Winscribe end of life. What’s your plan?
Winscribe, Nuance’s digital dictation platform, is to have support discontinued for its cloud-based version on June 30, 2023. The end of life of Winscribe on-premises or local server version is set for the end of June 2024.
That means that Nuance Winscribe end of life is a little over seven months away for some customers (at the time of writing) and less than twenty months for all customers.
So, if you’re a Winscribe user what’s your Winscribe replacement plan?
In this post we look at the process Winscribe users should go through when looking for a replacement digital dictation capability now that Winscribe is end of life.
Examine your needs now for the end of life of Winscribe
While the Winscribe end of life may seem a good while away, looking for a replacement for Winscribe is not something you should be kicking down the road. That is, don’t postpone it until nearer the time. Look at your options now, decide what it is you/your organisation need(s), then explore with the benefit of time for consideration, assessment, and comparison which Winscribe alternative best suits those needs.
That way you’ll have a better, more future-proof alternative to Winscribe. One that key stakeholders will have been involved in selecting, will have travelled through the house of change with the organisation, and when the end-of-life date kicks in, will be prepared, trained, and able to move on. Securing both business continuity and productivity.
Winscribe end of life – build back from when and how it will happen.
A good standard project management discipline is to start at the end and work back.
So, with Winscribe end of life being either end of June 2023 or end of June 2024, Winscribe users, at the time of writing (mid-November 2022) have 36 weeks before the cloud-based version of Winscribe ends of life and a little less than 60 weeks before the on-premises/local server-based system is end of life.
If you have a June 2023 Winscribe end-of-life deadline
Whilst 36 weeks seems like a long time, it’s a lot shorter than you think.
To start, if you want to have the replacement on boarded a month before Winscribe end of life, that reduces you to 32 weeks.
If your procurement process is the average 12 to 16 weeks, that leaves you with just 16 weeks to assess your needs, look for alternatives, compare, arrange demonstrations, and keep everybody in the loop before making a decision.
And all this is based on starting now. Given we are close to Christmas, if the project is left until the start of the new year then the timeline compresses to a total of 26 weeks, which gives the project groundwork only about six weeks. That’s pushing it.
In that scenario, what seemed like a long way off suddenly has a much-compressed project timeline and will lead to rushed actions, and potentially poor decisions.
If you have a June 2024 Winscribe end of life deadline
For those with Winscribe end of life in June 2024 time is less pressing. But it would be unwise to park the Winscribe replacement project until this time next year.
Certainly, the project commencement can be put off until after Christmas 2022, and probably until after Easter 2023. But if it’s left much later the project will be hit by the delays of the summer holidays, when diaries become difficult to co-ordinate, making progress slow. Then it’s into the Autumn and all of a sudden the project is running into the same horizon issues as those Winscribe users who have the software’s end of life in June 2023.
Recommendations – start now for 2023 or by Spring 23 for 2024
So, good project management disciplines recommend that if your Winscribe end of life is June 2023, start on the replacement digital dictation project now, as soon as possible, and at the very latest, before Christmas. If, on the other hand, your Winscribe set up is premises based, then you can delay the project, with the sweet spot being starting after Easter and before the summer holidays. Say, late April, or Early May, giving you a year before having to have the Winscribe replacement onboarded, and 13 months before your own Winscribe system is sunset and is no longer supported.
What are your options for Winscribe end of life?
Winscribe is a well-established digital dictation and workflow management capability.
Users record from their laptop or desktop PC, with a digital microphone, or via their smartphone or tablet and the associated app. The software collects these dictations and sends them to the transcription function for creating patient or client letters/documents.
In addition, it provides all the associated management information for the dictation and transcriptions, so that the workflow doesn’t bottleneck and if things go wrong, they can be traced back and resolved, not lost.
But Winscribe is far from unique in the marketplace.
As this is a Lexacom article, we will be detailing our capabilities as a replacement for Winscribe, but it would be wrong of us not to mention other Winscribe alternatives. They are available from Phillips, Olympus, BigHand, and even Nuance with its Dragon product.
All have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Be they in the products capabilities, the support and service that is available, and of course, costs.
Plus, the technology is changing.
Specialist speech recognition is in many areas an alternative to digital dictation. Although our experience has shown that a combination capability of digital dictation and speech recognition is the most effective solution.
Anecdotally, our findings are that speech recognition is the productivity tool for fast note-taking, updating medical e-forms, and writing a few sentences or a short paragraph. After that, digital dictation becomes the better format, for when users need to write multi-paragraph letters or documents.
Ultimately, we go back to the starting point of this article. Look at your needs, look at what’s available, both by supplier and technology, and determine what is the best path for your organisation. Take the opportunity not to just react to Winscribe’s end of life as a one-for-one replacement, but review your whole document creation, workflow, distribution, and management requirements, be they physical and/or electronic, and use this need to replace as an opportunity to improve and enhance.
Why do you need to change when Winscribe reaches end of life?
An acceptable question to ask. As if you’ve been using Winscribe for ages now, and you are happy with it, why should you change, if it is end of life? Won’t it just mean that you don’t get any updates? It’s not as if Winscribe will stop working on July 1, 2024.
All are, on the surface, valid points of view. Winscribe will still be working on July 1, 2024. But continuing to use legacy software that has gone past its end of life comes with a range of challenges and threats. These can vary from small inconveniences to organisation-killing security risks.
Compatibility with other software or operating systems will become a growing issue as they are developed and updated over time. Plus, older software declines in reliability. It will run slower and may even stop working. Finding fixes for that will become difficult, leading to increased IT support costs and eventually, risks of complete failure.
Security updates to prevent hacking and malicious intrusions will stop. Putting your digital dictation system and the documents associated with it at a heightened risk of cyberattack and cybercrime. Given that the key markets for digital dictation are medical/healthcare and legal, the result of such activity being successful would be disastrous and potentially widespread. Plus, the cybercriminals could see the software as an easy back door into broader systems that are linked to it. Taking them into the heart of the NHS, or corporate systems.
Related to the compatibility and security issues are the compliance needs of your organisation. Will other organisations stop working with you, because of their concerns over compatibility and the associated risks that they would be exposed to? Given the heavily regulated nature of the medical/healthcare and legal industries, this is a very important consideration in the decision-making process for replacing Winscribe.
So, yes, you could continue to use Winscribe after its end of life in June 2023 or June 2024, but it is very unlikely to be no more than a tenable short-term decision. It really needs to be replaced with a future-proof platform that can support your work, and mitigate all the issues, risks and threats detailed above.
The main project steps for a successful migration from Winscribe
All software migration projects will have a varying set of elements depending on the organisation and the complexity of the project. For your migration from Winscribe we recommend the following steps be part of your plan, if not all of it:
Understand your needs
As detailed above, investigate what your organisation needs, while also viewing this project not as a one for one replacement but as a chance to enhance and improve your document creation, workflow management and distribution system.
Find a partner supplier that is best for you
When moving from Winscribe you need to find a partner supplier that can match your needs for both implementation and ongoing support. One that not only has the capability and technology to “get the job done” but also has the depth of support and expert knowledge to support your organisation over time.
Again, as mentioned above, while we believe Lexacom is a great partner fit for any organisation moving from Winscribe, other partner suppliers are available. All with their own pluses and minuses and credentials.
Your best solution is the one that works for you
After understanding your needs, and looking at the potential partner suppliers, the best solution for your organisation will be the one that works for you. Keep your focus on this and your migration from Winscribe will be successful. To do this form a project team, empower them to decide, while also requiring them to continually communicate and update the broader team on the project.
Plan your switch over from Winscribe
Take the time to plan out all the elements that need to be in place, when they need to be moved, and any links or paths that need to be considered. Your partner supplier must be able to help with this, so check that they have a depth of experience in such changeovers and migrations. Ultimately, never forget that you’re dealing with important data, documents, and information that cannot be lost in the process of moving on from Winscribe.
Set up for effective onboarding
Your partner-supplier needs to be capable of efficiently and effectively training your users, and installing software, often across multiple sites, to ensure a smooth onboarding of the new capability.
When looking at which partner-supplier to go with, make this a key part of the assessment process. As a good solid foundation is what needs to be in place if the users of the Winscribe replacement are going to embrace the change or be unhappy about it.
One indicator will be how far before the swap over the new partner-supplier plans to start their user engagement program. Earlier being better, although too much disruption is bad.
Secure long-term support
Onboarding is key, but ongoing support, be that helpdesk, the training of new users, or product updates and improvement is paramount.
Digital dictation, document, and workflow management are vitally important capabilities in any organisation. Being able to do them fast and efficiently delivers huge productivity gains by reducing administrative drag. Meaning that the help and support your partner supplier can offer become major cornerstones in the smooth running of your organisation.
Winscribe end of life. It’s time to talk to Lexacom
Given all the above points about when, how, and why to move from Winscribe as it nears end of life, we believe that you should investigate Lexacom as an alternative.
We have a huge standing in the digital dictation arena with our products being used in GPs clinics, hospitals, and legal offices across the UK and abroad.
Our in-house UK-based support facility is constantly praised for its rapid, helpful, and effective response on Practice Index, a community website for Practice Managers.
Our product range evolves with both technology and market needs. The latest example being Comprehension Engine®, which automatically adds plain English definitions after complex medical terms. Making it easier for patients to understand their medical notes now that they can access them through the NHS app under the Citizens Access program.
But above all, we’ve supported a range of organisations, in both size and industry, move over to Lexacom. We’ve done this because:
- Lexacom digital dictation matches and improves on the functionality offered by incumbents, such as Winscribe.
- We can add new productivity-boosting capabilities, including AI-based speech recognition, digital dictation transcription outsourcing, cloud-based capabilities for secure multi-site operations, and smartphone apps for away from the office/desk working.
- Users praise Lexacom’s products for their ease of use, accuracy, and time-saving capabilities.
- Our licensing models are flexible, and we’ve often found organisations migrating to Lexacom save money.
- We move fast – being able to turn around projects in both a rapid and effective manner
So, if you are looking at a renewal situation before Winscribe’s end of life, or are driven by the June 2023 or June 2024 end-of-life deadlines, get in touch with Lexacom.
Our expert team will discuss your needs, provide on-site or remote demonstrations of our capabilities, and when you like what you see, deliver a competitive quote, supported by comprehensive migration, onboarding, and support options.
Find out more
Get in touch with Lexacom to discuss your Winscribe end-of-life project, call us on +44 (0)1295 236 910, email us at sales@lexacom.co.uk or use our contact form.
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