Automating manual data entry is an imperative for businesses not just for improved efficiencies and turnaround times, but for maintaining critical accuracy standards.
A Malaysian student went on a multi-million shopping spree for 11 months, splurging 2.7m (AU$4.6 million) on designer handbags, clothes, jewelry, mobile phones and much more – all from luxury brands including Chanel, Cartier and Christian Dior. The trigger was an unlimited, though accidental overdraft she received from Westpac – Australia’s largest bank. The bank soon realized its gaffe caused by a data entry error but the damage had been done. It was faced with a non-recoverable dent, as all the charges against the student were dropped. In a similar ruling earlier a man charged with fraud for withdrawing $2.1 million was evicted. Here again, the culprit was a data entry error by the bank. These two examples then are not unique and represent an obvious challenge with data collection. But the problem is far wider-reaching, affecting all elements of the business and totting up to a huge 3.1tn in unnecessary business expense in the US alone.
How manual data entry errors affects your business
Data entry errors can disturb every single data management effort of an organization, adversely affecting its profitability and brand reputation. Priorities to core business activities, lack of skilled professionals, or minimal exposure to advanced tools and technology are some impediments in ensuring quality data. This makes data entry service providers a much preferred option for businesses. Know how to deal effectively with common data entry errors. Get a FREE Quote »
5 sources of data entry errors & quick win solutions
1. Data entry error due to ambiguous data

- While entering collected data, the alert not just sends a signal that things are not in order, but also asks the data entry operator whether to continue or not.
- It paced up processing of 120,000 insurance claims and increased the data accuracy manifold.
- Perfect benchmarking to compare predefined date formats and the format of the date entered gives a seamless process with highest accuracy levels.
2. Data entry error due to value representation consistency

- Data validation and completeness Check, ensures that the data entered in a specific field is in the correct format.
- If the data entry professional enters text instead of a number or a field is left blank, or the value entered has a blank space; data validation checkpoint would produce an error and alert the data entry operator and the quality check personnel.
- It also keeps a check that no fields are empty and no values were missed.
3. Data entry error due to missing values

- Encoding a Value for NULL helped in identifying blank fields and to maintain the accuracy of data, an optional data element was allowed to encode a value for NULL.
- Data entry experts created a support system of macros containing keywords to take care of empty fields considering the queries and COUNT, GROUPBY, and other commands to formulate results easily & correctly.
- It compelled the data entry professional to go back to source data to find out the correct value that needs to be entered in the field.
4. Data entry error due to valid values

- Completeness and Validity Check will consider a value “valid”, only if it is a part of a collection of possible accurate values represented in an unambiguous and consistent way.
- The validity check macro nowhere can identify if the value is accurate, and not all values are accurate because they are valid.
- For a value to be accurate it must be a correct value which can be determine through data cleansing.
5. Data entry error due to change-induced inconsistencies

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How to improve data entry accuracy using Automation
The Internet is flooded with information about transcription & transposition errors, advice to use “Double check data entry” method, and improve working environments as suggestions to improve data entry accuracy. However, scope of these process standardization measures remains limited and does not help in answering how to reduce data entry errors. Data entry automation makes your business processes smarter without redesigning the fundamental process. Automating data entry by leveraging machine learning and artificial Intelligence not only enhances your existing manual data entry process but also ensures greater accuracy. Templetised and trained bots are programmed to perform routine yet critical business processes by mimicking the way data professionals interact with applications and following simple rules to make decisions. The bots extract information from images stored in the forms processing servers, process that data and transfer it to respective APIs, designated databases, predefined user interfaces, or into legacy systems. Data entry can be performed by software robots with very little human interaction, typically to answer the long persistent challenge of how to reduce human error in data entry.How intervention of bots enriches manual data entry

So, what are the specific benefits of automating data entry?
- RPA enabled automated data entry work flows do away with repetitive work, prevent errors, and result in enhanced productivity.
- Free up a lot of man hours from structured and dreary manual data entry tasks; which can be utilized for other productive work.
- Tools and bots support automated error reports which raise a red flag for erroneous data entered.
- Conformity with robust data entry standards such as geo-coding, matching, data monitoring, data profiling and linking to improve the overall accuracy, hence the quality of the data entered.
- Automating manual data entry increases efficiency and reduces errors which translate to cost savings and viable operations.
Conclusion
Data management best practices may help organizations identify inaccurate data but not all of them, and fix only a small fragment of what they found. Immediate improvements in data accuracy can be done in short time with considerable payoff but getting business databases to low levels of inaccuracies and keeping it that way needs you to automate your manual data entry process. Automated data entry has been accepted by industries across verticals to do away with laborious and manual data entry processes. RPA and ML is enabling enterprises big time with superior data entry solutions to constantly enter, maintain, and manage more accurate and valuable business data. Check out how our data entry solutions benefit your business. Get in Touch »