Though modern techniques of data entry have reduced the number of errors to a great extent, they are still happening in businesses. Since data accuracy must be the main focus area of businesses, it’s very important for organizations to have a proper mechanism to monitor data quality and to address challenges.
As per a study conducted by the Experian QAS last year, 65% of the companies have cited human errors as the reason for data quality problems. Recent news related to Hutch says that, data entry errors have resulted in an overpayment of $324,000 to the city by Reno County Treasurer.
Impact of Data Entry Error at Hutch
Usually the treasurer’s office distributes tax money in the months of January, March, June, September and October. Due to errors in the entered data, every tax jurisdiction of the county got affected, totaling $2.25 million of overpayments or early payments. Overpayment amount at the city of Hutchinson is estimated at $324,567 to the general fund and $101,300 to the bond and interest fund. Anyhow, the treasurer’s office plans to compensate the overpayments by distributing less money to the jurisdictions in the upcoming months of September and October.
Telecommunication companies should follow some methods or measures to address the errors that can happen with data entry.
- Performing manual checks during data capture
- Check for the range and consistency of data
- Validation of entered data
- Organizing data in databases can solve the problem of repetitive data entry
- Analyzing data
- Implementing automated provisioning (monitored by humans) to enter critical business data
Errors can happen due to a variety of reasons including transposition or transcription. It can happen when the operator hits the wrong key or accidentally enters wrong data while typing fast (generally called transcription errors). Transposition (19 becomes 91), copying (0 (zero) becomes O during data entry), coding (improper coding due to changes in the coding scheme), and consistency problems are some other reasons for wrong data entry. Fortunately, the error that occurred at Hutch didn’t cause any significant impact on the revenue projections of the company. It is reported that it won’t affect the ongoing preparation of the 2015 budget.
