In this blog post we focus on one of our larger corporate clients, AMP Australia. We have been working with AMP for the last three years and although the work we do for AMP is “high pressure”, they are one of our most interesting clients to work with. We transcribe AMP’s quarterly financial announcements and Annual General Meetings which usually involves transcription of both the media and analyst briefings and occasionally closed door wires meetings. AMP is one of the few clients that we regularly go onsite to audio record their meetings...

My company as you will likely know offers transcription services, that is we take digitally recorded audio of people speaking (e.g. meetings, interviews, focus groups, company announcements, the list goes on) and we convert that to written text. Sounds easy right? To do this we employ a team split in two, we have the transcription typists, the people who actually listen and type and the proofreaders, the people who QA the completed document. In this post I am going to focus on the role of a transcription proofreader to give you an idea of what exactly they...

Perception is such a powerful thing, we are all perceived differently as people by our peers, family and friends – the same applies to your business and more importantly your website. Your website is often prospective customers first insight into your business so what they read initially determines how they perceive you. Make big claims, look important and generally people will believe what they read. But dig a little deeper and often you can uncover some truths that can knock a business down a peg or two. Like most in business we strive to maintain...

My business branding says it all, we are THE Transcription People, the people you go to for transcription in Australia, the transcription experts in fact. But the more I networked last year, the more I realised how many people just did not know what transcription was. All too often I was met with a glazed look and “Oh transcription” short pause “…and what is that exactly?”. To be fair most did have an inkling, something to do with typing, however it is much more than that as I have explained in an earlier blog post – What...

I was recently invited by Digital Citizens co-founder James Fridley @fridley to be on a panel discussion entitled “Startups, small shops and bootstrappers: the real value in social media and digital PR for small business”. Digital Citizens is an inclusive, informal organisation dedicated to knowledge sharing and discussion of social, political, ethical and professional issues related to new technologies and the social web.   So my first response was along the lines of “Are you sure you want me”? I don’t profess to be an SME, SMEG or...

My initial reaction to my father-in-law offering us a paid trip to the UK for a month was to panic! Even before the excitement set in, I panicked and only because I wasn’t sure how my business was going to survive without me. Now that we are on our last day of our four week holiday, I’m yet to experience any problems or dilemmas or any reason why I need to come back! So I got to thinking that maybe we should look into moving over to the UK for a year to set up our UK transcription site. We have the website already and clearly my business was being...

Recently Rhianne, who has been with us at The Transcription People since early 2008, finished her Certificate III in Business Administration and is about to start Certificate IV in Front-line Management. Rhianne came to the organisation straight out of school after finishing Year 12. With the decision made not to go to ‘schoolies’ and to become focussed with starting her career was the perfect start. “… Although the tempation to have a break and go to ‘schoolies’ was hard to resist, the benefits of starting the job was...

I am often asked the question “What is Transcription?” when chatting to people about what I do and am often quite surprised when people don’t know. Put quite simply, transcription is the conversion of speech-to-text from video or more commonly digital audio recordings. However there are a lot of steps to go through to transform a digital audio file into a useable text document – and there are many reasons in business for needing an accurate record of events. Our clients upload their digital audio files via our secure online server, which...

Being a busy transcription business, we often receive around ten job enquiry emails per day either requesting information or submitting resumes for transcription work. Whilst this can be quite time consuming to review each email and resume, the process is often shortened by the occasional email that I don’t even waste my time reviewing. I have been shocked over the years at people’s lack of consideration and social etiquette with something as serious as asking for your employment. The following can deter me from even considering an application: Not...

When using a transcription service one thing you must check is the security of the file transfer mechanism used by that transcription service. The vast majority of audio we process at The Transcription People is confidential, this means that the audio our clients send to us must be sent to us across the internet securely, this means encrypting the audio from the sender all the way through to our servers. How do we encrypt audio and what should you look for when hiring a transcription service? There are a couple of common ways to transfer files across the...