The results of NCRA’s fifth annual Economic Benchmark Survey are now available for download on the Association’s website by participants and members. Each year the survey is released to attendees at NCRA’s Firm Owners Executive Conference. It is used to provide a glimpse into the new and emerging trends in the court reporting and captioning industry.
Respondents to the survey provided feedback and input that generated the latest information related to annual income, regional differences, and market intelligence. Comparisons with previous survey findings aids in completing a full view of the state of the industry.
Overall, the results indicate that court reporting firms are continuing to grow when compared to data from the initial survey completed in 2011. Other findings included:
- Firms that saw substantial revenue increases in 2014 were more than twice as likely as firms that saw severe revenue declines to have increased their marketing budgets this past year (32 percent vs. 14 percent) and six times less likely to have reduced their marketing budgets (4 percent vs. 24 percent).
- Firms with substantial revenue increases were much more likely to have added services to their firms’ repertoires, raised billing rates, and expanded their geographic footprints; whereas firms with severe revenue declines were quite a bit more likely to have reduced unnecessary expenses.
- Firms with substantial revenue increases were much more likely to have suggested the following areas as new areas of demand/growth: Video depositions (58 percent vs. 21 percent), rough ASCII (46 percent vs. 32 percent), realtime (42 percent vs. 15 percent), expedited transcripts (33 percent vs. 12 percent), and nationwide scheduling (46 percent vs. 35 percent).
Members can download a copy of the 2014 survey at NCRA.org (login required). Nonmembers will be able to purchase the report when available in the NCRA Store.
