Over the
past decade, weve witnessed an increasing number of businesses going digital
or adopting digitization which means having to do away with paper documents.
Not only does that improve efficiency but productivity, management and ease of
access.
Inbound
documents in any organization can be anything from feedback forms to purchase
orders, invoices, bills, etc. all of which will need to be entered into a
software application. Businesses tend to use everything from spreadsheets to
cloud-based solutions and ERP applications. However, every one of these methods
will require a human to enter the data manually, which has its own drawbacks.
Fortunately, these are drawbacks that custom software can address.
A High Error Rate
The error
rate could be the result of various issues from inadequate training of the data
entry people to bad typing skills, human error, misinterpretation of the
documents, handwriting thats hard to read, etc. However, regardless of what is
causing the errors, it will hurt the business. To fix this issue organizations
try to identify the error rate and then what is causing it. While it can help
to slightly minimize error rates, it cant completely do away with it.
Custom
software can potentially solve the problem by using OCR and AI. Not only will
it speed up the data entry process, but computers dont make spelling or
interpretation errors. The only time a human being will be needed is if a
document or a piece of text is ineligible to the software for some reason.
Slow Turnaround Time
Now,
generally speaking, a good data entry pace from paper to digital format is
around 15k keystrokes an hour. However, capturing data from an image is often
seen as being faster. The data entry pace can also be slightly higher for text
heavy data that does not require a lot of understanding. That said, human
beings tend to get bored and tired, leading to them slacking off which slows
things down.
Custom
software that uses OCR does not require much human intervention, and the data
it enters is exponentially higher than 15k keystrokes an hour. Plus, computers
dont get bored, demotivated and slack off. If anything custom software can
help slash your human team by as much as 80%, with human beings only being on
hand to assist with texts it cant recognize or interpret.
Quality Assurance
Quality
checking is a big part of manual data entry. However, that often means hiring
more people to check the accuracy of the data entered. The more people you hire,
the more you spend.
Custom
software can help with quality assurance. Things like grammar errors, entering
digits where there should be text, etc. can all be handled by a computer. While
it cant outdo a manual human review, it can speed it up considerably.
Distraction from Other Core Tasks
If data
entry isnt a core task for a business, it is unfortunate if it takes the
majority of an employees time, which distracts them from other important
tasks.
Automating
the majority of the process with OCR, and AI can help ensure that employees are
free to work on core tasks while the software handles all the tedious data
entry jobs.
Training Employees
Many data
entry tasks require that employees be trained. Training takes time and money. An
organization can save considerably by using custom software custom software.
Custom
software can take care of all the heavy lifting associated with scanning,
categorizing, and storing the data. Not only does it make the process easier
but also cheaper for the organization.