IT Industry

Introduction | Initiative of the State Govt. | Data Processing | Medical Transcription | Call centres | STPS | IT Enabled Srevices | Online Education

Data Processing

Introduction

The management of large companies has posed difficulties for senior executives for many decades. The desire to increase shareholder value has driven the pursuit of new ways to organize management activities and many new management models have emerged as a result. In the 1970’s, the Multinational Corporation emerged as companies, primarily from the US, attempted to create a structure, which would allow them to exploit market opportunities in a number of different international markets. These large companies were fully integrated taking responsibility for all value chain activities in-house. The nineties, on the other hand, have seen global companies move to a ‘core competence’ business model focusing on areas of strength and outsourcing many non-core activities.
Industries such as Banks, Airlines require large-scale data entry and revenue accounting work to be done. For revenue accounting and other back office accounting operations, paper documents / raw data are sent to remote locations, which are used for data entry and necessary reconciliation. Using high-speed datacom links for their back office and data processing operations, these banks, airlines and other organisations with extensive data turnover and customer interface, are able to save costs and valuable resources. The prime concern of these companies is 100% availability of data and uptime of facilities. In other words, such a centre could be realised simply as an offshore extension of existing information and backoffice operations promising constant availability.
Over the last few years, there has been a steadily growing trend to outsource these services to major IT service providers with contracts running into decades. The prime criteria for such projects is quality of organisational processes, availability of abundant manpower and ability to dedicate resources to clients’ needs.
In this chapter, we examine the basics of data processing and advantages of undertaking such initiatives from India .

What is data processing?

Data Processing is a category of IT Enabled Services pertaining to capture, digitisation and processing of data emanating from various sources. Traditional data processing services comprise of punching data from manually filled forms, images or publications; preparing databases and integrating them. However, with the advent of multimedia and internet, sources have widened to include manually printed documents, images, sounds and video. Equally diverse are the new output media which include databases on servers, hard copy publications, CD-ROM authoring and managing records emanating from internet based queries.
Data Processing has acquired significance in the last decade as information has become a critical resource for most enterprises dependent on timely, effective and judicious use of IT. These industries may have to make internal decisions, swiftly respond to a customer query, present reports, or for any other use driven by information availability. Importantly, there is an increasing comfort level with outsourcing such services and as MIS staff are deployed in more tasks requiring high skills.
Using high speed datacom links for their backoffice and data processing operations, organisations with extensive data turnover and customer interface, are able to save costs and valuable resources.

The Process

The clients for Data Processing services are companies / organisations receiving or generating large quantities of forms that are handwritten or typed and time sensitive. These forms can be sent either physically or can be scanned and transmitted to vendor’s facility. The processing may be done using high speed, automated systems reading hand print, check-boxes, mark sense, reader response, bar codes, and most of data slots that is variable on a form. Forms can be processed from hard copy, fax or scanned version.

Many companies enter it manually (from image or paper) or through computer assisted data capture, using OCR (optical character recognition), ICR (intelligent character recognition), mark sense, MICR and Bar code. Information is checked by validation routines including table look-ups, data/range checks, and relationship validation. Processed documents are then sent to verification stations where experienced operators verify the accuracy of processed information. This product is then turned into Data, and properly formatted Data (record layout) is quickly transmitted to the client’s computer.

Some vendors also use this as a stage in the complete value chain and provide further enhanced services. These include database search, database integration and establishing dedicated backoffice operations for large customer.

Range of Services

The following are an indicative range of services that are typically offered as part of data processing services:

• Document Preparation
• Data Entry
• Image Capturing
• Image Keying
• OCR & ICR Processing
• Image Storage & Retrieval
• Data entry front end edits
• ASCII format for upload to your database
• Forms are imaged and transferred to CD ROM
• Custom reports
• Statistical analysis
• Outcome studies
• Handwritten, Machine Print, Mark Sense, Bar Coding (Reader Response can be captured and processed from any hard copy or faxed document).

Who are the potential customers?

Potential customers are those industries or sectors that have high information turnover coupled with need for efficient archiving of records and their frequent access. Some of the prominent potential clients would be from industries in:

• Insurance
• Banking
• Public utilities
• Telecom
• Legal
• Transportation
• Manufacturing
• Publishing
• Police departments
• Government agencies
• Municipalities
• Hospital

Essentials for setting operations

Investments and logistics for establishing a Data Processing Venture in India are a function of the intended services portfolio, scale of operations and size of customers’ operations. Therefore, there may be a start up company carrying out data punching, editing and compilation for an international publication. There may be an unit acting as an offshore data processing centre for a large overseas customer, offering services ranging from data entry to database maintenance. Higher up the value chain, a company with well established practices may act as a back office operation for a customer having high dependence on IT infrastructure and making frequent low to high level decisions, such as responding to customer queries, determining daily sales movements, tracking customers, etc. Such a service company may offer services in the complete value chain ranging from data punching to database development, integration and frequent maintenance. In other words, this service outfit takes complete responsibility for managing the back office operations or end-to-end services.

Costs for a simple data processing unit may vary from Rs 1-1.5 crore with seat capacity of about 50-60 people per shift. Depending on customers’ needs and ability to manage internal efficiency, vendor may opt for two or three shifts. This would translate into installed capacity of at least 50 PCs. Also, depending upon your customer needs, 100% uptime of communications lines is not essential, company may opt for dial up ISDN connections which ensures minimum disruption and packets loss, while highly improving throughput. Equipment requirement would include:

• PCs (50) and Servers (2-3)
• Word Processing Software (depending on number of PCs)
• Networking and Dial-up communication facility
• Database Software
• Database gateways
• Connectivity (Internet / ISDN / Leased Circuit)

As regards workforce requirement, such an operation has data entry operators, Project / Group Leaders, Quality Experts / Editors, and senior management consisting of heads of functional organisations for marketing, finance, administration, Human Resources (important), Quality Assurance and New Process Development.

Marketing

For a small scale operation, a company may start as a subcontractor for an already operational company in USA or Europe , probably UK or Germany . These markets offer tremendous potential for services in publishing, bills processing, and other forms of data processing. There is growing trend in these markets to build up order book, and appoint a number of affiliates to subcontract their projects. However, in the initial stage, the main vendors share the operational control in appointed affiliates and also take responsibility for quality control. To find vendors in export markets, internet and directories of chambers of commerce and other official corporate publications could form the beginning point.
With maturity in revenues, internal organisation and ability to benchmark against globally accepted service standards, companies in India can begin to build services higher up the value chain and thus build internal marketing organisations, preferably with an office in US. This would help to establish local interface and establish direct customer relationship. The businesses to validate such a set up would include backoffice operations that help to tie up with customers with extensive data needs. Service Providers may consider establishing their solutions portfolio that meet scale needs of diverse range of businesses. For instance, one may consider have seperate business lines for companies having upto 500 employees, for more than 500 employees and upto 1000 employees, and for companies with more than 1000 employees.