Typos can ruin lives, and I’m not talking about an embarrassing autocorrect error in a text message to your boss. I mean errors that destroy dreams and accomplishments. Take the case of Great Britain resident Kim Walmsley, whose career and marriage were ruined after she was mistakenly recorded as a male at birth. Or Raymond Lorenzo, who was listed as the perpetrator of identity theft instead of the victim, resulting in a life riddled with unemployment that led to bankruptcy. Both of these ordeals and others were the aftermath of one tiny wrong piece of information.
A study by the Data Warehousing Institute reported that 75% of data quality problems are caused by manual data entry errors. This means the effect data entry has on employee time is twofold – the time it takes to log the information, as well as that spent managing and correcting any resulting mistakes. The additional risk of any large consequences that may come with the worst of data entry errors is the icing on top of a terrible tasting cake.
In addition to a reduction in accuracy resulting from human error, manual data entry creates delays that both hold up business processes and keep employees from more valuable, knowledge driven tasks.
To sidestep these problems, many organizations are using advanced capture technology to take in and organize their data, eliminating the need for anyone to tap number after number into their computer while daydreaming about a tropical vacation, only to realize they’ve been typing “Bermuda” over and over for the past hour.
Advanced capture streamlines data entry by extracting from electronic documents, then verifying it, sorting it, and dispersing it to relevant business applications. To understand better how this works, let’s review three main types of documents:
- Structured: The documents come in the exact same format, every single time. Examples of this include tax forms and loan documents.
- Semi-Structured: These are documents that contain the same information, but may not consistently be in the same format; for example, AP invoices or student transcripts.
- Unstructured: Unstructured documents typically contain a lot of unformatted text, such as email correspondence or word documents.
As you may have guessed, advanced capture technology works the best with structured and semi-structured documents, though it can process both handwritten and typed information. After being extracted and indexed, will become searchable through keywords or other tags and will automatically update information in other applications.
Advanced capture comes with a wide range of ROIs as it works well in many different applications, from automated invoice processing, to insurance claims processing, to document storage and archival. In addition to significantly improving data accuracy and conserving staff time, automated data entry has the potential to improve customer service, increase productivity, ease compliance, reduce costs, and much more. Maybe it’s time to grab hold of the opportunities advanced capture provides.
To learn more about how advanced capture technology can transform your processes, check out our case study below and learn how a leading financial services firm found the answer to streamlining their services.
