Data Capture, like any other process, is a necessary evil that just needs to be done. The reason it's necessary is because it helps your company to better understand statistics, surveys, feedback forms and many other kinds of documents. The reason it's evil is, if done by hand, data capture is extremely time consuming and extremely tedious.
So the next thought on the process is to outsource it. However, you may have some doubt about this which is perfectly natural, after all you are passing on data that could potentially be valuable and private, but also perhaps because you're unsure about the reliability of the partcular data capture service you are going to use.
The majority of professional data capture companies that are out there will have gone through safety and security regulations and / or will have excellent security on and around their buildings. After all, they have to as they will lose everything if the clients files have been stolen or destroyed. So if you have a lot of files to have captured then it might be a good suggestion to go and visit the company that you eventually choose to do the work and take a look around before you sign off on anything.
Then there is the matter of outsourcing. A lot of people wonder how professional data capture service providers can offer data capture at such a low price. This can be for a number of reasons. The first one is that the company may use highly sophisticated software to scan for data or to look for boxes that have been ticked or crossed etc. This of course speeds up the process and requires little manual labour so the costs for the company drop and so should the costs to you. The other reason could be that the company will outsource the work to a country where they can get the work done for a cheaper rate such as India or China. This is a very common practice in the data capture world and perhaps some of you will have already suspected that this is the way it is done.
At the end of the day, when you buy a piece of clothing it will inevitably say something like 'Made in India' and toys will often say 'Made in China' on them somewhere, so we live with this kind of outsourcing in our every aspect. But when it comes to data capture and the gathering of information in a language that may not seem familiar to someone from another country this may also become a concern to you. Most good data capture companies will check where they outsource their work to, but it is always best to double check. Talk to them candidly about it and they will be honest with you about it and tell you about the process.
But, as someone who has worked within the document scanning and data capture industry for quite a while, the results that come back from our outsourcing are always of the highest quality. The companies that data capture agencies outsource to convert the files as their bread and butter, their livelihood, so therefore know the industry inside out and could, arguably, do a better job than if it wasn't outsourced outside the country, purely because they're very experienced.
The only real way to see about reliability is to actively contact the companies and talk to them, ask for a sample of work to be done so you can see just how effective the work will be. When you do send the samples out to be converted, make them somewhat differing from one another so you can see how the company deal with different types of documents and text.
So in conclusion data capture can be done at a good price and still done well whether by the use of professional industry software or by outsourcing cheaply, but make sure to do a little research on the company yourself, find out as much information as you can about their outsourcing and software, even visit them, but most importantly have some samples mocked up for you. A physical render of what you can expect is the best way to tell quality so you don't get any nasty surprises.
Steve Wright is marketing manager for Pearl Scan Solutions, a UK based document scanning company offering a comprehensive data capture service for our clients throughout the UK. We use different methods for your data capture needs and always use the best resources possible to produce the best results.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Can-Cheaply-Outsourced-Data-Capture-Still-Be-Of-High-Quality?&id=5903524
So the next thought on the process is to outsource it. However, you may have some doubt about this which is perfectly natural, after all you are passing on data that could potentially be valuable and private, but also perhaps because you're unsure about the reliability of the partcular data capture service you are going to use.
The majority of professional data capture companies that are out there will have gone through safety and security regulations and / or will have excellent security on and around their buildings. After all, they have to as they will lose everything if the clients files have been stolen or destroyed. So if you have a lot of files to have captured then it might be a good suggestion to go and visit the company that you eventually choose to do the work and take a look around before you sign off on anything.
Then there is the matter of outsourcing. A lot of people wonder how professional data capture service providers can offer data capture at such a low price. This can be for a number of reasons. The first one is that the company may use highly sophisticated software to scan for data or to look for boxes that have been ticked or crossed etc. This of course speeds up the process and requires little manual labour so the costs for the company drop and so should the costs to you. The other reason could be that the company will outsource the work to a country where they can get the work done for a cheaper rate such as India or China. This is a very common practice in the data capture world and perhaps some of you will have already suspected that this is the way it is done.
At the end of the day, when you buy a piece of clothing it will inevitably say something like 'Made in India' and toys will often say 'Made in China' on them somewhere, so we live with this kind of outsourcing in our every aspect. But when it comes to data capture and the gathering of information in a language that may not seem familiar to someone from another country this may also become a concern to you. Most good data capture companies will check where they outsource their work to, but it is always best to double check. Talk to them candidly about it and they will be honest with you about it and tell you about the process.
But, as someone who has worked within the document scanning and data capture industry for quite a while, the results that come back from our outsourcing are always of the highest quality. The companies that data capture agencies outsource to convert the files as their bread and butter, their livelihood, so therefore know the industry inside out and could, arguably, do a better job than if it wasn't outsourced outside the country, purely because they're very experienced.
The only real way to see about reliability is to actively contact the companies and talk to them, ask for a sample of work to be done so you can see just how effective the work will be. When you do send the samples out to be converted, make them somewhat differing from one another so you can see how the company deal with different types of documents and text.
So in conclusion data capture can be done at a good price and still done well whether by the use of professional industry software or by outsourcing cheaply, but make sure to do a little research on the company yourself, find out as much information as you can about their outsourcing and software, even visit them, but most importantly have some samples mocked up for you. A physical render of what you can expect is the best way to tell quality so you don't get any nasty surprises.
Steve Wright is marketing manager for Pearl Scan Solutions, a UK based document scanning company offering a comprehensive data capture service for our clients throughout the UK. We use different methods for your data capture needs and always use the best resources possible to produce the best results.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Can-Cheaply-Outsourced-Data-Capture-Still-Be-Of-High-Quality?&id=5903524
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