First Data says jobs restructuring to save $150 mln

First Data Corp, (FDC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) a data processing company that agreed to sell itself to private equity investors, said on Monday that it was outsourcing more work to save about $150 million a year.

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College Senior Hopes To Turn Love Of Data Entry Into Career

As she prepares to enter the "dog-eat-dog" business world this summer, computer applications major Lisa Milch, 22, said Monday that she is skeptical she'll be able to parlay her lifelong passion for data entry into gainful employment.

I knew when I chose to work with computers that I'd be facing an uphill battle after graduation," said Milch, a senior at the University of Maryland, as she reordered a list in an Excel spreadsheet. "But when you love numbers and archiving information as much as I do, you have follow your heart and be willing to take a risk, no matter how far-fetched it may be."

Milch said she's always fantasized about working 50 hours a week as a clerk in a medical records department, where the "big-time" information processing and retrieval opportunities are. However, she fears that setting her sights too high could set her up for disappointment in the real world.

"It's definitely a long shot, but I just know I'd regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't even try," Milch said. "It's something I have to do. I owe it to myself."

As early as age 8, Milch displayed an avid interest in quantitative measurement and numeric arrays. A star pupil in her high school business and typing courses, Milch said that a summer principles of information technology class at a nearby DeVry University first sparked her desire for a brilliant career in data entry.

"I know I might be listening to my heart more than my brain here, but something inside me keeps telling me to go for it," Milch said. "I've never wanted to do anything else. I'll take low pay, I'll work under fluorescent light, I'll telecommute if I have to—just let me do what I'm meant to do."

Milch is not alone. Across the country, millions of seniors worry about the difficulties of transferring their personal interests into profitable careers.

Wesleyan University senior Frances Hardwick said she's concerned she won't be able to find employment as a personal assistant even after graduating in the top 10 percent of her class.

"The only thing I've ever wanted is a life of service: taking phone messages, picking up dry cleaning, and getting coffee for the well-off," said Hardwick, who believes she will be in for a "rude awakening" once she is out on her own. "I'm not looking to get rich. All I need is just barely enough money to pay rent."

While these idealists continue to send out resumés and cold call dozens of potential employers, their futures remain uncertain, leaving each of them with the same question: Will the world find a place for my inner callings, or will it crush my deepest dreams?

And for Milch, the waiting game is almost too much to bear.

"Some days, I want to give up on data entry completely," she said. "I sit around wishing I'd win the lottery so I could just take one temp job after another forever."

OCR Scanning Services or Data Entry?

Spending lots of money on OCR Software and still not getting the results you want?

What is OCR (Optical Character Recognition)?
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the process that recognizes the printed words on paper documents and outputs to an editable documents like Microsoft Word, Excel, PDF Normal, or Text. OCR is generally used when the documents are good quality printed pages and is usually highly accurate for typed manuscripts and text documents.

Accuracy on poor quality photocopies, dirty or hand-annotated documents will be substantially lower.

"OCR programs do not have the same high level of accuracy as retyping documents like lease agreements, technical manuals, medical papers and documents with columns and tables, spreadsheets and graphics. A service bureau with an offshore data entry office can provide manual retying at favorable rates."

What are the disadvantages of OCR?

1. No OCR software is 100% accurate.
2. The accuracy of conversion depends on the quality of the original.
3. OCR correction is very labor intensive.
4. OCR on spreadsheets tends to produce a high rate of errors in the OCR conversion compared to text documents.

The inaccuracy of OCR on poor quality documents negates any labor savings by the automated process due to time consuming manual character corrections.
A data entry service is your best solution for converting poor quality documents. Manual data entry (keyed-in) of poor quality documents provides a high level of accuracy not provided in OCR applications. Manual data entry is widely used for mailing lists and 'excel' spreadsheet type documents as well.

Scanning and keying from paper to image is significantly more cost-effective than OCR due to the advantage of lower costs offshore. With lower wages (employees make a decent living in India) and high quality work, outsourcing gives you fast turnaround of your project and cost savings.

OCR or Data Entry: Should I convert my documents with a data entry service?
Generally, an in-house investment in a document scanner and software starts at $5,000 and the higher end models are very expensive (above $30,000). Of course, there is a cost associated with this option as well--labor.

Utilizing a Scanning Company with offshore data entry facilities reduces costs and provides higher accuracy for poor quality documents. It generally should cost 1 cent per field to manually enter a mailing list or an excel spreadsheet from a paper copy.

About the author

New York Document Scanning, a global outsourcing company, is headquartered in New York, NY with offices in Kolkata, India and provides ocr scanning services and data entry at low cost. Get free quotes for all your document scanning needs. Visit us at http://www.new-york-document-scanning.com

Source: http://www.propeller.com/

Make data entry in Access easier by changing text boxes to combo boxes

Access users should not have to memorize codes or look up ID numbers in order to enter the correct data into a record. Not only is it time-consuming, but it also can lead to data errors.

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