The Ultimate Guide to Data Entry Outsourcing (2021)

As businesses enter into 2021, they are striving to increase their productivity while also decreasing overhead costs. The demand for outsourcing continues to grow exponentially in all areas, including data entry services. A recent report released by Business Wire showed that the data entry outsourcing market will grow by almost 352 million dollars by 2023, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 5%.

Businesses like financial services and insurance providers, banking, IT, manufacturing, health care and telecom have proven to be the primary market drivers for data outsourcing needs. Businesses that need to move to data entry outsourcing can now do so easily. By outsourcing data entry tasks, businesses can save 40-60% in operational costs, making it a practical solution for overall cost reduction within your business.

We’ll highlight the key benefits of data entry outsourcing in the complete guide to data outsourcing below.

Evaluate your business needs

Before deciding on a data entry service provider, it’s important to first conduct a complete and thorough analysis of your business needs and requirements. You should look at, step by step, what processes are being fulfilled by your employees in every department to determine if it makes more sense to outsource data entry. Does it add more value to your business and will it improve efficiency? Does it offer a scalable solution to reduce operating costs?

Identify your requirements

After a full analysis, you will have identified the extent to which you need data entry outsourcing. It is now time to break down your requirements to specify in terms of service what your expectations are for your data entry service provider.

• Cost - what is your total budget for outsourcing data entry?
• Customization - how much of your data entry tasks do you need to outsource? Will your service provider of choice have the ability to adapt to your business process flows and deliver what you need?
• Manpower - Does your outsourcing provider have the manpower and capacity to handle the amount of work that you will require from them?
• Technology -  which tools or apps will your third party service provider need to fulfill your data entry requirements?
• Data Privacy and Security - what are the data security measures that your provider has in place to ensure the privacy and safety of your business data?
• Turnaround Time - what is the time frame to accomplish each workload requirement?
• Customer Support - Do you need 24/7 support availability? How would you prefer to communicate with your provider when you need support?
• Flexibility and Scalability - what are your adaptability requirements? What skills and infrastructure are you looking for when it comes to the scope of growth and expansion?

Make a list of all possible outsourcing service providers

Now that you have accumulated a list of your requirements, it is time to put together a list of prospective third party outsourcing partners. You can do an easy search online to find a good list of providers. Visit each website to get a better understanding of each individual company to help narrow the search down to companies who look like a good fit for you. Make a short list based on the list of your requirements as a guide to identify which companies meet your needs and will make a good fit for your business. From that list you can decide which provider is your top choice. It’s also a good idea to research at least four other companies in case your first choice doesn’t work out.

Schedule a consultation with your top choice

Now that you’ve shortlisted your candidates, you can move forward with scheduling a consultation with your top choice for data entry outsourcing. This consultation is a vital step in the process in order for you and your provider to understand the expectations of each other in regards to the type of partnership you wish to initiate. This is time when you will also explain to the service provider what your service requirements are to establish a clear understanding for both parties as to what the partnership includes, all the way from the transition process to quality monitoring.

Prepare a transition plan 

Now is the time to begin the planning stage for transition. It is important to establish who and what will be involved in this process. What will you need to do on your end to prepare? What will be required from them on their end? It is essential to ensure a smooth transition in order to establish a successful partnership from the beginning. Having a well laid out and well thought out plan helps you to avoid any issues that could otherwise arise, like data corruption or loss, an extended interruption of business, compliance issues or security breaches. This is also the time to prepare your team for the upcoming transition. Establish an in-house point person to handle all transactions with the data entry service provider if necessary.

Plan for system and process integration

Once the transition stage has been completed, it’s time to map out all essential integrations. An experienced outsourcing partner should already have an established system and process integration guideline, so you shouldn’t have any problems. The most important thing is to be sure that data security is carried out correctly to ensure the safety of your business data. This is also the point in the process to analyze if your choice of outsourcing partner was the right one. If any of the transition or integration stages are not working out in the way you expected, you may want to consider a different outsourcing partner.

Schedule regular process and quality reviews 

After a smooth and successful integration stage, you will still need monitoring to assess the performance of your new service provider. Gather feedback on a regular basis from your point person if you have established one, and anyone else on your team who has been impacted, positively or negatively, by the decision you made to outsource data entry. By conducting regular process reviews, you will better understand how your decision to outsource data entry affects your bottom line. By doing so, you will also be able to make better business decisions, like outsourcing other processes or scaling data entry projects.

Data entry outsourcing is extremely critical for all businesses, so you should make your decision to outsource with genuine thought and care. If you are interested in or looking to outsource your data entry tasks, the specialists at TRONITECH Managed Document Services work directly with you to communicate, collaborate and provide solutions to your data entry processing. Contact us today to discuss how we can help.