In a digital world and paperless work environment, businesses increasingly strive to adopt digitization of paper documents to improve efficiency and productivity. Manual data entry also offers ample digitization options to ensure accuracy, speed and better security of data. No matter whether it is feedback forms, receipts, catalogs or invoices, it is critical to capture all the relevant information from these physical documents into software applications like Excel sheets, ERP applications or cloud-based applications for better data utilization and storage. However, in-house manual data entry has a lot of challenges when it comes to meeting the parameters like speed, accuracy, and completion of tasks.

In this post, we are discussing six of these challenges that manual data entry systems have to cope with.

Manual Data Entry Challenges

High rates of Errors: Maybe to err is human; however, it is not acceptable when someone is handling the crucial task of manual data entry, which holds a high risk due to human errors, inadequate training of data entry professionals, misinterpretation of comments, and so on. Even the smallest errors in data can leave a debilitating effect on business productivity, customer relations and brand reputation. The best way to avoid this risk is to identify the errors and rectify it. One way could be to take a random sample of records on a periodic basis and verify it. The average benchmark for data entry error rate is considered as 1% and anything above this rate should be considered as serious.

Slow Turnaround Time: A good speed of data entry from paper documents varies between 10,000 and 15,000 keystrokes per hour. It could be less while capturing data from images and more for tasks that involve a lot of texts or require an understanding of the text. If the turnaround time drops below this accepted benchmark, it is high time to take some damage controlling measures.

Ambiguous Fields and Formatting: One of the most serious data entry challenges is when the operators run into missing values. Assigning blank values or meaningless substitutes can all cause serious discrepancies in the desired output. To overcome this challenge, make sure that all the original documents are complete with values in the assigned fields and tables.

Quality Check: It is always easy to check the data for accuracy and compliance at the point of data entry than at a later stage when the data is in batch form. If no corrective action is taken, it could prove costly for businesses and can cause both serious losses of face and money. Periodic quality check makes an integral part of the manual data process. Businesses need to invest in manpower to handle this responsible task and implement practices such as the Double Entry System to ensure the right output.

Heavy data load: Businesses generate tons of documents like invoices, catalogs, survey forms and more on a regular basis as part of their marketing procedures. Managing an unexpected spurt in manual data entry work will put tremendous pressure on the data entry personnel and may lead to errors.

Loss of Focus: Manual data entry is mundane and repetitive and is not one of the core tasks of the business. It can eat into the productive time of employees that they could have utilized in executing the core business tasks. This can have a detrimental effect on the growth and strategic goals of the organization.

Though technology and tools have made data capture easier, manual data entry will always have a major role in dealing with unstructured content and validation. Several successful organizations have overcome these challenges faced by their data entry team by outsourcing manual data entry tasks as it ensures better value for their money, quicker turn-around time and reduction of operational overheads.

Data Entry India Outsource has the expertise and experience in handling huge volumes of all types of manual data entry outsourcing tasks at the industry’s best rates. Call us to know the details and invest your productive team on your revenue generating and business building tasks while we handle the data entry task for you.