Stephen Green, CFP®
Financial Advisor
Nixon Peabody Financial Advisors LLC
Interview by
Marcia Layton Turner,
Layton & Co.
"I'm actually a terrible typist," confesses Steve Green, "I'm very slow." Using the hunt-and-peck method for years, Green, a financial advisor with Nixon Peabody Financial Advisors in Rochester, N.Y., knew that there had to be a faster way to complete client advisory documents. "I do a lot of explaining of financial and investment concepts for clients via email," he says, and typing them took quite a while.
To get away from having to type time-consuming longer emails and memos, Green started using a dictation machine, speaking into a recorder and then handing over the tape to his secretary to transcribe. But, in addition to the turnaround time on those documents, that process increased the burden on his secretary. So he tended to only dictate longer formal documents. The rest he did himself, eating up hours of his time.
Then an attorney at Nixon Peabody began using the Dragon software in February or March and Green asked for a demo. Seeing how easy it was to use, he thought, "I can do that," and promptly signed up for the training.
He was trained and started using the software in March, during his department's busy season, and says, "It took me no time at all to get up-and-running."
Now, instead of typing a memo or an email after reviewing a client's tax return, Green simply opens the Dragon software and dictates into a Word document. Or when drafting a lengthy letter to a client, instead of having his secretary transcribe it, he'll draft the document using Dragon and then have her clean it up and format it.
Using Dragon software has become so second nature that "When I start to type, I wonder why I don't just speak it," says Green.
In three months, Green estimates the use of speech recognition software has improved his document creation speed by 100%. "However long it took me before, it's now taking me half the time," he says.
