Business Transcription is one of the services under Information Technology
Enabled Services. Let me start from the roots. Transcription is a process where
a voice or speech is converted into a written format, for example, a PDF or a
word document.
Transcription is vastly known in the field of medicine, where
patient records are documented electronically. Same way, business, legal and interview
transcriptions are some of the other kinds of transcription oriented processes.
Business Transcription is a process that produces verbatim transcripts
of earnings calls, sales calls, product releases, acquisition and merger etc.
of public limited companies registered under stock exchanges like NASDAQ , NYSE, AMEX etc.
To comply with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) rules, Publicly Listed Companies hold quarterly conference calls to publish thier results to the shareholders, investors, analysts and market professionals, etc. Transcripts help many dot-com users, mainly the company covered, research
analysts, individual and large research firms. It is mandatory in most
countries that a copy of the transcript is to be filed with the governing board.
The Process
Recording
The process of Business Transcription begins from recording the
live earnings conference call. Most companies pre-schedule a webcast event for
the earnings release, where the whole or a conference partial is streamed over
the internet. The streaming audio is recorded live with the help of recording software.
The audio of the live recording is simultaneously split into intervals of two/three
minutes for the ease of processing.
Transcribing
The splits of two minutes are then transcribed by trained Transcribers,
who will take up to 10 to 12 minutes to transcribe each split. The transcribed
files are then edited by an Editor, who will check for errors in the file; this
process is done in 2.5 to 5 minutes. After editing, the content of the split
documents are then compiled to make it one single document with necessary formatting.
The industry standard Turn-Around-Time for transcribing, editing, compiling,
formatting etc, in total, takes three to six hours for one hour of audio on average.
Quality Check
Then comes the QA/QC; QA will proofread the whole or partial transcript
and corrects if necessary and forwards for publishing. The corrected transcript
is then formatted and published on dot-com sites. The transcript once published
on dot-com is available for readers/analysts/companies and others on paid purchase
or on-demand or in some cases for free, depending on the priority.
Pricing
For transcription service, various individuals and organizations
have different rates and methods of pricing. Transcripts are charged on line
count or word count or on duration basis, which differs from each vendor. Transcription
companies primarily serve to large research firms.
