Tips To Successfully Capture Data

Data Capturing is the practice of identifying and extracting important information from published and scanned documents. It is the most crucial aspect of running a successful business. The data that is extracted can be later used to make educated decisions regarding the fate of your business.

Now, this is a task that can be done in-house but is avoided by many because of its tedious, time-consuming nature. This is why outsourcing comes into play. Hiring an offshore company to do data capturing work has time and cost-cutting incentives for companies.
As such, many companies today want to jump at the opportunity of outsourcing data capturing service to an offshore company. Outsourcing to companies that fall in a different time zone has the added advantage of getting services done around the clock, thus resulting in faster turnaround time.However, If You are Someone still wants to capture data in-house, then here are a few tips that will help you capture data.

Tips to Capture Data

Decide What You Want to Capture
Before you start the data capturing process, understand the kind of data you want to capture. Data to be captured can be from lists of business cards, phone lists, etc. Identify the data you need; it can be phone numbers, personal details, designation, e-mail addresses.

Ensure Replication
Find out whether the fields you have captured replicate the data that is available in your database.

Use a Digital First Methodology
The best practice to capture data is to keep your digital files digital whenever possible. A digital capturing process avoids errors and saves money and valuable time to retain the context of the content. If opting to outsource, look for a vendor that focuses on digital-first.

Get the Latest Software and Tools
You are living in the great age of advanced technology. As such, you need to take full advantage of your environment. Getting customer data was difficult before the internet was a thing. Browsing through thick yellow pages to get to one prospect was a choir. Thankfully, today, that is seldom the case.
There are many software and automation tools that can fetch you the customer data you require and need. You have software that automatically fills the form, so you don’t have to spend even a second of your time on tedious form filling.
This software makes it easier for your customers as well to leave their information behind. They also help you collect data that is accurate and has a higher probability of converting.

Use OCR
Optical Character recognition can be used to convert different types of machine-printed documents into readable and editable data.

Use ICR
Intelligent Character Recognition helps you identify and capture handwritten data from source files. As handwritten data is more prone to errors, the data thus captured can be less accurate and captured. However, the technology evolves itself, learning how to adapt and thus increasing the accuracy of the data.

OMR
Optical Mark Reading is used to capture marked human data from forms like questionnaires and surveys. OMR has the ability to differentiate between marked and unmarked boxes and helps capture data from boxes that were entered manually.

MICR
Magnetic Ink Character Recognition helps proficient in recognizing and capturing characters. It can recognize the formatted character from data that were entered in magnetic ink. This technology is used primarily by the banking industry to facilitate the fast processing of cheques and other documents. MICR also makes it easier for humans to read the data as well.

Magnetic Stripe Cards
As the name Magnetic stripe cards protect data under a stripe made of magnetic material. Usually, these stripes are iron-based. They can help electronically store particular numbers associated with credit cards, identity cards, and enable automated data transfer whenever swiped in magnetic readers.

Capturing Through Social Media
Social media is your greatest ally when it comes to acquiring customer data. It is estimated that customers spend around five-six hours a day. Most of this time is spent liking, engaging, and commenting on news feeds and posts; they find it interesting. Hence, this makes social media a great tool for customer data that can tell you a lot more about your customers without them overtly disclosing anything.

With the help of social media analytics tools like Piwik, Clicky, etc. you can find out what interests your customers, what kind of content engages them, and what their buying behavior is.

Smart –Cards
Smart cards are pocket-sized cards with electrical circuits embedded in them. They can function with or without any contact. They can store more information in them than magnetic stripe cards and contain information related to personal identification, authentication, and biometrics.

The Bottom Line
With advanced technology, data capturing has become way more convenient. However, to make things simpler, you can always consider outsourcing data entry services to an offshore firm to save valuable time and money.

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