If you’re part of a sales or finance team, you process mass amounts of financial data and figures on a daily basis.
This is why it’s crucial that you regularly record, properly document and distribute clear, accurate data.
You want your stakeholders to easily and fully understand the numbers and associated context in analyst interviews, earnings calls, or other financial presentations.
Company stakeholders, whether team members or the general public, expect your presentation to be a full and faithful account that will help them picture and appreciate what’s going on in the business.
How do you organize all that data into a presentation that clearly communicates your work and the business numbers to others?
I’ll go over what financial transcription means, the various scenarios that call for a transcript, some overwhelming benefits, financial transcription services, and more to help you create quality text version of your financial reports.
Let me begin this dive into financial transcription by briefly discussing what that actually means…
What is Financial Transcription?
Financial transcription, basically, is similar to any other business transcription service.
This type of transcription, however, mainly deals with financial data from audio recordings.
The transcripts help you extract the most valuable financial data for your company reports.
Keeping track and properly documenting fluctuating figures are essential to manage company growth and operations and to avoid getting blindsided.
What are The Types of Financial Transcription (and Who Needs Them?)
Generally, finance teams in any business or trading sector need financial transcription.
Corporate firms may need financial transcripts at annual meetings with shareholders or investors, and sales and marketing meetings to gauge their financial health.
There are many reasons why a company would need to transcribe financial data. Here are some of the most popular types of financial transcripts required by firms:
8 Popular Financial Transcription Scenarios
- Earnings calls
- Annual meetings with shareholders or investors
- Financial and sales reports
- Business surveys
- Analysts reports
- Investor updates
- Market research
- Interim results
Let’s further explore exactly how businesses can benefit from recording, transcribing, and distributing these reports…
How Do Businesses Benefit from Financial Transcription?
First, a good financial transcript accurately delivers the full message.
It reduces confusion or misinterpretation, particularly when data is professionally transcribed by skilled specialists.
Of course, there are other options for recording data, whether through audio recordings or manual note-taking. However, a fully transcribed document makes it easier for audiences to digest the information without missing crucial data.
It also serves as a way for repurposing digital and audio content.
Financial transcriptions can give your business the flexibility to use it for other distribution content/channels.
A full financial audio or video transcript also becomes easier to translate to a different target language.
For example, after recording and transcribing a meeting with your team on Q1 finances, you can use the transcript as a report to send to other company members, along with a good summary which you were able to easily prepare based on the transcript.
Benefits of Financial Transcripts
There are some of the ways you can use text copies for your company’s benefit:
- webinars,
- written reports,
- print publication,
- reference for collecting and storing internal data,
- and usable material for website content
Now that we’ve discussed why financial transcription is essential for finance or sales teams…You should also consider how you plan on implementing this process into your workflow.
How do you begin transcribing more of your meetings, conference calls, or research? You want to record and transcribe financial reports and meetings.
If you ask any experienced CEO or manager, they would recommend outsourcing the work to specialists for multiple reasons.
Let’s proceed to explore the logic behind outsourcing financial transcription services…
Why You Should Outsource Financial Transcription Services
Outsourcing gives your company several advantages over doing the work in-house.
When you outsource financial transcription, you get global access to professional and experienced transcriptionists. This enables your business to optimize work hours and operate globally from different time zones.
You also maximize efficiency and accuracy at a lower cost.
While your firm may have secretaries and assistants who can occasionally transcribe, it’s unlikely for them to match up with the speed and accuracy of a specialized transcription system that’s equipped to handle high volumes of data.
Here’s a quick rundown for the benefits of outsourcing financial transcription services:
- Maximum efficiency and accuracy
- Lower cost
- Faster turnaround
- Improved communications
- Increased focus on your teams’ main tasks
With Scribie’s affordable rate of just $0.80/min, an hour of transcription is fairly inexpensive vs. having it transcribed by your firm.
Paying for high-quality and accurate transcription services is cheaper than introducing grave errors into your data.
Consider the potential added costs of inaccuracies or errors that may lead to ill-informed business decisions, as well as the benefits of keeping stakeholders up to speed.
The Case for Avoiding Inaccurate Transcripts
According to F1F9, which offers financial modeling and business forecasting to blue chip firms, Up to one out of five large businesses suffer financial losses as a result of simple spreadsheet errors.
See this case study of an erroneous do-it-yourself transcription by an accountant that ended up costing more for the company.
“Fidelity. The company’s well-known Magellan fund was forced to cancel a $4.32/share year-end dividend distribution. The problem? A missing negative sign. A tax accountant omitted a minus sign when s(he) transcribed the net capital loss (of $1.3 billion) from the fund’s financial record to a spreadsheet. This turned the loss into a gain, causing the dividend estimate to be off by $2.6 billion.” – Oracle
Familiarity with Financial Terminology and Concepts
Different transcription options are available, including DIY and AI-assisted transcription, like voice-to-text. Financial transcription, however, in particular, needs a high detail of accuracy.
“Transcription systems still cannot disambiguate homonyms like “for” and “four” or parse the contextual meanings of words like ‘account’ or ‘promise’…The inability of rudimentary transcription mechanisms to extract the context and meaning of a conversation renders those technologies impractical at best.” – Corporate Compliance Insights
Having your audio/video files transcribed by a professional with in-depth knowledge of financial terminology and concepts can give your business the accuracy and precision you need.
Over to You
Let’s recap. Why record, transcribe, and distribute your financial presentations and meetings?
Get on the record, instead of repeating the same message over and over again.
Habitually keep your stakeholders and collaborators up to speed with the numbers. Allow people to help by giving them the right and complete information in a format that’s presentable, easy to consume and understand–which they’ll appreciate.
Showcase your growth and provide context behind the numbers.
A written transcript is far better than distributing hour-long, raw audio or video files, which may include background noise, distortion, or banter.
Text is easier and faster to skim through, and it’s easier to repurpose for other types of content distribution. You (and your team) can repurpose the full text transcripts by picking the highlights.
Free your employees from the monotonous task of transcribing content. Allow them to use their specialized skills in areas that can improve productivity and profitability by outsourcing accurate financial transcription services.
Scribie’s certified specialists offer the most secure and precise financial transcription service, with centralized billing, team accounts, and more features designed for business and enterprises.
Our exclusively formulated Four-Step QA process ensures superior quality transcripts, with the highest accuracy and privacy for customers.