Your company probably stores more data now than ever before. Unfortunately, much of this information must still be keyed from paper. So who's responsible for entering all that data? Often, the work is distributed across multiple employees within your organization.
Today more than ever, staff members have specific areas of expertise. As a result, they can enter information that's more complex in nature, or add value by applying their knowledge as they key in data. For example:
● Recording time and material usage
● Configuring product information
● Entering order information
● Submitting time cards and other payroll data
● Generating invoices and entering accounts receivable data
● Logging job applications and resumes.
Chances are, if you own a piece of information at your company, you're probably responsible for entering it. But what if the same data must be entered more than once? For example, suppose your order entry system doesn't talk to your accounting system. Or your inventory system isn't on speaking terms with your order entry system? What choices do you have? Three options come to mind:
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One choice is to rekey the same data
into two or more systems. Yes, it may be repetitive, but there's a
certain comfort level in not upsetting the apple cart. Sometimes
employees are afraid to suggest changes that might reduce this
redundancy. Why? For fear that they'll suggest themselves right out of
a job! |
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Another alternative: hire modestly
priced data entry personnel to do the data work for you. But
this option has its own issues, including high turnover, little concern
for data integrity and excessive error rates. |
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Avoid the rekeying of data altogether by
using the skills of a custom programming company to build a
bridge between your systems. Often you'll find that the return on
investment isn't only monetary--you'll realize improvements in both
productivity and employee morale at your office. |
Duplicate data entry is expensive: if your employees spend as little as an hour a day rekeying data from your order-entry or inventory system into Quickbooks or Peachtree, the effect on your bottom line could amount to $3,877 per year--or more[i]! Add the time required to reconcile the two systems to check for data entry errors, and your cost could exceed $5,000 per employee.
For more information on how to get a grip on your data entry costs, please contact us.
[i] According to the 2006 report from The Association for Work Process Improvement, the average cost of data entry is $13.54 per hour. Full time dedicated key entry staff were a more expensive at $14.91 per hour. (http://www.tawpi.org/FormsProcDataCapStudy.html)
