Interview: Joe McGowan, McGowan Transcriptions

Welcome to the new interview series launched by Creative Intelligence where we gain insight into how businesses today manage transformation, and the transition in achieving that. 

My name is Nathan Relevy and I am the MD and Founder of Creative Intelligence and I have been in tech, systems, processes and transformation for over 20 years. 

Today we are speaking with Joe McGowan of McGowan Transcriptions.

If you’d like your business to be featured please connect with me here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/nathan-relevy-36555419/

Nathan Relevy: Morning Joe. Yeah. Very well. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining me this morning. Just to confirm that we're recording the session so that we can then extract the transcript. As I say, the only reason we're doing the video is just to aid conversation. So just introduce myself, I'm Nathan Relevy and I'm conducting a series of interviews just to find out how people in businesses are managing transformations. There'll be sort of four to six questions depending on the duration of the answers, and to begin with, if I could ask you please just to tell me briefly about your business?

Joe McGowan: Okay. Well we are McGowan Transcriptions, founded in 1993. We're a transcription agency first and foremost, for the first 25 years, and then we opened the translation agency in 2019. I've been asked probably since year one to open a translation agency and I'd absolutely thought no, it's something I'm not going to do, and that was 25 years, I thought, "Yep, okay," finally. So we did that. Yes, so we've been providing transcription services across the UK and globally for 26 years. That's what we do.

Nathan Relevy: What transformation challenges do you face in your business?

Joe McGowan: In terms of what we do face, it's quite different to what we have faced. We've faced a lot in the past, obviously moving from physical cassettes and even modems. I remember when modems first came and everyone was terrified of them, and it did actually take us a little while to get on with that, and then we moved to digital. So that was a huge issue, and now really in terms of transformation, it tends to be security seems to be where we have to continuously keep on top of that. GDPR obviously caused everybody to have to transform many processes in their businesses and we were exactly the same, and then we just had to learn to move very quickly around security. A very large client of ours decided the week before Christmas that they had to change some of their security because their clients had changed and it needed to be implemented very quickly.

Joe McGowan: Within a week we managed to change all of our security, which was unbelievable that we were able to do that and thank heavens the technology was out there to enable it. That really transformed our business, because it meant that to follow one of the elements, we had to move over to Office 365, which is something we were not working in and didn't want to work in and went kicking and screaming, but we did very quickly, and we had to get monitoring on our systems, we had to have all sorts of security systems put in place and find the right provider and then get the team of 45 people to learn it, get on it, get behind it, embrace it within seven days as well. So that was a huge challenge, and I think going forward that will always be our challenge, making sure that our security is up to date and our data is secure. I think that is our biggest thing that is just constantly going to transform us and the way we work.

Nathan Relevy: Okay, and looking back then, and you've touched on it already to some degree, what would you say are the top successes that you've had over the years that have really made a big impact to your business?

Joe McGowan: I think the number one that stands out to me was biting the bullet and we got a bespoke version of an uploading secure workflow system. 100% that has totally changed our business. There was so much administration involved before we got this system created for us, and over time we have managed to add to that, and we still do on a weekly basis. We think of other little things that we can add to it. So now it does our invoicing, it's our clients upload system, it's where deadlines are created and met, it's our quality control workflow system, it talks to all of our team, our team knows exactly what's going on all of the time. It's a knowledge database. It's an amazing piece of tech that we have just continued to build on, and that has really transformed our service levels because we can track everything from the minute a client has been in contact to when they receive their finished transcript. We can track every element and know where that recording and that transcript is and where it is in the process, which before used to be with wonderful coloured Excel spreadsheets.

Nathan Relevy: And presumably this is all within one integrated system as opposed to different systems?

Joe McGowan: It is.

Joe McGowan: Yes. It used to be lots of different systems that have slowly kind of, as we've realized the capability. I suppose it's just natural as we evolve, isn't it? We kind of start thinking how do I need to do this? Can this be automated? And that is our number one question we ask almost every day. Do I need to do this? There must be a system that can do it, and if there isn't, then we keep hold of that question, because in six months we'll look at it again because then the tech might be there, then it might be available for us to do that, and I think in terms of security and streamlining, and it has helped us with our customer service as well because we have more time to focus on our actual clients rather than where's the project? How is it? How's it moving through? We can track it easily and it's just enabled us to look at things like invoicing. I never thought invoicing would be part of our uploading facility, but we've managed to get those two to link. So there's a lot of things that used to be lots of different systems that we are just adding on and adding on, and it all just comes from that constant question of do we need to be doing this, or can this be automated?

Nathan Relevy: Makes sense. So now looking to the future, what opportunities do you feel lie ahead?

Joe McGowan: Obviously if you'd have asked me that a month ago, before COVID-19 turned up, it might be different and might get a different response, but we are still looking forward to moving into the American market, which is where we really want to go. We want to be in the States, and we feel that is a place there for us as well. So there is a lot to do with our morals and ethics as a company that cause us issues that wouldn't necessarily cause other problems with other companies. So we want a UK field force, we want UK nationals. That's part of who we are as a company. So it's interesting to see how we're going to manage that moving into an American market with the global time differences. We do have American clients already, but we are not going out and trying to win big markets. We're just fortunate that we have several American clients, but we have realized that there is a global time difference. It's a challenge, and that is a challenge to our system.

Joe McGowan: We didn't think it would be, but when you think if you're uploading at three o'clock UK time and you're wanting a deadline of 8 AM American time, it can cause an issue to our systems. They just currently say do not compute, but that is something that we are working on. We know it can be done. It's just a very complicated system to make sure that our UK arm works well with the global timeframes on a huge scale, rather than on a project by project scale. That's definitely something that is a challenge for us coming up.

Nathan Relevy: And are you deploying any tech within clients' infrastructure? Or is it purely sort of just a matter of them providing you with the raw material, the raw data and you're processing it?

Joe McGowan: So currently we only use humans. I can't see a time where we won't. I know there are many agencies out there that don't use humans, or that use automation as a part of that process. That is not something that we have found to be helpful. It doesn't add the quality that we've got. So that's something that we currently do not do. We look at it every three months, just in case the tech has changed. So far it hasn't. Funnily enough, I checked the very large one yesterday, a piece of tech that somebody was raving about, and I checked it and I was delighted to find that it was still just as useless as I thought it was. So I was delighted about that. So currently, no, we don't use tech, we just use professional humans for what we do. I suppose the tech is in the interface of the client being able to seamlessly upload their recordings and then they arrive without actually having to get involved again. So I suppose in that way the tech is there, but in terms of the actual transcription itself, then that is done 100% by humans.

Nathan Relevy: Is your approach to transformation, would you say, continuous or fixed? By which I mean, do you have a rolling program of changes, or is it more a case of making step changes after reviewing every so often and then implementing changes? So do you have something like a rolling continuous deployment?

Joe McGowan: Our culture is that we change all the time and our culture is that we look for change all the time. It doesn't mean we find it, and we don't change for change sake, but we are constantly looking for change that might benefit us or our clients or streamline or something that can affect costs. For example, one of the things that we are currently looking at, but it is in its baby stages is tech for timestamping, but right down to the hundredths of a second, which a couple of clients have started to enquire about, which humans just aren't that good at. So that's a form of AI [Artificial Intelligence] that we're looking at, but it is baby stages, but again, that's just really part of our looking and going, how can we make this easier? How do you make this quicker? How do you make it more cost effective, that is moral, that doesn't involve manipulating a human being?

Joe McGowan: Because that's something that we won't do. That's why we don't outsource our projects either. So we look for the tech constantly. It just isn't necessarily always something that we feel we can use, but it's definitely our culture. If you were within our team and you asked that question, they would be saying yes, it's constantly changing, constantly learning new things, constant. So from within, yes we are, but obviously there's a bigger picture. We are constantly looking but not necessarily taking up everything that is out there.

Nathan Relevy: I have one final question, and this is really more to do with your clients' reactions. How are your clients reacting to the services that you provide? For example, are they impressed? Are they hesitant? Are they anxious? And do you find that there's more increased take-up in the services that you're providing?

Joe McGowan: I would say the clients who use us and have used us, we exceed their expectations, and I think just from looking at Trustpilot reviews, five stars across the board says quite a lot with regards to how comfortable our clients are with the process. New clients are always, and rightly so, nervous, as they should be. So that's why we have really strict security in place. We have vast amounts of information available to show who we are, what we do, where we come from, and how we will protect your data. So rightly so, new clients are always nervous, and normally after the first job we get a comment saying, "Oh my goodness, I did not realize it was going to be this easy or fabulous quality. Got this far earlier than we thought we were going to." We try to always manage client's expectations and then completely exceed them.

Joe McGowan: That's our culture. That's what we try to do. Yeah, I think maybe a year ago it was possibly different as well. People would not just go onto our website and upload. They were very nervous around doing that, whereas I think now maybe just there has been a mind shift to realize that the quality and the security is there. So actually, in fact every day, we will receive something that's been uploaded to our website. We didn't know it was coming. Don't know who the person is and they've uploaded, and then we contact them and say, "Hi, did you send us something?" "Oh yes. Yeah, that's fine." So I think people have got, in one way, a lot more relaxed with online and that's certainly something that we've found the past few months as well, is people are being very nervous about moving online with their interviews and their group discussions.

Joe McGowan: And I think that we've seen that the past few weeks they've realized actually it's fine and it's a good way of communicating, and I think that's opened people's minds up to the different technology that is out there. I think these questions before Christmas would be very different than now. I think the world is going to become a very different place, I think, and I think a lot more people will embrace technology. I know that's not the question you've asked me, but I think the trust of tech and the understanding of tech is going to be far greater than it was before this recent crisis.

Nathan Relevy: Oh, certainly. I think, as you say, that this current crisis has forced a mindset change on a global scale on so many different levels, micro/macro, so we're going to emerge differently from where we've entered this crisis.

Joe McGowan: Yeah, I agree. I think so. I think the thing that we've been delighted with, is after 26 years of working remotely, it finally actually has a real benefit. Nothing has changed. Nothing is interrupted for us. Obviously it's changed in terms of our clients, what they're experiencing, but there hasn't been a blip. There hasn't been anything that we've needed to get used to. Nothing has changed on our day to day because we've been remote and completely cloud-based for years now.

Nathan Relevy: Fantastic. Thank you very much. Is there any further information that you want to provide that you think would be relevant?

Joe McGowan: I suppose the only thing that I was thinking of is when you said what other opportunities are there for us, I wasn't sure if you meant in terms of tech or in terms of new markets we were looking at going into.

Nathan Relevy: Yeah, well really both. I mean one of the things that we see when we're speaking to people is how technology is not just about streamlining what people are doing today, but it's about enabling sort of future behaviour for tomorrow, which either people had only dreamed of today or in the past, or maybe people haven't even considered and suddenly it dawns on them so they're actually using this new technology that's come out, we can now do X or Y.

Joe McGowan: One of the things I should probably add to that then is just, and it's up to you to decide if you feel it's relevant or not, but one of the things that we are currently looking at, because of this scenario, and not only because of this scenario, but because this scenario has enabled people to be doing far more telephone recordings, and therefore far more really horrendously recorded telephone recordings are coming our way. So the one thing that we all do is we're looking into trying to streamline but it's not streamlined yet. Our programmers are on it, a system whereby you can call them and then you can call the person you are interviewing and it will record and it will go directly onto our system. So then that will allow for much higher quality. I think what tends to happen is people make the phone call, put it on speaker, and that is not the best quality in the world, and then they've got to then transfer that onto their computers and then eventually it gets to us. So we are looking at that tech through a ringing-in service. It's not up as of today, but it might be as of next week. So that's something that we're doing to try and aid our clients.

Nathan Relevy: Excellent. That's a fantastic example of how technology has really transformed the way people work. Well thank you very much Joe. Appreciate your time.

Joe McGowan: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Nathan Relevy: bye.

Joe McGowan: Okay, bye.

Thanks for reading. If you know a business leader transforming, we’d love to interview them, please tag them in if so. If you’d like your business to be featured please direct message me on LinkedIn here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/nathan-relevy-36555419/