The current big IT issue BYOD – bring your own device, blurs the line between the use of technology at work and at home. This blurring of the work/life boundary has ensured IT departments now have to accept that many individuals within an organisation will want to use the technology they are most familiar with. And for younger employees in particular, that is likely to be the latest Wi-Fi enabled smart phones and tablets.

The obvious benefit of BYOD is a cost saving for the organisation. The not so obvious benefit is that many organisations report an increase in productivity from engaged employees who enjoy the new working environment.

Happily for employers, a policy that allows a certain amount of personal usage, blurs the line between work and home, with employees more likely to undertake out of hours work on their own device, which is often close at hand, day and night.

In transcription outsourcing, we have seen this trend manifest itself in the request from many hundreds of law firms we work with, to provide a BlackBerry app., so fee-earners could use devices for dictation at any time of the day, in any location. The trend towards BYOD is perhaps most easily seen in our development of similar apps., for iPhone, iPad and Android users; not necessarily the device of choice for the firms' IT department, but definitely the personal choice for many lawyers.

We tailor all our software to the specific working requirements of each law firm. Our system allows a lawyer using their mobile phone/device to send a dictation either to their own secretary or to one of our 300 plus typists.

We provide every individual client with a dedicated email account which they can access from anywhere in the world. As long as they have a mobile device with email functionality and an email account with an internet connection, they can dictate a document and have it transcribed by one of our typists.

However, there are drawbacks to the current BYOD culture. Data leakage is perhaps the major concern, but this can be mitigated with encryption of the devices and software to keep personal and corporate data separate. Collaboration between colleagues can be stifled if everyone is utilising different devices, different operating systems and incompatible software, but again the problem can be overcome with a flexible but robust usage policy.

Whilst organisations and their IT departments struggle to cope effectively with this growing trend, we expect to see a decline in traditional dictation hardware as users look to exploit smart technology to record their words and email the sound file to us for transcription – whatever the time of day or night.