The Real Cost of Manual Data Entry

With our global marketplace and rampant digitalization, manufacturers and distributors can’t afford to make slip-ups or waste time. However, many companies continue to manually enter data across multiple systems every day. After all, this process has worked for years—why stop? But as industries move at an increasingly faster pace, these businesses can’t afford to continue relying on outdated practices. They will find themselves falling behind their competition and experiencing business failure.

With the availability of affordable, user-friendly ERP software, enterprises no longer need to mindlessly plug in information day in and day out. In this piece, we detail the hazards of manual data entry and explain how an ERP implementation mitigates these risks.

Unacceptable Errors

Imagine entering data for hours at a time. After a while, you go on autopilot, completely zoned out as you key in information. One day proves especially frantic because a spike in orders or production has resulted in abnormally heavy data entry. You finally finish typing for the day, but it eventually comes to light that a couple of numbers were entered in the wrong order, some values were left blank or something was misspelled. Sounds pretty minor, but those tiny errors suddenly aren’t so tiny when an order has been sent to the wrong address, reports are riddled with inaccuracies and products are misplaced. Undetected, these mistakes can compile to wreak havoc on your company’s profit margins and even result in lawsuits.

Precision is key in manufacturing and distribution, and that leaves no room for the human errors that inevitably occur during manual data entry. ERP systems, such as Epicor, automatically capture data and generate reports to provide accurate, up-to-date information at all times. Rather than risk building strategies and processes off the wrong information, Epicor ERP enacts workflows that can update critical data throughout your enterprise without human intervention.

Wasted Time

Businesses generate more data than ever, and no employee can type fast enough to record a mass of information in a timely fashion. This results in slow turnaround times. Without real-time insights, users can’t effectively leverage data to communicate effectively with leads and customers, develop business strategies and plan for future demand. Manual data entry also wastes employee time as your users spend more time keying in information than analyzing that information.

With Epicor, your employees can leave data collection to their ERP system. Epicor ERP offers out-of-the-box reports and updates data in real time on dynamic dashboards. User-friendly tools transform big data into actionable insights that employees can leverage for sophisticated forecasts, growth strategies and overall business improvement.

Wasted Money

Where there’s wasted time, there’s wasted money. Without accurate, real-time insights, businesses end up losing out on opportunities. Even more alarming, data entry errors can set manufacturers and distributors back tremendously, as demonstrated by the 1-10-100 rule.

Let’s say it costs $1 to check data accuracy at the first point of entry. If a mistake is detected fairly quickly, it could cost $10 to fix the error. But if the mistake isn’t detected until it affects customers or the production line, that cost increases ten-fold and results in even more costly issues related to customer retention and your brand’s reputation. By that logic, it’s most cost-effective to have some sort of quality control in place to maintain data precision. Though ERP software comes with an initial price tag, it ultimately saves your company money by maintaining data integrity and improving efficiency.

Duplicate Entries

Though ERP will take care of updating and capturing most of your data, someone will still have to be on hand to manually input data into your other systems. That’s why it’s critical to integrate your systems into a single source of truth. With Epicor, you have several interconnected modules, which means that you aren’t maintaining separate platforms for inventory, supply chain management or accounting. Therefore, you have all that information in one hub, reducing duplicate data entries.

However, this will still leave you with other systems, such as CRM or eCommerce. Here’s where software integrations come in. Using an integration application, businesses can seamlessly connect all their software platforms. An integrated system will maintain the integrity of your back-office and front-office data in one place. This not only makes manual data entry a thing of the past but also provides an end-to-end view of your enterprise, boosting efficiency and powering decision-making.

Wrap Up

As enterprise software and integration solutions have become available to businesses of all sizes and budgets, there’s no longer an excuse for manually inputting data. To start automating your data processing, get in touch with Datix consultants. After over 20 years of providing ERP solutions and services to manufacturers and distributors, we know the toll that manual data entry can take on your workplace. As an Infor Partner, Datix has the expertise to implement, maintain and upgrade your ERP instance. Additionally, our pre-built Unity integration platform connects Infor ERP with an array of systems to provide your business with one holistic solution.

Faster, stronger business practices are within reach—contact Datix today to find out how our premier solutions can transform your enterprise!

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