Outsourcing CRM Data Entry

Data is the heart of any Customer Relationship Management(CRM) System. It uses customer information to personalize sales strategies, aimed to build better relationships with clients. However, if the data gathered is erroneous and full of gaps, the results of the CRM’s analyses can do more harm than good. It is important to plan out your data gathering strategy beforehand as this will greatly affect the quality of your data as well as your team’s adoption rate, two very important factors in the success of a CRM project.

One common method to ensure the proper management of data entries has been to outsource the task to a third-party vendor. This is known as Data Entry Outsourcing or Data entry BPO.

What is Data Entry Outsourcing?

As we are living in the information age, data has become very important. Having a clean, organized, and accurate set of data can make a world’s difference for a company.

However, because of data entry’s monotonous, unending nature, it can be challenging to get your CRM users to enter data correctly, or to even have it entered at all. It is a time-consuming, tedious task that is often in the way of any real, productive work. This is where Data Entry Outsourcing comes in. The idea is to hire other people to do the data entry work for your company. That way, data entry can be taken care of and your team can focus on what’s important.

Vendors would usually offer these services by hiring and training data entry experts. These employees can be onshore, but more often than not, these data entry experts are sourced offshore. The countries they outsource data entry to are those whose population already has a significant level of English proficiency, such as in India or the Philippines. Generally, the cost of living there is less compared to the US, and therefore, labor is cheaper. This partnership with a data entry service provider saves the company money, time, and the risk of having unmotivated in-house CRM users.

Many experts believe that outsourcing your data entry tasks to a third-party vendor who has a team of data entry professionals with high typing speeds, mastery of the English Language, etc., is a smart move, and in many cases, it is. However, relying solely on humans manually entering data is not without its drawbacks.

Outsourcing Concerns and Solutions

Having people outside your company do your data entry for you, whether they’re on the other side of the world or not, is bound to have a few issues. Here are three major examples:

Data Security Threats

This risk will always be present when outsourcing because first, the data is being handled outside your own company, and second, the data is being managed by humans who by nature, can make mistakes. They have full access to your customer’s data, and if they are not properly trained, it can lead to data leaks and the like. This can cause problems like penalties and sanctions according to government laws.

 

Solution:

Thoroughly review the different vendors first and make sure to select a credible and trustworthy outsourcing company that properly trains the professionals who will handle your data. Choose a vendor that is fully compliant with data privacy laws and regulations and one with a good track record.

Also, consider the outsourcing company’s specializations. If you’re looking for a Data Outsourcing vendor specifically for your CRM, there are companies that usually do this and is familiar with how sensitive CRM data can get. It would be good to understand the exact on-boarding process of these companies to ensure that they follow the security protocols commensurate to your industry. The idea is to find a reputable company able to handle the amount data that your company has and be able to be compliant with industry level standards for data privacy and security.

 

Supervision

It will always be challenging for you to monitor the progress of your data entry team in real-time. Sensitive information is being entered manually and this requires due diligence and focus of people handling your data. Since the client’s company cannot supervise them directly, there is less managerial control over the manual data entry team.

Solution

To get around this, choose a vendor that you can trust with keeping productivity in check, as well as keeping regular reports and communication lines open.

Dedicated account managers are usually allocated by outsourcing companies specially with enterprise level commitments and with big data. It is one of the key qualities overlooked in the outsourcing process. The dedicated manager will be the one to process knowledge transfer and client culture to the team handling your data.

Conclusion

With that being said, data entry outsourcing does have a certain amount of concern that should not be overlooked. Engaging with pro-active companies may perhaps be the next step in getting work done much faster with lesser risks. Some companies implement Artificial Intelligence to aide human processes to get things done faster, but still keep data integrity. This is one of the main goals of Einstein Voice when it was conceptualized years back. Although development was abandoned other companies have started to adapt technologies into their process which are great alternatives to work with.

Voice to CRM solutions nowadays are using AI in their data entry processes to be able to have faster turnaround times which is what most companies are looking for without sacrifices efficiency and data integrity.