Thank you for your interest in our services. The purpose of this page is to introduce myself and make you feel more comfortable using our office and transcription services.
My name is Barb Krultz, owner of B. Krultz & Associates. My organization offers a variety of off-site support services to the public, with a heavy focus on transcription. Our associates are talented subcontractors whose services may be used on your project depending on need. Our associates work in their own environment or homes and supply their own hardware and software.
My background in office services goes back over 30 years and includes positions in both county government and the private sector. I started transcribing and typing back in the days before cassette tapes or CDs when we used cylinders for recording. At various points in my career I returned to school to keep up-to-date with changes in this field and to improve or learn new skills. Because I have always loved medicine, I earned a medical transcription diploma a few years ago.
This business began about 1989, before computer technology was widely available and affordable. My first computer was an Apple IIe, which I loved, but what a difference from today's computers! Now I use two different operating systems, Vista and Windows XP. Prior to Windows XP, I had Windows 95, and prior to that, Windows 3.11. All our main windows operating system computers have been custom built so we can meet customer demands. Over the past decade, we have seen marvelous improvements in technology, and we have participated in many of these changes.
There were many, many reasons I wanted my own business, and I always knew it would be office support because that is where my talent, interests, training, and experiences were. Fortunately, I am a workaholic when it comes to office work and transcribing, and I am pretty fussy when it comes to the finished product.
We are located in a rural area, and my office is located right here where I live. My office is like any outside business office although I believe the environment, equipment, reference tools, security, and many other things are superior to an outside work environment. I am basically on-call all the time for customers, which could not be done cost-effectively in an outside working environment. I thoroughly enjoy being available at any time for my customers.
My job here includes customer service, scheduling, billing, and related office tasks such as maintaining the web site, advertising, maintaining and upgrading the computers, etc. I proof subcontractor's work and do quite a bit of the actual work myself.
My current typing speed is 85 words per minute. I have to thank MidState Technical College and my document processing teacher, Millie, for that because when I entered the medical transcription program my typing speed was 72 words per minute, which had held steady for 12 years prior to that time. My calculator speed is extremely high although I don't know the exact number of characters per minute.
I'm pretty much a workaholic, have high standards, want perfection, and am always striving to be better. I put a lot of value in the customer's work; they have done the hard part, and many times their work can't be redone, so we have got to do it right for them.
I believe in helping customers as much as possible because it benefits both of us, and because it benefits all of us, the customers, associates, and myself, I also believe in providing as much help and information to the associates as reasonably possible.
For those who want more details about my background, I'll start with my education:
Work experience (only those related to office work are included)
Personal information
Personality traits
Not afraid to try new things, determined, fussy yet flexible, love learning new things. Am a self-starter, can function independently and remain focused on the task at hand. I am work-oriented and never have problems separating personal from business activities. Have worked in a number of jobs in the past requiring confidentiality, which has never been a problem and seems to be just part of my personality.
About my office
My office is a full room in my house, our old living room. My office has the same equipment you would find in any office although the quality is probably significantly better. We also have more reference tools than any outside office I've worked in. One wall contains a tall seven foot long storage unit with a work counter. On the opposite wall is a file cabinet, large desk, two microfilms readers, a bookcase, telephones and re-recorder, the tape transcribers, the satellite modem and router, and overhead shelving. Years ago, I found a tall computer cart that I love because it holds so much within easy reach. This cart sits at a right angle to the desk. The bottom shelf of the cart holds the part of the speaker system. The next shelf holds the scanner. The next shelf is for my keyboard, mouse, and graphics tablet. The shelf above the keyboard holds the tower and monitor, headsets, digital recorder, and miscellaneous electronic gizmos, and the top shelf holds a printer. Under the cart are three foot pedals used with the various transcription devices or software. Behind the computer stand is a whopper of a battery pack with lots of plugs for the important computer devices. We are currently adding another office, which hopefully will be running in a few months.
Additional comments
I have been very fortunate to be a PC and software whiz. For quite a few years I was this area's unofficial computer and software fix-it person. I have installed software and devices for private individuals and business. Any time people had problems with their computer or software, they would call or visit me, and I would help them or in some cases even train them.
Reasons why I started my own business
My reasons for wanted to develop my own business may seem strange to some people, so I thought they should be explained to my customers. First, I need to say that there were many, many reasons I wanted my own business, and it all boils down to I thought I could do it better and for less money, which has turned out to be true.
You all know the advantages of working from home. No dress codes, no driving or parking problems or expense, total control of your environment, and so on. It was all those reasons plus many others that pushed me into my own business.
Most people also want freedom, freedom to make their own decisions. For myself, the biggest part of this decision making thing did not involve workplace rules and regulations but was more related to the methods and equipment we use to accomplish our work. For example, people with limited experience and knowledge often times made the decisions on what type of office equipment would be used when I was employed in private and government positions. Often times that decision was based heavily on budget, with limited input from the people who work directly with a particular product. I knew that it could cost more initially to purchase a quality computer and buy that special software or keyboard, but it could increase productivity and accuracy and generate long-term savings. For example, I use an abbreviation expander software program that greatly increases productivity, reduces operator fatigue, and increases accuracy. This software benefits both the customer and our organization, but it is not something commonly found in many business offices.
To me, time lost from driving to and from work and those mandatory lunch breaks was just excessive. I calculated that two working days per week were lost, which could be spent working. I like working, and I would rather put hours into that instead of driving and eating. I also love the fact that I can put in extra hours at very odd times with my home office. Somewhat related to this is the fact that customers can reach me at any time.
I wanted to be able to use my education. For example, there have been minor changes in grammar over the years; however, at the last place I worked, the editors were not familiar with these changes, and the workers were required to utilize the older out-of-date grammar rules.
I wanted our services to be flexible and not hindered by policies. You need to be very flexible with customers' needs, and you need to be able to respond very quickly to those demands.
Have you had to share? The last place I worked was a large medical facility, but it had limited physical space, equipment, and reference tools. We had to share so many things that it became inconvenient. Perhaps related to sharing would be down time on a network, which happened almost daily at that facility.
My business philosophies
Some of my values are contrary to most businesses. I do not believe in trying to make the highest profit possible. Of course, you need money for operations and growth, but from just a pure greed point is against my whole personality. I would like to see a return to a family-type feeling between workers and owners. I want to see more cooperation, more interaction, more loyalty, and more respect between owners and workers. Even though I am a manager and owner, I do not believe in the exorbitant wages made by some of the individuals in those upper level positions. Whenever possible, I believe owners and operators need to get in there and perform the same tasks as their workers. Unfortunately, throughout my career I have witnessed, been asked to participate in, or asked to represent an individual (as a union negotiator) in what I consider to be unfair or unethical tactics conducted by management against employees. That will not happen in this organization, period. One of my reasons for being so firm about this is I think this whole think process gets transferred to the customer too, how we interact and deal with customers, and there is too much risk in treating the customer unfairly.
Customer philosophies
I would say all the places I worked for in the past were very good with customers as far as support. I believe in the maximum amount of customer support as humanly possible. I would like to reach customers before they begin some of these projects, particularly the ones that will be transcribed, so we can offer help so customers can reduce their expenses. For example, we really push digital recording devices because of the extremely high quality and compact file size of the newer audio formats. Some of our customers are able to recover the cost of this type of recording device in one project. Once the customer releases a project to us, I don't want them to have to worry or think about it until the completed document is returned to them. I want them to realize that we are the experts; we have the knowledge, the training, the experience, and the appropriate equipment to complete the task. Our overall goal is to retain customers and have them come back as they need the service.
The most challenging parts of this work
The technology involved. Although there is a lot to know as a transcriptionist, it is more complicated as an owner-manager because we have more tasks and more software to deal with, and sometimes we need to know more than the customers and associates in order to prevent or fix problems on their side. There's a lot to know, and it keeps changing.
Advertising. Our customers come from many different walks in life, and it is not physically or monetarily possible to reach even a fraction of our prospective customers. In the same token, much of our work involves confidential projects and/or customers who want to remain anonymous. This makes it very difficult to use these people as references or to spread the word about our services through the grapevine.
Getting prospective and new customers to feel comfortable and secure about using our services. In most cases, they don't know us, don't know our skills, so they are hesitant about the unknown.
Transcribing poor quality audio recordings. Many customers are inexperienced at recording interviews, meetings, etc., and they really don't know about the differences in microphones or recording devices. Usually, this is a problem with cassette tapes, which we may re-record to digital and then use software to try to improve the quality. Sometimes all this effort does not help at all. We really need to assist customers before they attempt recording because we need maximum audio quality in order to save the customer money. To be honest, many transcriptionists get very frustrated and burn out when working on some of these poor quality recordings, and we need to prevent the exit of these transcriptionists from the field.
Keeping up with changes. This includes everything from new medical devices and drugs to changes in grammar.
Topics. Our customers come from a variety of fields, and the subject matter in their projects is never the same as the next customer. Although our job is basically to listen and type, sometimes we need to research the topic to clarify areas in the transcript. We often times are not familiar with names, businesses, abbreviations typically used in that topic, and so on. In a sense, it does help to be an older person when working on some of these projects because we have had more time to learn about people and the world; it doesn't make us smarter though. We've just had more time to accumulate knowledge.
Customer service. The only difficult part is getting the customer to understand our rate schedule, which is somewhat complicated. We also have some problems with some customers who have unrealistic expectations as far as turnaround time particularly when tapes are involved. Some clients are totally overwhelmed by the whole process, and our job is to remove that feeling. Customer service is an area that needs a lot of work on a constant basis.
Trying to keep costs down.
Thank you for taking time to read this long page.
office services || transcription services || pkbk@badger.tds.net