application. Today's voice recognition systems can be set up to operate multiple applications. So, if you are a sales rep for instance and have just dictated an email to a new customer, you can use your voice to enter that customer's contact details onto your business' CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. This seamless integration of voice control is where these systems come into their own.
Your business is now run on the move. Voice recognition systems from Nuance have a cloud component that makes these systems infinitely more flexible especially in a business setting. You can use your phone to dictate an email when you're travelling and see this document on any device connected to the cloud. Being able to sync your dictated documents can have a profound impact on your firm's overall efficiency.
Businesses in highly specialised sectors such as the legal profession are in an ideal position to take advantage of what voice recognition can offer. All of the systems are learning machines – the more you use them, the more accurate they become. If your business often creates documents that include jargon and other specialised terminology, voice recognition systems will learn these terms to ensure high levels of accuracy.
Ultimately it's the time-saving factor that attracts businesses to voice recognition. Being able to spend less time typing and more time working on more important aspects of running a business such as customer service, is why more businesses are adopting voice recognition into their business processes.
Even if your company only uses these applications for simple transcription, you'll be surprised at the efficiency gains that can be obtained from relatively low-cost software.
Key questions
To decide whether voice recognition would be useful for your business, ask yourself these questions:
- Does your business generate high levels of written documents?
- Does your business trade with overseas companies?
- Does your workforce often generate documents outside of your office?
- Does your business frequently create documents with similar content?
- Does your business operate in a sector using high levels of jargon or technical language?
If you answered yes to any of these questions your business could be a candidate for voice recognition applications. The best course of action is to test the systems in your organisation. Even a short trial will reveal whether these systems can be seamlessly integrated into your company's working patterns.
Always consult with your staff, as they will be using these applications, which can take some getting used to after a lifetime of typing with a keyboard. What many businesses usually find is that they augment their day-to-day practices with a level of voice recognition. And over time, this increases and expands, as they gain experience of its advantages and of course its limitations.
Choosing the right tools
Choosing the right tools
There are a number of tools you could start to use in your business today. The leading applications include the following…
Dragon NaturallySpeaking
Price: From £139 (around $200, or AU$270)
NaturallySpeaking allows users to dictate into Microsoft Office applications and OpenOffice, create emails, tasks and meetings in Microsoft Outlook, search the web using any major browser, and post to social media services such as Facebook and Twitter.
The software recognises a number of standard commands, such as creating files, scheduling calendar entries and searching a user's computer. It's also possible to set up custom commands. Be sure to check out our Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 review.
TalkTyper
Price: Free
If you only need basic speech-to-text dictation functionality, then TalkTyper may well be adequate. TalkTyper is a simple, free-to-use website that captures user speech and renders it in plain text ready for being copied and then pasted elsewhere. It's not possible to sign up for an account, meaning that the website is designed simply for immediate and straightforward use.
Microsoft Windows Speech Recognition
Price: Built into Windows 10 Pro
Windows Speech Recognition can be used to both control a computer with voice commands and dictate text. A short setup process is required in order to calibrate the user's microphone, and the software can be trained to better understand a user's speech by creating a voice profile that it uses to recognise the individual.
SpeechGear Compadre Interact
Price: On application
Compadre Interact allows users to say something out loud and have it spoken back in another language. Likewise, something spoken in a foreign language can be translated and spoken back in English. SpeechGear says that translation is instant, so there is no need to wait in order to hear something repeated back. The software also transcribes conversations automatically.
Dictation
Price: Free
This web-based dictation application requires Google Chrome to run. As Google supports multiple languages and can translate your speech, Chrome could be ideal if you're looking for a simple dictation application. The system allows basic commands such as 'new paragraph' and 'full stop'. More complex formatting isn't possible with this service, but if you use the Chrome browser, adding dictation is a very handy little extra for taking notes.
A voice future?
There is no doubt that business is becoming more decentralised. Flexible workforces are now the norm. What this can mean is a bottleneck where the creation of written documents is concerned.
The voice-based assistants including Siri and Cortana are showing how voice can be integrated into everyone's lives. Banks are using voice to improve their services, as your voice is just as unique as your fingerprints. HSBC is already using voice authentication with its phone banking app on the iPhone and when purchases are made via Apple Pay.
No one has the time to spend hours typing up notes, writing emails, modifying contacts or entering data into customer management systems. The great news is that all of these tasks and more can be achieved with voice recognition applications you can install on your desktop PC, phone or tablet.
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