Transcription app Mobile Assistant gets upgrade, partners with Salesforce

Mobile Assistant, the transcription app for financial advisers, has integrated with Salesforce and updated its iPhone apps. Advisers who use Mobile Assistant speak their notes into the app on their mobile phone and receive the transcription in their inbox or customer relationship management system within eight hours. The notes can then be accessed in their CRM dashboard. "If notes just sit in their email then it's kind of like that tree that fell in the forest," Corey Westphal, chief executive of Mobile Assistant, said. With Mobile Assistant's integration with CRMs, "they are going to go in and see notes, assign them and make some actions on that note now." Part of the mobile update is that advisers will now be able to search their transcribed notes on the go. (More: 7 top apps for saving financial advisers time and money) Salesforce is the transcription app's latest integration — the program has already partnered with Redtail, Evernote and Advisors Assistant. It currently serves more than 3,000 advisers and sales professionals, and claims that it has never had a security breach since starting in 2008. Users are charged on a monthly or annual subscription basis and get about 1,000 lines of dictation a month. The updated mobile app has a meter to show an adviser how many lines they have used in their billing cycle. "The notes that come back to the adviser are incredibly accurate," Mr. Westphal said. "The only way to ensure accuracy is to have US-based professional transcriptionists that do the work."