Quality data helps businesses take quality decisions. Maintaining quality of information can be quite meticulous. With an in-house data entry operator, the business will have to appoint an entire team to check the quality of the data and cleanse it before it can be used for compilations and comparisons. Outsourcing data entry service will prove to be more economical and efficient for the business as the entire data entry and cleansing processes will be taken care of by the outsourcing partner. The end result would be clean, consistent and reliable information that can be depended upon for taking important management decisions. But how do the outsourcing firm ensure data quality? Here are the top 10 tips for quality data entry as suggested by the outsourcing firms.
Start from the Source
Your quality check must start from the source of information. If the source has mistakes what you input will also be wrong. Data should be accessed from reliable sources so that it will be accurate and trusted.
Set the Standards
You can then set the quality standards for information being input. It is important for the outsourcing data entry service to set the standards so that they can be compared with the actual and corrected during entry or at a later stage.
Set the default values for the fields and the field types. Wherever possible, set selections rather than input. This makes sure that data conforms to the standard to a large extent. Minimal inputs will make quality checking and cleansing easier as most of the errors are avoided by selections. Moreover, you can avoid duplication resulting because of minor changes in data.
Identifying Key Data
When you input information, you need to check for key data so that there’s no chance for redundancy. If you are inputting country details, you cannot repeat a country name with and without space. So once a particular column or field is identified as Key, its duplication will not be allowed.
Technology
The main purpose of storing digital data with the help of an offshore data entry service provider is to ensure data quality. Outsourcing partners will invest on the latest data equipment since it is their core business. They will have multiple clients to cater to simultaneously. Even though technology changes occur very frequently, when you outsource data entry, you no longer have to ponder on that aspect.
Removing Duplicates and Obsolete Information
Once the key is identified and set, most of the databases do not allow repeated values in the key field. This avoids duplication to a great extent. But the entire set of information has to be scanned for redundancy and the same should be removed. Similarly, all obsolete or irrelevant information must also be removed. This reduces the processing time and increases efficiency.
Identifying Omissions and Commissions
The data may have incomplete information and wrong information which need to be identified. Once these are corrected by the data entry service India, they can be fed into the BIS which come up with the required metrics and analysis.
Some terms may not fall in any of the mistakes stated above but they may be wrong according to the industry standards. This is identified by an industry expert and necessary changes are made.
Train the Data Entry Operators
The data entry operators must be trained well to use specific tools for specific projects. This will increase their efficiency and data quality.
Data Audits
Periodic data audits will reveal if any quality issues are there in the information stored. Accordingly, corrective action can be taken.