The Ten Steps Needed to Put Data Capture Services into Action

• unisoftdatatech


• 21 Feb 2017

Advancements in information technology today are increasing the methods, and ways data are captured and stored. The means of transferring data from one form of document files (such as PDF files, electronic forms, emails, web content, doc files, and image files) to another file formats is also increasing. It is making data capture services an attractive business activity that requires the present day business executive to give it more attention now than ever.

 

The constant increase of business data requiring processing daily, and keep accumulating in various forms such as manually filled forms, letter, and documents, etc., without a singular form of capturing them will require the use of multiple capturing systems to convert them from their original form into a usable electronic format.

 

For organizations and businesses to determine the best way of putting their data capture services into action, here are ten steps needed to meet your data capture needs.

 

1. Manual Capture. The manual step requires a data capture operator to key in the data manually using appropriate devices like keyboard, mouse, stylus, touch screen, etc., relevant software such as Excel, Word processor or Database application. Using manual data capture is labour intensive, but there is occasion where it is necessary. Organization or business who finds this method unacceptable can implement automated data capture, but one may not completely do away with manual data capturing. This is where outsourcing to data capture companies is recommended.

 

2. Automated Capturing. Electronic data capture involves the use of digital technology to automate data capture activities. Using this method particularly has high initial costs of acquiring suitable equipment and software to install an automated data capturing system. Some of the equipment required according to the type of data for capturing includes OCR, ICR, and OMR among other. Although, initial cost may be high, but as time passes, it becomes significantly low, and efficiency becomes high.

 

3. Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR is a document capturing technology to various machine printer document and image files, PDF files, Scanned document into editable texts. It allows conversion of a photocopied document into text form without having to retype it all over.

 

4. Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR). ICR can recognise handwritten documents. The beauty of ICR technology is that it is a self-learning device that keeps learning a given handwriting until it achieved better accuracy I recognising it; OCR is for printed text, ICR is for hand-written text.

 

5. Bar Code Recognition. BCR captures bar-code information depending on the barcode type used. The amount of metadata that can be added is high, as is the recognition level. Its effectiveness increases with the number of single or multiple barcodes it can process such as Delivery note, application form, membership forms, gift aid and more.

 

6. Magnetic Stripe Cards. Magnetic Stripe Cards store data using magnetic properties of certain materials. They have iron-based magnetic materials which make it possible to electronically store information related to the card, credit cards, and identity cards and automate data transfer when re-swiped in magnetic readers.

 

7. Optical Mark Reading (OMR). OMR capture device helps to capture human-marked data from a document such as a survey and forms. It can differentiate between marked and unmarked boxes; it thus contributes to collect data from a manually marked boxes documents.

 

8. Voice Recognition. It converts speech into text. This capturing device is useful in dictation, issuing a voice command and in word processing.

 

9. Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR). A data capture device capable of recognizing characters. It recognizes specially formatted characters printed in magnetic ink by a machine. It is mainly used in the banking industry for speeding up checks processing and other financial documents.

 

10. Smart Cards. They are a chip carrying Card with memory capability able to hold the cardholder’s vital personal identification data. They are useful for personal identification, transaction authentications, and biometrics data collection. It can be read by a card reader to capture and transfer valuable data.

 

The different methods above are by no means exhaustive of available capturing methods. As you have various types of document data so also are different types of capturing methods. And as information technology improves, there will be more innovations for tomorrow in areas of capturing technology to get your data into a system for manipulation to serve you best.