By Erin Swan
[salesforce form=”5″]Data entry is a game of speed and accuracy. Most data entry positions require employees to be able to type between 60 and 80 words per minute while maintaining a high level of accuracy. You want your data entry specialists to be able to enter information from as many forms as they can, and to do it as quickly as possible, but you don’t want them to miss any vital information.
To get these skills, you can expect to pay an average of $30,000 per year, or roughly $14.50 per hour. Of course, it’s worth the cost if you can get an efficient and accurate employee. But what if you could find a data entry specialist who could enter data from a form in a matter of seconds? And what if we told you they would do it for just $350 a year? Don’t believe us? Let us introduce you to the hot, new data entry specialist on the block—Zonal OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
This add-on for eFileCabinet On-Premise software will be available on August 4, and it will revolutionize the way your company does data entry.
Here’s How It Works
Zonal OCR will require some basic programming when you first get started, but it’s simple and easy; in fact, it’ll take less time than training a new employee on data entry. You will create a template for Zonal OCR to follow, telling the program which form fields you want to pull data from. Select the desired zones and name each field.
Then, tell Zonal OCR how you want these forms filed. You can select the cabinet, drawer, and folder where you want the document stored; if the folder doesn’t exist, Zonal OCR can create it for you. You can set up as many templates as you need, and Zonal OCR will remember them for later.
Once the basic programming is done, you can scan in as many files as you want at once. You can even scan in different document types. Zonal OCR will recognize the different types of documents based on the templates you’ve entered. It will then apply the appropriate templates to the appropriate documents and will pull the information from the zones you’ve designated.
Using basic OCR, the program will recognize the typed characters on the document and pull the information into an electronic form for you, auto-populating each field with the data from the document. When it is finished pulling the data, Zonal OCR will file the document away for you in eFileCabinet. If the appropriate folder doesn’t exist, the program can create a cabinet, drawer, and/or folder for you, as needed.
Instantly, your scanned documents are filed and organized, and all the necessary data has been saved into eFileCabinet for you. Let’s look at an example to better illustrate what Zonal OCR can do for a company.
Here’s an Example
Tommy Taxman owns and operates his own tax firm. He has 500 clients, all of whom need their taxes done. During the busy tax season, Mr. Taxman hires an intern to enter data from his clients’ W-2s, 1099s, and other tax forms. The intern can enter the data from a W-2 in approximately 3 minutes, while 1099s and other forms take 5 minutes or more.
Assuming every client has a W-2 and just one other tax form, the intern will spend a minimum of 4,000 minutes simply entering client tax information. But of course, a lot of clients will have more than those 2 documents—especially his clients who own their own businesses—so let’s assume that the intern spends roughly 7,000 minutes entering and double checking data from client forms. Then, the documents must be filed. Assuming the intern is efficient, it will take them only about 2 minutes to scan and file a client’s documents; so that’s 1,000 minutes of document filing.
Compare that to Zonal OCR:
It takes less than 10 minutes to set up a template for a document. Once this has been completed, Zonal OCR can enter data from a document and file it away in a matter of seconds.
So how does that translate to cost savings for Mr. Taxman’s business?
Let’s assume he pays the intern the going rate for data entry—$14.50 per hour. That means Mr. Taxman will pay his intern nearly $2,000 for the time spent on manual data entry and filing alone. And that’s just during tax season! For extension deadlines and other tax work outside of the basic tax season, Mr. Taxman does his own data entry. His billable rate is $150 an hour to his clients, and he’ll spend approximately 60 hours doing data entry—do you see where we’re going with this?
Zonal OCR costs only $350 a year, is faster and more accurate than manual entry, and works year-round—not just during tax seasons. This saves Mr. Taxman time and money, allows him to get his clients’ taxes done more quickly and accurately, and if he still wants to hire an intern, he can put the intern to work doing more productive things, like helping with taxes or scheduling appointments.
Here’s the Point
You can already see how the time and money saved on data entry can add up over a year, especially if you need data entry year-round. With Zonal OCR, you have the data you need right at your fingertips, right when you need it. And not only is the data entered quickly, it’s entered accurately too.
This means you can process your customers faster, and you don’t have to worry about inaccuracies. Plus, the time you and your employees spent on data entry can now be spent on more productive efforts to grow and expand your business, leading to innovation and increased revenue.
Sound good to you? We thought it might. Get Zonal OCR on your team, and start reaping the benefits!