DEO Assisted American Research Agency in Critical Survey Data Entry Project
The Client – US-based Research Agency
The client is an American research agency who provides qualitative, quantitative, and custom research for Christian ministries. Their goal is to help change ministry research by identifying and analyzing information to produce insights to help change ministry relevancy, effectiveness, and connection to donors. The client’s insights focus on donor experience, ministry experience and impact, ministry identify, and mobilization.
Survey Data Entry Requirements for the Project
As much of the client’s insights originate from handwritten survey forms and questionnaires, they needed efficient, fast data entry to digitize these documents and streamline their research and analysis processes. This required a reputable data entry outsourcing company with the ability to handle high volume workloads at quick turnaround times.
The client discovered Data Entry Outsourced (DEO) through one of their research sources, and decided to partner with us due to the following:
- Ability to work closely with the client on a long-term basis and offer frequent updates as to the project’s progress.
- Proven experience in best practices for survey data entry related projects, and similarly for data entry in the research and analytics domain.
- Ability to assess the handwritten forms and add supplemental information where needed to ensure the data was complete.
Challenges Faced by DEO’s Data Entry Team
DEO came across a couple of challenges during the course of this research and analysis related survey data entry project:
- The handwritten forms often contained illegible and missing information, which required both the automated data capture systems and manual techniques to decipher.
- The client required 500 surveys to be completed per day, which was a time challenge.
Survey Data Entry Process Followed by Data Entry Outsourced
DEO produced a customized process for this full-time survey data entry project to streamline the steps and ensure the best possible outcomes:
- DEO jump started the project with a trial of 25 surveys to be completed by one experienced data entry specialist in under an hour.
- The client approved the full-time project and DEO assigned two resources to work exclusively on this project.
- The DEO team worked in Google Drive and began by scanning client provided PDF’s using automated data capture systems with OCR, OMR, and ICR technology.
- Each survey included questions like how many students were in the ministry, how many years served in the ministry, how many parishioners in the ministry, etc.
- Each row would include one survey and each column would comprise one question. The data would be entered into an excel sheet in a tailored database that’s integrated with the clients existing system so that they had access to quick, operational survey data.
- The output was then emailed to the client with 250 surveys completed daily per resource.
Additional Value Add
For further value, DEO supplied survey data enrichment, eliminating invalid and outdated information, and structuring the data to ensure that the surveyed information was comprehensive.
Takeaways – 20% Cost Saving for the Client
DEO continues to work closely with the client on this high-volume survey data research and analysis project, with the following takeaways occurring:
- The client received easily read convenient survey data that allowed them to map out ministry research and provide more accurate insights to their clients.
- DEO and the client have a mutually beneficial working relationship and are starting another data entry project together for their outreach project in South America.
- Thanks to the outsourcing contract with DEO, the client was able to receive a cost savings of 20%.
