As businesses continue to look to the cloud and automation to improve processes in all departments, automating data entry has emerged as a major help. The right automated data entry solution will extend a powerful document capture platform with the ability to perform comprehensive data extraction and document classification. This technology offers a plethora of benefits for businesses. Read on to get a quick look at how automated data entry works and how companies leverage it for a competitive edge.

What Is Automated Data Entry?

Automated data entry refers to software that can extract data from documents with as little user intervention as possible, which provides fast and accurate data capture for all document types. Data entry software manages the data entry process from document capture through to data extraction and validation – and then populates the transaction into the target system.

Once documents have been captured – in formats including scans, faxes, emails, EDIs, and XMLs – the software converts the image to text. It then finds data based on format masks and keywords users can configure for individual fields. Users can correct data if data extraction was not confident, and the software learns from these instances how to better recognize and process data. This “online learning” aspect of automated data entry enables the system to improve in real-time through the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

How These Features Help Automate Data Entry for a Business

Businesses can shave enormous amounts of time and effort from certain operations through this technology. By using data entry software to manage the data extraction and validation processes, companies can leave the manual steps behind. Now, what was once a manual task to find data within documents and enter that data into the target system is done by machine learning and automation technology – freeing up employees.

Automated data entry software also uses character recognition to make documents machine-readable. This helps to automate data entry by capturing the data from scanned images and interpreting it. Employees no longer need to handle paper or perform manual keying.

Benefits of Eliminating Manual Data Entry

Reduce turnaround times.

Automating data entry streamlines record-keeping such as invoices and orders. When this financial data gets processed faster, and with more accuracy, a business reduces the turnaround times involved in getting paid.

From a compliance aspect, with the ability to process data more quickly, you’ll be able to meet deadlines faster and with less stress.

Cut long-term costs.

You’ll reduce the number of human hours involved in processing data using automated data entry, which will, in turn, either enable you to cut those labor costs altogether or redistribute people’s efforts to more strategic and value-added activities. Your employees will be free to concentrate on higher-level tasks that aren’t tedious and can better contribute to company growth.

Improve flexibility.

Competitive businesses need to stay agile, and automating your data entry allows you to do that better. Automated data entry enables a company to process data on the go instead of leaving behind large batch-based tasks.

If you’re interested in exploring what automated data entry can save for your business, contact All Star Software Solutions today. Our experts have experience helping businesses like yours transform their operations through automation.