Considering its significance, it’s well known that the data entry outsourcing market is rapidly expanding. Did you know the size of the data-entry outsourcing services market is likely to inflate at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.01% between 2022 and 2027, which is an exponential increment of USD 185.56 million (a report)?
Data entry is also known as data input or recording. Though it seems like a simple task that requires typing and making entries in Excel spreadsheets or Google Worksheets, this concept is vast. It involves multiple processes, which all businesses may not be able to do in-house. The reason can be the budget, resources, expertise, etc.
This is where outsourcing or contracting out to a third-party professional for inputting records occurs. Global corporate entities prefer this alternative because it is cost-effective and helpful in managing large volumes of records with efficiency and accuracy. This post will help you discover what solutions or services are included in data entry.
Services Involved in Data Entry Outsourcing Services
- Online Data Entry
The very first service is online data entry, which refers to recording datasets from various sources into digital databases or systems. This task can be anything from filling out forms, extracting data from websites, conducting online surveys, to updating online records. Online entry outsourcing enables you to capture and streamline any range of data from the internet effectively without breaking the budget.
- Offline Data Entry
The next is offline data entry services, which involve the conversion of hardcopies. These can be handwritten documents, scanned bills or images, printed forms, handwritten, etc., into digital formats. Considering some specific documents, this type of service involves digitizing invoices, receipts, catalogs, etc. so that a paperless workspace can be established. This service makes crucial documents digitally available, searchable, and secure.
- Data Conversion
Data conversion is a digitization practice that refers to transforming records from one format to another. However, it can be considered the practice of converting PDFs and image-based databases into digitized versions like Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and HTML. This process of conversion outsourcing helps streamline conversions across different file types. Once done, this data becomes compatible, consistent, and accurate enough to swiftly integrate into various online systems or applications like CRM, inventory management, etc.
- Data Processing
Data processing is also one of the recording services, which includes the cleansing, enrichment, analysis, and interpretation of raw sets of data. This is a primary stage of data mining, which leads to meaningful insights and actionable intelligence. Considering how it takes place, this process encompasses data cleansing, validation, enrichment, aggregation, and summarization. With this practice, corporate entities discover their full potential, which can be seen in innovative decisions, strategies, optimized operations, and growth strategies.
- Document Management
Document management is a broad service that refers to the process of handling data effectively. It involves the systematic organization, storage, retrieval, and archiving of digitized documents and records. It requires streamlining, which includes some technical aspects like document indexing, categorization, version control, and meta data tagging. Companies leverage outsourcing this process in order to streamline this process of digital document handling. This step certainly helps beneficiaries collaborate, comply with regulatory requirements, and maintain industry standards.
- Data Mining and Web Research
These are some of them are of broad range of services for which mining is all about discovering knowledge or intelligence towards business objectives. And research can be treated as a valuable process for extracting valuable information from a diverse range of sources, which can be websites, online databases, social media platforms, and records. Both are interrelated and aim at competitor analysis, product discovery, lead generation, trend analysis, etc. Businesses outsource these services for accessing a vast amount of structured and unstructured data so that they can gain actionable insights, identify opportunities, and predict trends.
- Data Cleaning or Hygiene
Also called data hygiene, the cleansing process refers to filtering out errors. These errors can be typos, inconsistencies, redundancies, duplications, and incomplete datasets found within a database. This type of erroneous data often leads to bad decisions. That’s why business experts emphasize its accuracy, integrity, and reliability. For this purpose, data specialists focus on eliminating duplicate entries, standardizing formats, validating entries, and updating obsolete entries. Outsourcing data cleansing offloads the burden of diverting focus to maintaining high-quality data. After all, it is associated with better decisions and customer satisfaction.
- Data Entry for E-Commerce
It is no different from data recording, but it is dedicated to e-commerce products, their descriptions, pricing, and inventory levels. Retailers, wholesalers, and merchants require it for digitizing their catalogs, their management, product listing, image editing, order processing, inventory management, etc. They outsource these tasks to optimize their online sale operations, enhance product visibility, and provide shopping experiences for their customers.
- Data Annotation
Data annotation and labeling services are mainly concerned with captioning, labeling, and categorizing datasets. It prepares the data for machine learning modeling, which later becomes artificial intelligence algorithms. It is a technical procedure that helps in leveraging image tagging, sentiment analysis, object recognition, and speech transcription, which are extremely popular these days. Companies outsource data annotation and labeling so that they can develop and deploy AI-powered solutions. These solutions automate various operations in the backend, creating scope for innovation and enhancing business performance.
- Customized Data Entry Solutions
Customization refers to tailoring data entry requests. Multiple businesses and organizations look for customized data entry solutions, outsourcing their needs and requirements for leads, sales, optimizing their products or services, etc. Outsourcers use advanced tools and defined workflows, which may also include designing automation tools to integrate customized data and provide ongoing assistance. This type of data entry service empowers beneficiaries with optimized data, processes, and systems that help in maximizing efficiency and achieving business objectives.
Conclusion
Data entry seems like a simple process of just recording datasets in the digital library. But actually, it’s a broad concept that involves data migration, cleansing, processing, and mining diverse data sets. Sometimes, it involves conversion, which is enabled through OCR technology. Outsourcing companies are equipped with advanced resources and technologies that make it effortless.
