Posted on 04/12/20 by Justin Barr


Working from home CPS RPA Automate TogetherLast week we talked about business processes.  There are thousands of business processes in every organization.  Some business processes are unique to your type of business and others to the industry you are in.  As unique as your business processes are, ultimately the data ends up in a line of business (LOB) system.  Companies have many systems; some created in-house, some purchased from a vendor.  Some of these business systems have an approved way to import and export data and some do not.

I heard on a conference call recently with a top global research firm that 80% of business systems that exist today don’t have an approved way to get data in and out of their systems. 80%!

You may ask yourself “Well, how do people get data into business systems?”  You could probably guess (which also happens to be my arch nemesis) … by MANUAL data entry!  Let’s explore how you can help your company by saving time on the manual data entry that you, or others in your organization, do.


Week 4/13/2020

Manual data entry, in my opinion, is the biggest waste of our time.  Given all the tools and technology that we have today, why are we still manually entering data into our business systems?   I believe the answer is: awareness…or lack there of.  Some business users have “done it this way for over 10 years, so why switch now?”  Other business users feel that their job is to enter/update data so, that’s what they do.

What if you could rewrite your job description? Would you list one of your primary or secondary duties as: enter data in one or, worse yet, many LOB systems?  I’m sure that is your least favorite thing to do AND probably the most painful. 

Let’s discuss the ways you can reduce, or even eliminate, manual data entry.  In our experience, the top ways to eliminate data entry include:

1. Use a tool for data entry

2. Change your business process

The best tool we see on the market to help eliminate data entry is a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tool.  I realize you may be thinking “A ROBOT? There’s no way I can use that to eliminate data entry.”  Furthermore, you are probably thinking “What type of degree do I need to have to create the robot?”  I’m here to tell you it IS possible, and you DON’T need to have a doctorate degree.

The RPA platform creates the software robot.  All you have to do is teach the robot what you want to automate.

To put it simply, the RPA platform records every mouse click and key stroke you take as you enter/update data into one or many different business systems.  Then you simply tell the robot where the data is located. For example, Excel.  Next thing you know hundreds, or even thousands, of records are created/updated into one or many LOB systems.

And the beauty behind all this automation? You didn’t have to MANUALLY type the data.

Changing your business process can be something as simple as creating a standard form for users to fill out to create vendor or customer portals and everything in between.  The point is, you should not be re-entering data that is already provided by someone else.  To form an analogy, if someone chewed gum and handed it to you, would you chew it?  Unless you really know that person, maybe. But even then, probably not.  Why are you taking data that has already been chewed and re-chewing it? 

There are tools and platforms that exist today that can completely eliminate manual data entry. By updating your business processes, you can take advantage of them.

Remember what I recommended in a previous blog of this series, “Make your job better by automating it”.  If you want to rewrite your job description and provide that next level of value to your organization, today is that first day of awareness.  The question I have for you is “What are you going to do about it?”

If you’re curious how Clear Process Solutions helped Cooper Tire eliminate 105 hours of data entry, let’s have a discussion.

Contact me on LinkedIn or contact the CPS team. 

Let’s #automatetogether

Get caught up on this blog series. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.


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