Common Data Entry Challenges Faced by Every Organization

Data Entry Outsourcing, or "have you ever seen a business drown?"

Not in water, or debt, or unfulfilled orders, or uncollected receipts payable.

No, drowning In paper.

Before the turn of this century, most businesses were drowning in paper. Every document generated by any business was printed on paper, sometimes multiple copies for distribution, read off of paper, filed on paper, and eventually stored on paper. The ubiquitous file cabinets grew larger and larger. Entire industries developed to handle the printing, distribution, and storage of paper documents. Entire forests perished for these documents. FedEx was founded on the idea of getting paper to and from customers overnight! Entire mega-sized warehouses existed to store nothing but paper. Looking at that period in business history from today's vantage point makes the practices seem wildly inefficient.

And they are. But replacing that paper was and is a painful process. Hopefully, you've already made that transition. Regardless if you have or haven't, read on.

If you've already gone digital, you are still confronted daily with gigabytes of digital data – most of it vital information that can contain data to help you determine logistical needs, sales projections, profit margins, basically the keys needed to make an enterprise successful. That data needs to be quickly and accurately entered, stored, cataloged, and be searchable with any number of criteria.

Paper still exists, and all your paper documents need to be accounted for as well. With the advent of digital technology, it is now possible to convert physical documents like newspapers, periodicals, books, images, texts, and other business paperwork into a digitized version such as pdf, doc, Xls, XML, jpeg, gif, HTML, CD, tape, or Zip disk.

Enter data entry services, or more specifically:
Data Entry Outsourcing

You can imagine the staff and equipment needed to accomplish all of this! If you can partner with a Data Entry Outsourcing Company, THEY supply the entire process, so you don't have to hire and train the staff, buy the infrastructure, acquire the office space, handle the HR requirements, and keep tabs on their work. In other words, if you choose to Outsource Data Entry Services, that giant task becomes manageable.

"OK, This Sounds Like A Good Idea,
But I Could Do Data Entry In-House!"

Sure you can, but then you have the additional headache of facing the most common manual data entry challenges:

• Spike in error rate - since you've hired and trained your data entry department, it's going to take a while to get them up to speed. During that time, you'll see an error rate that you'll never have to suffer through if you had outsourced the work to a team of experienced, trained professionals
• Long turn-around time - new data entry workers start slow – they'll make mistakes as noted earlier, but they'll also be slow to find and correct the errors. Data entry outsourcing with specialists with years of experience is both fast and accurate. And as a bonus, since they are usually on the other side of the world, the work you assign them at the end of your day is completed and waiting for you when you come in in the morning.
• Quality control - if you're still using a new in-house team, you're going to suffer some growing pains that stem from their inexperience. Chief among them is QC. It will take them longer to check their work, submit it, make the corrections, and resubmit it before it is approved. Not the case with an experienced Data Entry Outsourcing team.
• Unclear fields and formatting - again, if you're starting from scratch, part of getting up to speed is finding a formatting style that suits your needs. No matter if it's an Excel document or a PowerPoint presentation, there will be some confusion as to just how everything must look and work. With an outsourced data entry team, you won't have to do this on your own. They will listen to your needs and present you with a time tested plan tailored just for you, eliminating weeks of trial and error.
• Increasing workload - as your business grows, you'll probably have to bring on new staff, training them, or at the least show them your stylebook. With outsourcing, you can scale your team to the size that fits, adding personnel in busy times and shedding them in slack time. The size of your team will always be exactly right.
• Distraction from your core functions - no successful enterprise ever made it to the top on data entry alone. Data entry is an essential back-office function, but it is a back-office function. Concentrate on your core business process, and let an outsourced data entry partner handle the rest.

What Exactly Can Outsourcing Do To Overcome Data Entry Challenges?

• Since your staff doesn't need to do the data entry, they can hone other skills, the skills you probably hired them for. At first doing some of those back-office tasks with your existing staff might seem the right move, both from an economical and efficiency standpoint. But that's a false illusion, as many new businesses find out the hard way.
• With back-office functions out of sight, suddenly, the office is more energized. Your team is all focused on the same goal - making your venture a success. If you follow sports, it’s not uncommon to see successful teams not repeat a championship. The best players often get a better deal elsewhere after winning it all. It's a good way to “team build” when everyone is focused on the tangible success. Keep your best players on the field and hire another team to handle the back-office.
• You can expand your data entry to fit your needs. And scale it back if you need to. And with outsourcing, you only pay for what you use. This is one of the prime attractions for partnering with a BPO. To be able to use, and pay for, only the resources you need RIGHT NOW, is a luxury not often seen in business. It’s the reason the smart money in all business sectors are more and more turning to BPOs for their back office functions.
• Since you're not paying for the hardware and the software, your outsourcing partner will handle all the upgrades in tech. “Buy or Lease?” is a question that is more and more pertinent in todays’ business world. For enterprises of all sizes, today's  answer is “lease”. Skip the hardware race that may see you having to upgrade every year in order to run the newest, faster software that is released every year. It’s a never-ending cycle that you can avoid by having someone else make the capital investment in the latest tech gear.
• The key to all these gains in efficiency is “Outsourcing Data Entry”! Moving all of those “Back-Office” Data Entry activities to a third-party partner. Someone who has years of experience, a highly trained workforce, and the best of tech, makes everything in your operation run faster, more accurately, and with a huge savings in cost. They handle the continuing training, all of the personnel problems, all of the upgrades to systems, networks, and servers. They will be responsible for the network security and can deliver whatever you need them to do.