What is Stenovate?

Before we begin discussing how and why Stenovate came about, let’s briefly define what Stenovate is.

Stenovate is an online platform designed specifically for transcript professionals – court reporters, scopists, and proofreaders – to organize transcript workload and collaborate efficiently all in one tool without email, Dropbox, Excel spreadsheets, or any other variety of disjointed tools.

 

Who is the founder?

Well, hello! My name is Lauren Lawrence, RPR, and I am the author of this blog post.

I’ve been a freelance reporter for ten years in Kansas City, and there are few things I love more than steno AND efficiency!  The following few sentences are not a humble brag, but rather so you understand that Stenovate was not founded by some conglomerate corporate team, a big box agency, or a newbie reporter.  (Nothing against newbie reporters.  Everyone has to start somewhere, right?  We support you!)

I graduated from AIB College of Business in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in court reporting.  I have had the pleasure (and pain) of leveling up my skills to be able to provide real-time services and specialize in technical jargon, expedites, and daily copy.

I LOVE medical testimony.  (Former CNA in high school and during CR school).

I’ve had the pleasure of traveling internationally multiple times to Europe and South America for depositions, streaming real-time back to the States.

Agency Owner:  “Can you grab your machine and your passport and be on a plane in four hours?”  Me:  Sure.  Why not!?”

I’m an NCRA member and have served on multiple committees as a brand ambassador, the New Professionals Committee, and the Tech Committee.

I’ve even had a transcript appear in Huffington Post…and had no idea until my cousin informed me.  (Thanks, Dana!)

I’m also a big fan of writing short, advocating for the profession, scrupulous about transcript quality, and love figuring out how we, as the transcript community, can do more / do things better to continue to be the golden standard.

 

So what’s the problem?

About three years into my career, I was overwhelmed with transcripts and was being offered more work than I could handle.  (Sound familiar?!)

At the time, this was wonderful…and terrible!  It meant my bank account was happy, but I had no life.  I know this will resonate deeply with lots of my fellow reporters.

I had to choose between appeasing agencies and making oodles of money (that’s right, students!) or my friends, family, and self-care.  Every depo offer meant I had to make that decision all over again.  Do I take this one?  Should I take break?  Let me add up my pages again.  Can I swing it?

I started telling agencies, “I can’t do cover it unless you want XYZ transcript to be late.”  They didn’t care.  “Sure!  You can have an extension if you’ll just cover this one.”  Healthy boundaries are hard…

 

The Indispensable (Half) Solution

As many wise reporters before me have realized, scopists and proofreaders are absolutely critical for maximizing reporters’ time and income (and covering more jobs with certified stenographers and voice writers).

Through Facebook groups, I found and hired many scopists and proofreaders to find the right “fit,” so to speak.  That process in itself was time-consuming and, to be frank, very painful at times.  Fortunately, I eventually found excellent transcript teammates!

Unfortunately, even with a great lineup of transcript teammates, I’d still need to occasionally search for yet another scopists or proofreaders when my awesome teammates were on vacation or busy with life, then onboard the new teammate to the way I typically do things.

At this point, I realized just how many tools and how much time I was spending on managing what I call “the business side” of court reporting:  calculating due dates not only for the agency but also due dates for when I’d need jobs back from my scopists and proofreader, plus communicating details and figuring out who is available for each job, navigating to and uploading files to Dropbox folders, checking in on the status or progress of a particular transcript, etc.  The list goes on!

 

The Lack of a Solution

I knew there were project management tools available to help you manage projects with teammates, usually used by small businesses or corporations that have W-2 employees.

I also knew that most scopists and proofreaders would not already be familiar with these tools, which would leave me to have to convince them to use it and then onboard them.  And whenever I’d need to utilize a backup or overflow scopists or proofreaders, I’d also have to send them an invite and onboard them to said tool as well.

In short, researching PM tools, choosing one, and then setting everything up in the hopes that it would work well for us seemed like it might be more trouble than it would be worth.  But it didn’t leave me with any sort of solution.

 

The Big, Audacious Idea – A Real Solution

This is when I started to envision a platform that would help any transcript professional get organized, connect with others, and collaborate efficiently.  So now you know.

This is where the idea of Stenovate started.  To explain how Stenovate went from an idea to reality is definitely another story for another day.  The great news is:  We built it!

Today, Stenovate has hundreds of reporters, scopists, and proofreaders on every CAT software who use Stenovate to organize their entire transcript workload and streamline workflow when/if they choose to collaborate.

You can create a transcript workspace with one field – Transcript Title – and then add as many or as few details as you’d like.

From there, you can use that workspace to track the number of pages you have on your plate and what’s due when OR you can even invite teammates to the workspace, upload CAT, audio, and exhibits, track progress between teammates, leave comments or notes, and more.

Aside from the major benefits of having everything organized and all collaboration centralized, if you’re searching for scopists and proofreaders, Stenovate has built-in scoping and proofing job boards that make connecting easy.

Stenovate also has professional profiles with built-in ratings and reviews and rate sheets, as well as an area for reporters to upload their preference sheet to their profiles.

 

What’s next?

Stenovate is still a fairly new platform with big plans to continue making improvements and adding new features that make life even easier for our transcript (steno and voice) community.  If you haven’t already, we hope that you give it a whirl and see just how easy connecting and collaborating can be.

 

Are you Ready?

Just click here to start exploring Stenovate with a 30-day free trial.  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to support@stenovate.com.  Genuinely, we’d love to help!