Outsourcing Audio Transcription - a contract of retainer may be The Way Forward

If you're planning to outsource a significant amount of clerical or other administrative tasks on an ongoing basis, then it may be more convenient to use a retainer agreement, rather than pay as you go. This generally works well for large organizations that have a significant amount of dictation product managers, or for market research companies who regularly conduct interviews with members of the public. It can also work well for universities - is a great way to get a service discount for students, because while each student could be just a small number of transcribed interviews, across the university or faculty in any given year there are probably hundreds.

The way in which a contract firm usually works is that you agree to send a certain amount of work per month, you pay in advance at a slightly discounted rate. You would need to establish a working relationship with a service of the first transcript, to make sure that you were both happy to work together. This also helps to establish with greater certainty what the transcript you can have each month.

Suppose you plan to have about ten hours of recording, transcribing every month. You should first work on a pay as you go basis with the transcription service, which can download work in a variety of ways - online, by character, by pressing a button, per page, per minute or audio hour the time taken. A Penguin Transcription is charged per minute for digital audio recording time or the time required for analog tapes. However, the time required may vary depending on the quality of recordings and a number of other factors (see my other articles for more information on this) so that the transcription service will need to determine how long the recordings take on average. If the recordings are clear it will probably take about four hours to transcribe each hour of recording, in this example you are looking at 40 hours of work per month. Or, if based on an audio minute you'd be watching 10 hours of recording = 600 minutes of recording, then 600 multiplied by the rate per minute audio.

You could then sign a retainer agreement stating that you agree to pay this amount in advance each month, at a discounted rate agreed with the transcription service. Some services will agree to bring a small percentage of those hours to the next month, if not all used, while others will require you to start over every month. Normally the extra hours that require more than the number specified in the contract still, pay the standard rate, which is why it is so important to establish the amount you're going to need before going to stop the agreement.

Retainer agreements will vary with different providers in order, as with any contract, do not check carefully and be ready to negotiate the right deal for your organization .......