The Most Common Challenges in Offline Data Entry and How to Overcome Them

Offline data entry is considered as the most traditional data entry method and this is how the journey of recording data into digital format began. In today’s digital world, data entry is considered as one of the critical tasks of business operations. Due to the changing demand of the market, most of the companies are using online data entry systems to perform their routine data entry tasks. But, there are still many industries and business models that rely heavily on offline data entry services. 

Offline data entry is manually entering data into a computer system or any other digital device. You can enter the data from documents or forms in physical form, or perform data entry from handwritten records. Some of the information that requires offline data entry are the attendance of employees or workers on a construction site, manually taking purchase orders from local vendors, etc.  

Challenges Of Traditional Data Entry Methods

As offline data entry is the most commonly used data entry method, there are some challenges in performing the task. As it depends on the skills and experience of the person performing the data entry work, it may not be consistent for every data entry work performed by the team members.

In this blog, we are digging deep to explore the most commonly faced challenges in offline data entry work and we will try to find out practical solutions to overcome them.

Human Errors

Challenges of Human Errors: One of the known challenges with offline data entry is the high chances of human errors in data entry work. Data entry must be performed with high accuracy. If the data entry work is performed with manual data input, it can increase the chances of mistakes in data such as typing errors, missing data, or mis-spelled details in entering the information. A small error in data entry can create a high risk of losing customers' trust, you can also miss on a client's expectations with the results you deliver. As a result, it can impact your business in a negative way such as revenue loss or other financial losses.

Solution to Prevent Human Errors: To prevent your team from performing offline data entry work with human errors, the best way is to have a separate process for quality check that can assure the data entered is checked efficiently for highlighting human errors. Also, you can also have a quality check of data entry operators on a frequent basis or plan some training sessions for data entry operators to reassure that the results are aligned with the expected quality. You can also use automation for offline data entry work to validate and highlight errors that can later be checked and corrected by data entry experts. 

Take A Lot Time For Bulk Data Entry Work

Challenges of High Turn-around Time: Offline data entry is usually performed manually by entering the data record by record. If the data is in large volume, it can take a lot of time and it is highly possible that the work is not delivered at the given timelines or there are high chances of missing deadlines. As the data entry work is monotonous, it can reduce the efficiency of data entry operators if they are not given enough break times. Your business may need to invest a lot in hiring a large team of data entry work to perform data entry of large quantities. 

Solution of Saving Time in Data Entry: Time is a precious element in any business environment, it can affect your business on many dimensions such as customer experience, operational expenses, business growth, etc. In data entry work, it is important to keep your team motivated and engage them in the activities to keep them focused while performing data entry work. One of the best solutions is to outsource offline data entry to professionals at your expected budget, this will save your time and resources and also you can hire the team with great flexibility to overcome the challenges of changing data volumes.

Inconsistent Data Entry Formats

Challenges of Maintaining Consistent Data Formats: Data is easy to read and understand when it is in the same format. If your data is in various different formats, it can be difficult to use that data for strategic planning and analytical purposes. As a business owner, you must have your data aligned with your business needs as it can be time-consuming to filter data every now and then. Inconsistency in data can lead to many challenges in performing daily business activities.

Solution of Data Formatting: To keep your data consistent across all data entry work, you need to create a standard data format that is implemented for every data entry process. Also, there needs to be quality checks done to ensure the format is being utilized in the most efficient way. It is also possible to define guidelines on how to use the data entry templates and give training to data entry operators on performing such complex data entry tasks. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology can be used to convert handwritten documents in digital format with high accuracy and efficiency.

In offline data entry services there can be many challenges, but the modern problems come with modern solutions. One of the most suitable solutions to perform offline data entry is to outsource data entry services to professionals. If you need to focus on your business development and handover the crucial data entry work to experts, you can rely on your trusted offline data entry professionals. Increase your operations efficiency, reduce human errors and keep your data ready for strategic planning with these helpful tactics.