What is Data Entry Costing You?
There are lots of things in life that we’ve simply come to accept – paper forms that we download as a PDF, print, complete by hand, mail/fax for processing and wait (days…often weeks) for an answer.
If we’re the organisation on the receiving end of these forms – we’ve come to accept that our mailroom will be busy processing these paper documents, handwriting resembles what a spider produces after falling in an ink-well and despite our best efforts to explain what information is mandatory, a high percentage of forms will be missing required information or the phone number will have 9 digits, the date of birth is the date the form was completed ARGHHHH!!!!
It’s a bad experience for the form filler and form processor. But do you know what it’s really costing you? I hope this article will help you calculate that cost…
Assumptions:
- We don’t account for the cost of customers completing forms as we don’t pay their salaries – cost are counted when the mailed/faxed item hits the office for processing;
- We’ll ignore postage costs for the purposes of this calculation;
- We’ll allow $40 per hour as a cost for staff processing mail, performing data entry, etc (allowing for on-costs above salary such as IT, Real Estate, Payroll Tax etc.);
- 38% of forms received will require re-work due to missing or incorrect information*
- Forms will be scanned to make the data entry and paper-pushing more efficient – scanning will be at a rate of 1,500 page per hour per scanner;²
- Mail (envelopes) will be opened and prepared for processing (staples removed etc.) at a rate of 180 items per hour per operator; ²
- Data Entry on alpha-numeric values will be at a rate of 8,000 keystrokes per hour per operator. Given the accuracy rate of 98.5% on single-pass-data-entry, all fields will be blind-double-keyed to ensure accuracy even though this is more costly (data entered a second time by an operator without visibility of the first operators data with an automatic comparison to the first pass to ensure accuracy); ²
- Exceptions will be processed at a rate of 10 per hour per operator (6 minutes per item) – based on an expectation that exception processing will involve putting the item back in an envelope and returning it to the client. If the call centre is involved in contacting the client to correct the form, this would be a similar cost allowing 4 minutes per successful call and 1 minute for each of 2 unsuccessful call attempts; ²
- A Standard Application form such as a credit card application will average 250 to 450 characters for data entry purposes;
- Data Entry fields are based on the following standard field lengths (numbers of characters, allowing for spaces);
- Title & Full Name: 20 Keystrokes
- Address & Suburb & State & Postcode: 35 Keystrokes
- Mobile or Landline: 11 Keystrokes
- Occupation: 16 Keystrokes
- Employer Name: 17 Keystrokes
- Employer Address (2 fields allowed on form): 22 Keystrokes
- Drivers License: 9 Keystrokes
- Email Address: 26 Keystrokes.
So let’s do the numbers using the Avoka Data Entry Calculator assuming we get 100 of these forms every day…
(FTE = full time employee)
So this would give us a conservative average cost of processing paper application forms of $5.78 per item at the low-end of the range for credit card applications (250 characters). At the high-end (500 characters) its just over $9.00 – and that’s just mail handling, data entry and simple exception processing by returned mail or phone and excludes postage and printing costs. IT ALL ADDS UP.
There are a number of things you can do to address this – document imaging with intelligent character recognition (ICR) can greatly reduce costs, but can introduce errors when the handwriting is interpreted.
The real solution to this is to stop the problem at the source – make the data collection electronic. Instead of customers hand-writing forms, why not get them to enter the information electronically. Online forms such as HTML web forms and Flash Based web forms are great for online only forms – and PDF SmartForms are fantastic for longer more complex forms that could be completed in multiple sittings (save and come back to it) and those forms requiring signatures or where a PDF receipt of the submitted form is required.
But this is just the data capture cost – when you extend this to a process such as on-boarding a new customer (e.g. Credit Card Application) – costs grow exponentially as you ‘do more’ with the data on the form and these costs as exacerbated by errors and delays associated with moving paper around an organisation. In fact, according to a Forrester report (Le Clair, Craig. In Good Times and Bad, Document-Centric Web Transactions Lower Costs and Improve Experience – Forrester – December 2008), the cost of acquiring a new customer through the 3 primary channels breaks down like this:
- In-Store – $182
- Call Centre – $177
- Online – $51
Avoka have dealt with clients that process over 1,000 mortgage applications forms per day and a client that received 202,000 time critical forms in a 10 day period! The data entry challenge is often a multi-million dollar problem. The solution doesn’t have to be!
You can download a copy of this data entry calculator here which will allow you to change these assumptions and performs the calculations based on your situation.
* These figures were based on an analysis of the data collected on 11,000 paper application forms for financial services products and are used as a typical form example with Names, Addresses, etc. These values are based on Australian population – so each geography will have its own benchmarks for length of a name, length of a residential address, etc.
² Industry standards based on a commercial business process outsourcing offerings for document processing.
Higher Education – Now & Future: Callista Community Event 2010
Callista & Callista Users Shaping the Future of Student Management Systems
I had the pleasure last week of attending the Callista Community Event (CCE) for 2010 in Melbourne – apart from making me feel old (by hearing how much has changed in how universities manage their student relationships since I left university), it was a real eye opener regarding how much effort is going in to ensuring the relationship between a University and its Students is as rewarding for both parties as possible and how technology is playing an important part in achieving that.
Let me back up…Callista are one of the leading Student Management Systems in Australia. They’re kind of like an ERP for Universities. There are 13 universities in Australia using Callista and Avoka were invited to attend and sponsor because a project we’ve been involved with was the integration of Adobe LiveCycle for eForms and Workflow with Callista at the University of Western Sydney (there’s a little blurb on that project below) and UWS presented to the group on the challenges and results delivered by that project.
So what did I learn about IT and Universities? Well…
- Students are Customers: Universities are treating their students as customers – to the extent that they are looking at ensuring the student experience before joining the university, whilst studying, after leaving the university are all exceptional experiences. Hence the UWS project for eForms and Workflow to ensure administrative processes for students are easy to access, complete and track online and provide minimal overhead for lecturers.
- Lecturers and Administration Staff need to be attracted and retained: Talented staff are just as valued in the university sector as they are in any other industry. So mechanisms that allow the university to simplify the job of staff are a hot topic. Lecturers will have contact with hundreds of students (customers) every week.
- CRM and Analytics: Universities are using Student Management Systems, Student Information Systems and CRM systems to manage and improve the relationship with their students. In fact, Deloitte presented on the use of data analytics to identify things like the propensity of a student to leave the university before completing their studies (this has a financial and reputation impact on the university). This wasn’t theory – Deloitte have done this predictive analytical work.
- Education is Global: Not only are universities marketing to attract students from overseas, but with the use of eLearning technologies, they’re educating students globally and in some cases have established Campus(es) in far reaching corners of the world. So IT is helping the universities take their teaching to the world.
- Universities are Businesses: Universities face the same financial challenges as every organisation – do more with less. The GFC impacted enrolments, particularly from overseas students, so retention of existing students became an even bigger priority. IT systems that streamline labour intensive processes mean staff and financial resources can be directed to attracting and retaining students. Marketing in the university sector in Australia is a multi-million dollar business, for each university.
- Social Networking: Social Networks are changing the way universities work – students are collaborating online. Asking questions online. Sharing thoughts online. This is obviously an area the universities can leverage – work is going in to determining how the value of social networks can be harnessed to improve the student experience.
- Green is on the Agenda: As thought leaders in so many areas (most areas of everything!) the university sector feels an obligation to lead the way on sustainability. A historically paper focused sector is trying to move away from paper to electronic documents and communication methods (web conferencing) without compromising a student’s ability to take notes, collaborate with class mates, etc.
- TLA’s: I learnt a few new 3 letter acronyms (I.T. is probably the only acronym in I.T. that isn’t a TLA!!!)
- SMS – Student Management System
- SIS – Student Information System
- LMS – Learning Management System
Universities are preparing themselves now for a world where:
- Courses are dynamically assembled from modules;
- iPad and other mobile devices chance the way students (and lecturers) work;
- Virtual Classrooms – anywhere in the world with real-time and recorded audio/visual materials;
- Study Groups on Facebook – why not!
- Intellectual Property – As you move to electronic distribution of lecture notes, how do you protect this valuable asset that takes significant time to develop and maintain?
Adobe LiveCycle and Callista at UWS
In a world of consolidation (we’re heading towards having 2 airlines, 2 banks and 2 IT companies…Microsoft and Google…globally with all the consolidation going on!) it shows a real maturity in a company like Callista to not only support the integration of Adobe LiveCycle for eForms and Workflow at UWS but to invite UWS and Avoka to speak at their Community Event to other universities. The open architecture of Callista means Callista doesn’t have to be all things to all people – allowing for integration allows for flexibility without compromising the core source code of the product by creating customised versions for every client.
UWS capitalised on this and used Adobe LiveCycle for eForms (SmartForms) and Workflow Management to create electronic processes where paper reigned previously on ‘exception processes’ such as obtaining credits for previous studies in respect to the requirements on a current course of study. Where these transactions were paper forms completed by students, hand delivered to lecturers for approval and processing and manually entered in to Callista…they are now
- accessed online as interactive PDF’s by students,
- completed in the free Adobe Reader,
- submitted to an automated workflow for routing to lecturers (with reminders, escalations, etc.)
- and then approved transactions are automatically updated to the Callista database and TRIM document management system.
From eForms to Climate Change
One of the benefits of eForms over Paper Forms is a reduction in the use of paper (seems obvious). But when you look at how much of a climate change impact this can have – it’s surprising. Using data from the Environmental Protection Agency in Queensland Australia that using 1 ream of paper equates to 6% of a tree, 5.4kg of CO2 and 160 litres of water, Avoka have developed an eForm Benefits Calculator that calculates the environmental, cost and customer service benefits of replacing paper forms with eForms.
A core service offering from Avoka is the development of electronic forms (we call them “SmartForms“) … interactive PDF, Flash or HTML forms for structured data capture. Typically these SmartForms replace paper or static PDF forms within organizations and the clients for these solutions are medium-large businesses and Government agencies. They usually deal in tens, hundreds or thousands of different forms and many receive millions of form submissions each year.
Traditionally, the motivation for the creation of SmartForms is improvements to customer service, reductions in operating costs and increased revenue through improved sales order processing. But what about the environmental impact?
I received an email from the Environmental Protection Agency in Queensland Australia with one of those “think b4u print” messages at the bottom, which was backed up with data. Namely:
“Think B4U Print
1 ream of paper = 6% of a tree and 5.4kg CO2 in the atmosphere
3 sheets of A4 paper = 1 litre of water”
Based on this data, we decided it would be interesting to develop a calculator (eForm Benefits Calculator) that provides estimates on the benefits to an organization when replacing paper forms with SmartForms…with the benefits grouped in to 3 distinct categories:
- Environmental Impact
- Cost Savings
- Customer Service improvements
Based on the user entering 2 pieces of information in the calculator
- Forms – Number of forms processed per year
- Pages – Average number of pages per form…
we calculate the savings as follows:
Environmental Impact:
Assuming the Forms x Pages = pages consumed, and a ream of paper = 500 pages. We calculate the amount of CO2 produced, number of trees removed from the environment and water consumed in the manufacturing of that total number of pages.
We then convert the water and trees in to CO2 figures as follows:
- Using 1,100 litres of water is equivalent to 1 kg of CO2 in to the atmosphere (not that water isn’t valuable in its own right)
- 1 tree can remove 3 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere per year
By brining all the environmental benefits back to a CO2 number, we can calculate a single Climate Change figure represented by the size of the Green Footprint – the more potential savings, the bigger the footprint.
Cost Savings:
Based on research from a business process outsourcing company on the operational cost of processing paper forms (e.g. data entry, rework due to missing information, searching for misplaced documents, etc) and using a flat fee of $40 per hour for administrative staff, we’ve calculated the work time that can be saved when an organisation avoids dealing with paper…no data entry, no rework, no misfiled documents, etc. This is shown as a straight annual dollar saving.
Customer Service:
Based on the same outsourcing company’s research into paper form processing, we’ve estimated the reduction in the processing time for a request initiated with a form. Given that 38% of paper forms have incorrect information or are missing required information (from the same outsourcing company study), organizations have to get back in touch with the customer to get that information. When combined with data entry time etc. the total delays that can be avoided averages out to be 48 hours. So if your company operates 24×7, you can get back to a customer 2 days faster. If you operate 9 to 5, you can respond 6 days faster. This equates to more rapid customer service.
Summary
If your organization was to replace 500,000 form submissions with an average of 4 pages per form with eForms, the ANNUAL savings would be in the order of:
- 21,643 Kg of CO2
- 667,332 litres of water
- 240 trees
- $13m in operational costs
- Reduction in customer response times by 48 hours.
Try the calculator for yourself…
Note:
The calculator is not designed to be exact or exhaustive…it’s more of a rough estimate, but with some science to back it up. For example, we purposely haven’t factored in additional power usage requirements for filling in a form online using a computer as:
(a) It is probably balanced by the power usage to download and print (printers are power hungry!) a static PDF from a website
(b) Computers tend to be on during the day – this way they’re being used productively
(c) Other savings like emissions associated with transporting paper in mail vans etc. haven’t been included
(d) You get the picture…it gets complicated pretty quickly.
This is our first calculator and there’s probably room for refinement. We’d be happy to receive suggestions on enhancements – please post your suggestions here.