Last year, a staggering 68.9 million people quit or lost their jobs, of which 47.4 million left voluntarily. The more significant point is that many of those who left the active workforce never joined back. Instead, they preferred to stay home to take care of their families, launch their own businesses or retire early.

Per Goldman Sachs, about 2.5 million people are missing from our collective workforce. We're facing an unprecedented resource crunch. As a result, organizations must develop a strategy to combat resource shortages and avoid disruptions or a slowdown of production or service delays.

Resource shortages are not going away anytime soon

Forbes reported that when asked about their biggest challenges, executives in organizations across the economy overwhelmingly state that retaining talent is their number one concern. Number two is recruiting talent.

A study by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute projected that 2.4 million US manufacturing jobs will go unfilled from 2018-2028 due to the lack of skilled talent.

But it is not just highly skilled labor that is in short supply. Administrative workers and those handling mundane paper-based tasks are also expected to be in short supply during this period. 

Repetitive tasks, often done by low-skilled, low-wage workers, are likely to be affected. They may either quit the workforce in search of more value-added or higher-paid jobs or lose their positions due to job cuts or cost-cutting initiatives. 

While the missing resources may re-enter the workforce over time as the effects of the pandemic wear down, we're also facing a looming threat of an economic slowdown. The pressure on resources will likely continue for a while, and we may not be back to pre-pandemic levels for some time in the future.

Outsourcing data capture to combat resource shortages

A significant impact of the resource shortage is felt by document-intensive sectors such as government, education, banking, healthcare, oil & gas and departments such as HR, AP, and legal.

Automation can offset resource shortages by transforming repetitive manual processes into speedy digital workflows. Automation shifts mundane tasks to software tools, giving employees more time to pick up more interesting and value-added work or devote time to skills development initiatives that can boost organizational productivity. McKinsey estimates that, in about 60% of occupations, at least one-third of workday activities could be automated. 

Why outsourcing data capture is a good idea

Whether your business still depends on printed paper or you have adopted digital practices, manual data entry or paper-based processes pose many challenges:

Here are some challenges organizations face with manual data entry and why it's a good idea to outsource data entry services:

• High error rates: Manually entering data into digital spreadsheets leads to high probabilities of human error.

• Long turnaround times: Manual data entry is time-consuming and increases processing cycle times.

• Poor data quality: When error rates are high, it's unlikely that you can achieve high-quality data. 

Automated data capture solutions are highly efficient compared to manual data entry.

Revolution Data Systems offers outsourced data capture services to support your organization or department.

Our teams are trained and skilled, so you save the time you would have spent in hiring new employees or reskilling existing resources.

We release your staff from various paper-intensive business functions, so you can redeploy them in other departments or other core functions, thereby combating the resource shortage.

We use a combination of data entry specialists and intelligent capture software to automate transactional business processes like loan origination, invoice processing, customer service response management, daily indexing, surveys, medical claims, and more.

Let's look at our outsourced data capture services can be used in critical business functions in your organization: 

AP (Accounts Payable)

AP is one of the most document-intensive departments. The AP department in large enterprises deals with high volumes of invoices which must be validated, matched against POs and sent through approval processes before payments can be made to vendors and suppliers. A small error in manual data entry by the AP team can result in significant losses; delays can lead to late payment fines, and bad AP processes can even harm the organization's credibility.

AP automation or invoice automation is a high-ROI strategy that the modern enterprise cannot afford to ignore. 

When you outsource data capture to RDS, our trained staff uses intelligent data capture software to efficiently classify, extract and validate data from invoices before loading it into your accounting system. This drastically speeds up invoice cycles and lowers processing costs by reducing manual data entry and eliminating human errors. That's how outsourcing invoice capture to RDS optimizes your AP function while safeguarding your business from the challenges of high attrition and resource shortages.

Healthcare

Commercial healthcare institutions process an extremely high volume of paper documents. Digitizing patients' medical charts is now essential to speed up medical claims processing, reduce storage costs, and improve medical practice efficiency.

RDS offers a comprehensive digitization solution for medical institutions. 

We scan all legacy medical records in a one-time high-volume backfile conversion project. Next, we set up a professional day-forward scanning system to keep daily records updated in digital formats. We use advanced data capture technology to convert paper charts to HIPAA-compliant EHRs.

Government offices

Many government agencies are short-staffed and will continue to be so, given the resource crunch the country is currently facing. Government bodies can therefore benefit from outsourcing data capture.

For example, we can set up a digitization team to handle daily indexing of land records for county and clerk’s offices. Just send us your scanned land documents, our team is skilled and proficient at complex data capture. We then index the data and upload to their recording system.

Digital mailrooms

A digital mailroom ingests incoming physical mail and converts it from paper to electronic format using document scanning and data capture technologies to automate processes such as opening, sorting, and distributing your incoming mail. 

Data capture software intelligently classifies each piece of mail. Metadata fields are used to index each document accurately. Pertinent data is extracted and delivered to the appropriate business system, such as CRM, ERP, or document management software.

Digitization and automation remove traditional bottlenecks, raise productivity and improve the business bottom line. It also provides much needed flexibility for remote and distributed workforces.

Outsourcing mailroom processes to a firm experienced with document capture software and data processing services reduces costs and gives you instant access to information. 

Every business runs their mail processes a bit differently. RDS can custom build a digital mailroom solution to meet your company’s specific needs.

RDS: Your outsourcing partner for automated data capture

Turn to Revolution Data Systems (RDS) for outsourcing data capture services. We use automated tools to capture millions of documents for clients in our document scanning bureau. Our intelligent data capture solution can extract data from all types of documents and unstructured data sources. 

We also help organizations deploy modern document management solutions such as OpenText AppEnhancer and automate your mailroom processes.

Contact RDS to learn more about the work efficiencies and cost reductions you can achieve by outsourcing data capture to our data management experts.