Data entry can have profound implications for the continuing digital transformation of modern business. After all, data drives so much of what organizations do, from making informed business decisions to maintaining critical records, directories, and databases. Data entry services are essential for making this possible on an increasingly massive scale.
The rapid proliferation of data and the increasing need for digitization present significant challenges for organizations across every industry. Even those who have digitized their records often need assistance to clean and structure it to be useful to modern applications. Other businesses rely on real-time data entry to deliver products and services to consumers.
Data entry services can assist with high-volume, time-consuming, and quality-sensitive work. Outsourcing the work can be a cost-effective alternative to managing a team in-house. But not all data entry services come with the same benefits. Choosing a data entry service is an important decision that will affect the outcomes you achieve with your data.
We’ve created this guide to serve as a valuable reference on data entry services, use cases, and workforce options. Feel free to bookmark and revisit this page if you find it helpful.
Introduction:
Will This Guide Be Helpful to Me?
This guide will be helpful to you if:
- Your team processes high-volume or time-sensitive data that your organization depends on to deliver a product or service.
- You have large archives of printed or scanned documents that need to be digitized and structured so the information they include can be accessed, searched, and maintained.
- You have high volumes of incorrect, inaccurate, or inconsistent data that needs to be cleansed before it can be useful.
The Basics:
What are Data Entry Services?
What is data entry?
Data entry is the practice of digitizing data or transcribing existing data for use in a software environment, such as a database. Most data entry tasks involve the manual input of information simply by typing and transcribing, although other input devices, such as scanners and microphones, may also be used where necessary.
Data entry can be automated. For example, optical character recognition (OCR) software can decipher typed or handwritten text and translate it into editable data. Keep in mind, it has an error rate of between 5% and 20%. Automation without exception handling and quality control measures can lead to errors and inconsistencies that can have serious consequences.
That’s why data entry should incorporate data cleansing, whereby data is manually reviewed for error resolution, deduplication, exception handling, and reformatting. This is especially important for tasks such as medical and legal transcription, where errors can affect life or liberty.
What are data entry services?
Data entry services are outsourced providers tasked with the labor-intensive work of entering large amounts of data into a software program. These companies often provide related services as well, such as data cleansing and data transcription. Some data entry services specialize in an industry, such as healthcare or legal, so they better understand or have domain experience with the nuances of the information involved.
What is transcription?
Transcription is a key component of data entry. It involves extracting information from a wide range of sources, such as audio recordings, handwritten notes, and printed records, and transcribing it into a consistent digital format. Automated systems for transcribing printed text and audio, such as Otter.ai and Transcribe.me, are now widely available. However, automation lacks the accuracy required by many applications, thus it requires humans in the loop to check quality, manage exceptions, and make corrections for automation.
What is data cleansing?
Data cleansing is the process of detecting and mitigating inconsistent or erroneous records, sometimes called “dirty data.” It may include the correction or structuring of data that has been entered with errors, incomplete data, or duplicate data. Data cleansing is a critical quality control (QC) process for ensuring the validity, accuracy, completeness, and consistency across a dataset. Gartner reports that the “average financial impact of poor data quality on the organization is estimated to be $9.7 million per year.”
What is data enrichment?
Data enrichment is a more advanced level of data entry that goes beyond simply typing in data into a database. Enrichment is aggregating and adding to data from a range of sources and merging it into an existing database to enhance existing processes or data stores. Data enrichment makes data more useful for the people, processes, or systems it supports. For example, enriching a sales database with fresh, accurate contact information can increase the quality of the interactions a sales team has with prospective buyers.
Common Use Cases: Data Entry Services
Data entry allows organizations to develop databases containing information relevant to their customers, products, and operations. High-quality digitization, characterized by databases with quality structured data, is the driving force behind better decision making, process automation, and machine learning.
However, for data to be valuable, it often needs to be aggregated, cleaned, and enriched. Most organizations and workers apply data entry in day-to-day work, but there’s a lot more to it than simply transferring information into a unified digital format. Data entry services can be used to complete this work without the management burden of an in-house or crowdsourced team.
Here are some of the ways industries use data entry services:
Finance
Data entry is the foundation of good bookkeeping and accounting, and it’s key to achieving consistent and sustainable financial practices. For example, many businesses have piles of invoices, purchase orders, and other transactional documents in unstructured PDF format or paper documentation. To keep a complete and accurate record of finances, it’s necessary to input the information in such documents into a database.
For example, if a bank wants to expedite loan applications from clients, data entry services would help them process handwritten applications and verify printed bank statements faster.
Learn how one financial services company outsourced document transcription and improved turnaround time from days to just minutes with 99% accuracy.
Healthcare
Specialized data transcription and cleansing services are critical in the healthcare sector, where errors can mean the difference between health and illness. Doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, and others who work in the healthcare field need top-quality data entry services to ensure the integrity of printed or scanned health records. Any data entry services tasked with medical transcription must also fully understand healthcare terminology and be able to guarantee confidentiality and compliance with regulations that protect personally identifiable information, such as a patient’s medical history.
Many healthcare practices maintain thousands of paper pages of detailed health histories that must be transcribed for easier accessibility and to make them more useful to practitioners and patients. In the UK, for example, the average general practitioner has hundreds of thousands of pages of medical records, which must be scanned and archived according to the strict standards laid out by the British healthcare sector.
Legal
The legal sector is undergoing a rapid transformation, thanks to the digital age and mass digitization of existing paper documents into electronic form. For example, data entry and the digitization of information have given rise to electronic discovery. However, to litigate and rule on complex cases, legal practitioners must gather documents and evidence that are decades old, and they must have easy access to the right information.
Similarly, criminal lawyers working on highly complicated cases often end up working through paper trails spanning multiple decades. Conveyancers might find themselves dealing with property-related documents from long before the era of computers and digitization.
Naturally, the need for accuracy in legal transcriptions is paramount. There’s no room for data inconsistencies and errors in things like transcriptions of discovery interviews, hearing outcomes, or court proceedings.
Learn how a data entry service helped Ramsan develop software to streamline and automate legal contract review.
Transportation
Companies in the transportation sector face a growing need for data entry for many of the reasons we’ve covered, along with some unique challenges. Among the most significant is the need to simplify the management, collection, and shipment of goods by digitizing data that is included in unstructured, paper documents such as receipts, inventories, and bills of lading. Global supply chains depend on the efficiency of these processes which are improved by using digitized, structured information.
One unique use case where accurate data entry is critical is pilot logbooks. Aircraft pilots depend on the integrity of their logbooks to establish accountability and advance their careers. Pilots maintain these logbooks manually, particularly independent pilots.
A pilot logbook contains every flight a pilot has flown, including flight time, number of landings, and instruments the pilot used during approaches. Pilots also log simulator time, which help fulfill training requirements. Yet, many human resources managers in aviation consider logbook inconsistencies to be one of the most common sources of problems when screening applicants. Data entry for pilot logbooks is a common use case.
Customer service
Customer service is a primary driver of purchase decisions, alongside product and pricing. But it’s only possible to provide good customer service if a business can quickly access relevant and accurate customer, purchase, and inventory information.
The role of data entry in improving customer service doesn’t stop at the customer support department. The digitization of mailed warranty registrations, customer support calls, and repair invoices also ease research and development, thus providing companies across every industry access to insights that can help improve their product and service offerings.
Learn how one event planning and management company used data entry services to research and compile current online data to enrich their database and improve user experience for their customers.
What to Look For in a Data Entry Service
The best data entry services are those that strategically apply people, processes, and technology. These data entry services don’t take automation for granted or cut corners when it comes to hiring employees with the skill sets and experience necessary to deliver quality work.
Here are qualities to evaluate in a data entry service:
People
The best data entry services are operated by people who are driven by a desire to learn about your organization, your project, and how the data they enter will be used. That’s why you should look for partners who understand your unique requirements and are willing to adapt to your needs based on continuous feedback and oversight.
This is especially important for organizations with specialized requirements, such as those in the healthcare or legal industries. People who work for data entry services for these industries must be able to understand and comply with regulatory requirements, such as those that protect personally identifiable information (PII).
Process
Processes determine how a service is delivered. These govern the various workflows involved in a given project. By definition, processes are repeatable, producing consistent results to ensure a high quality and reliable throughput. That being said, you should look for service providers that possess quality certification and are willing to tailor their processes to better accommodate your goals, such as deadlines and quality levels.
A data entry service should be prepared to learn about your goals and help identify the key steps required to achieve them. There must be an established consensus for quality control and throughput on all tasks related to the project, which also means there must be clear instructions and ways to communicate and collaborate. Processes should also consider how work is reviewed and how success is measured.
Technology
Technology includes the tools a data entry service uses to help people perform their jobs efficiently and streamline processes for easier tracking and auditing. These may include basic data-entry tools, such as spreadsheets, or they may include more advanced tools, such as Grooper or RingLead’s Capture.
The best data entry services will be able to use your technology and recommend others for your use case. They also should provide technology to facilitate direct communication with a project manager or team leader for the data entry team. This communication is critical for ensuring your data entry work is completed accurately, that changes can be made to your process as needed, and that you can leverage any helpful feedback from workers about the tasks involved in your work.
When choosing a data entry service, be wary of those that put too much emphasis on the role of automation. On the other hand, you’ll also want to avoid working with providers that use outdated technology, which can stifle efficiency, increase delivery times, or expose your data to unnecessary security risks.
