Electronic Data Capture: Process, Method, and More

Data capture is a time-consuming process and it can take up employee productive time. But not with the electronic data capture. In this process, businesses can enhance data extraction, validation, and classification procedures far better. What the electronic process does is make the information retrieval process effective and faster.

Earlier, businesses heavily relied on the manual data capture process, which contains connectivity and errors. Later on, with the gradual development of electronic systems, these issues get lesser in numbers. From the medical industry to Information Technology, every sector is embracing this technique of data capture.

However, data capture itself is a whole process combining different attributes. Performing all the attributes accurately will take more time for employees in in-house roles. Therefore, outsourcing data capture services is becoming popular these days because it proceeds the work faster and more efficiently.

If you're eager to know about electronic data capture in detail then this blog is specially created for you. Here you'll explore the process, of course, but will all the methods of data capture.

Let's start this with the basics first!

Data capture is the exact thing that comes to your mind when you read the word "capture data". It's a process of extracting information from any type of document, whether it is structured or unstructured. Thus, the main aim of data capture is to transform the information into a machine-readable format.

In this digital age, the development of automated data capture is natural and has no exception in error-free data capture. More precisely, with the help of Artificial Intelligence, the data-capturing process is getting automated. It has taken the data capture to a new height.

With the example of medical data recording, you can understand electronic data capture better. In hospitals or pharmacies, you'll observe the data capture system, which performs automatic data capture tasks. This system extracts data from billing desks to calculate the stock. Also, this system ensures a smooth flow of information in the organization by managing inventory and other important systems.

Now comes the vital part where you have to understand the data capture in detail. The initial stage of data capture starts with digitizing forms filled by individuals, in most cases. Data capturing is the process that aids the digitization goals of an organization. With the right approach to data capturing, an organization can efficiently digitize its process.

Anyway, to capture data, a specially crafted form is being used that has some specific boxes. The data-capturing expert will accurately extract data and paste it into the provided boxes. Therefore, it will automatically make the validation process faster and reduce search timings. Businesses have now more options for choosing which tool or method to use to capture data.

However, considering electronic data capture along with robust tools will help businesses to capture data more efficiently. It's always best to choose a data capture method that is compatible as well as fast. Getting all data organized will ensure a smooth flow of information and allow a rapid flow of data. So, choose a method that is simple and can provide a transparent look at the data capture.

Let's get this straight – methods of data capture depend upon the organization and its needs. It's up to the organization that decide which method of capture it'll use to meet the requirements. With the application of the right technology, organizations can capture various things including forms, PDFs, emails, etc. Now, let's discuss different methods of data capture in detail.

As the name suggested, this method of data capture process involves manual keying of information. In this process, the data entry experts will key information from old databases or physical files. You can say this process is quite easy and suitable for small organizations. However, the process is effective as the experts will do their work with precision.

But on the downside, the manual data capture includes the highest processing time. This is why most companies switch to electronic data capture to ensure quick data capture. Naturally, human labor would take more time to capture data than other method, especially the automated system. However, you'll get the highest accuracy here because human intelligence is involved in this process.

Unlike the manual process, an automated system will run the data capture operations smoothly on time. Along with this, the automated system will reduce the overall cost of data capture, especially labor costs. Businesses can explore different options when it comes to data capture through automated methods.

OCR technology is an efficient development where machines can identify characters and typefaces, which machines generate. The amazing technology can extract data from PDF files or any other documents. With the integration of this technology, editing work is getting easier and faster. The method of data capture using this technology is high in healthcare, insurance, finance, etc sectors. Simply because this technology can capture a high volume of data with ease.

IDR is an advanced document recognition technology combined with Artificial Intelligence. Therefore, this technology can efficiently recognize patterns, help in indexing content, check the accuracy of lookup tables, etc. You can find the use of this technology in mailrooms, customer service interactions, invoice processing, etc. In simple words, this technology aids electronic forms of data capture with the power of AI.

ICR technology is simply the next generation of OCR due to its amazing features. This technology is amazingly smart as it can read handwritten characters and create meaningful data from them. Interestingly, this technology can read any type of font and make accurate results from that. Financial institutions, especially banks use this technology widely to capture financial data.

OMR is generally an electronic data capture method that identifies data from a document. This technology captures data from OMR sheets that were duly filled by humans in markings. You can expect the highest form of accuracy in the automatic data capture process done via OMR technology. This amazing technology ensures the highest form of security and thus it is used in ballots and examinations.

There's nothing more relevant than taking the example of barcodes to explain what electronic forms of data capture is. The barcode system is very common and you can see it everywhere, let's know how it works here. The barcode system works in two ways; one is the encrypted code and the other one is in the scanner.

The barcode scanners can efficiently scan the encrypted code and record the data in the database. You can observe this system commonly in shops, hospitals, or even in banks. However, there's an advanced barcode named 2D barcode which works more fast. Generally, 2D barcodes are QR codes, which are more complex and quite popular.

You pay faster when you scan a QR code similarly having QR codes in databases makes the data capture work faster. With QR, capturing data from different documents and websites is easy and effective. That's why QR codes are very popular in shop establishments, advertising, courier services, etc.

Digital forms are simply the replacement for paper-based forms of data capture but they are more effective. People can fill the documents in digital form because of its mobile friendliness. On the other side, these forms also help businesses to capture data through efficient measures. The process of electronic data capture includes data captured from digital forms.

Digital forms also provide security to the data due to their back-end system. Further, you can access digital forms from anywhere and it helps in capturing data better. Besides that, there's a digital signature, which is equal to a handwritten signature. In the process of data capture, you have to know about the digital signature very well.

With the integration of AI technology, the identification of individuals is becoming more accurate. In other words, AI technology is amazingly capturing data from videos and images to develop new technologies. These new developments in data capturing help in providing real-time capturing of data.

For instance, you can experience real-time electronic data capture in the airport's security scanning. This error-free data capture technique amazingly captures individuals from the video footage. Also, this amazing technology helps in biometric identification and theft prevention. Besides, you can observe the use of this technology in database matching, especially to remove duplicate images.

Have you heard about Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri? If yes, then you're completely aware of voice capture technology. This technology recognizes and assesses voice data and then proceeds with that. However, to develop these technologies, you need to feed the system with an enormous quantity of voice data. For that, the majority of voice technology developers rely on electronic data capture methods outsourcing.

Magnetic strip cards or smart cards contain encoded data, which mostly come up with strong security measures. Therefore, banks and other financial institutions use these cards for making debit/ credit cards. These cards are the most secure and hence widely used in financial transactions.

Read our blog: Powerful Methods to Capture Data – Uncovered!

Electronically captured data is more reliable than manually captured data due to many reasons. First, you can get all your required data on time along with all additional things. On top of that, you can capture more data faster if you choose this process. Besides, this process improves the quality of data because it ensures real-time validation.

Taking all these benefits aside, you can explore numerous benefits by choosing electronic capturing of data. Some of these are;

The electronic data-capturing process is far better than any other data-capture process due to its data storage capacity. The use of cloud technology is wide in electronic data capture. What cloud technology does is provide robust accessibility to the datasets. Therefore, you can find your data from anywhere after capturing it properly with accurate measures.

Since the electronic data-capturing process is built with advanced technology therefore it can provide better security. This technology efficiently tracks information while capturing it from different sources. Therefore, it will smartly capture data from some special websites that have copyrights.

With the best use of electronic data capture, you can ensure the robust quality of your existing datasets. This technology amazingly captures data from multiple databases by taking care of robust quality. Besides that, it also prevents unnecessary data from entering the database with powerful security measures.

Lastly, you can consider outsourcing an electronic data capture method if you need a huge volume of data for your work. Outsourcing companies are capable of capturing data using different methods.