Wow! What a year we just had. It has been a year of rebirth, reopening, and setbacks. The pace of change has quickened, and we’ve all become accustomed to things we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago. At Stenograph we wish everyone a happy new year and wish you health and happiness in the coming year. And we thank all our customers for your loyalty and continued business.
The year at Stenograph has been very exciting as well, with multiple new product launches and continued development of our current products and service offerings. Our Luminex II writer and CATalsyt software sales have been brisk and like all companies we’ve had to become more agile in managing our supply chain to make sure we kept products shipping. We have also seen an absolute explosion of Realtime sharing with CaseViewNet. The value of Realtime has become more accepted and expected in the market, at the same time as remote depositions have become the norm.
Stenograph has also launched some new and exciting products in the last year:
- CaseViewNet integrated with vTestify was launched in October. Now customers can use Realtime transcription with CaseViewNet directly inside of vTestify’s virtual testimony platform. Reporters won’t have to deal with multiple log in screens, and participants don’t have to wait to access transcripts until after the proceedings.
- Phoenix Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) engine was introduced to the market in November. The Phoenix engine was designed specifically for the legal transcription industry to increase productivity and profitability of reporters, court reporting agencies, as well as transcription service providers. Phoenix will be incorporated into solutions that will support steno, voice, and digital methods with products such as CATalyst™ Proof It, MAXScribe™ Desktop and CATalyst VP. Phoenix will improve accuracy and efficiency in capturing and producing the verbatim record.
- APEX®, a connected workflow solution for court reports and agencies, was introduced in December. APEX connects law firms, agencies, and court reporters in an intelligent ecosystem, simplifying the scheduling, production, and distribution of the verbatim record. Utilizing state-of-the art cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence tools, and blockchain security, APEX helps agencies and reporters to become more productive and profitable, helping to save 800 productive human hours per month and providing up to $450,000 in incremental revenue capacity per month.
- CATalyst v21.5 was also launched to court reporters in December. CATalyst 21.5 is a big update for our core customers and allows them the ability to communicate directly with agencies as they schedule, produce, and bill for jobs. Reporters can connect with APEX by creating a profile which allows them to join an interconnected network of agencies and reports. The efficiencies created by CATalyst 21.5 can provide a month of free time for court reporters or $5,000 per year in additional revenue.
These developments have come due to our continued investment of resources in R&D, engineering, and technical support for our core customers. We have doubled the number of engineers working on future writer enhancements and software. We are supporting the continued inflow of new court reporters by supporting Project Steno and NCRA’s A to Z program. We donated $50,000 and 50 writers to Project Steno in 2021. Additionally, we have given away multiple scholarships to deserving steno students.
We have also made improvements to our technical support team this year. Our phone system enhancements have reduced call hold time by 35% and we now have an improved Solutions Center where customers can access technical documents for free. We have also built momentum in our Ascend training program where customers can join live webinars, engage in live Q & A, and have access to previous training sessions from Stenograph experts.
This has been an exciting year for all of us, one I’m sure we will not forget. We wish you a healthy and prosperous 2022 and can’t wait to work with each of you more in the coming year.