Automating Data Input using MS tools

The Covit-19 pandemic is taking it's toll not only on the hundreds of thousands of deaths globally but on those organisations who have seen business demand shrink or even disappear.

The inevitable 're-sizing' is happening all around us and now we start to see the global economy beginning to emerge from the Corona fall-out and work out what the 'new normal'.

Many businesses are looking to technology leaders for guidance and solutions on 'smarter' ways of operating, from digital workplace and marketing to process and data entry automation so freeing up those employees who spend time with repetitive data entry to higher value activities supporting profitable growth.

The dilemma is that 'Cash is King' right now and not many organisations can afford or be willing to invest significantly in technological solutions.

One approach is to sweat the assets of existing IT software and services and try to think laterally about how functionality can be used to solve these key challenges.

Your organisation may find there are hidden solution gems within your existing IT investments - we all know how important communication and collaboration platforms have been in keeping us connected during lockdown but what about tools that could automate data input tasks, such as Financial system Purchase Invoice entry from an email or hard copy or Sales teams entering Sales enquiries and orders that arrive as an email attachment or Fax (yes they still exist!).

One of my recent assignments has been reviewing the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) functionality within an existing Microsoft O365

The main focus on Microsoft Power Automate (previously MS FLOW) have produced results that have been quite eye opening with the technology able to 'read' an email and attachment and suggest key data fields that could then be 'scraped' from the document and imported into a back office system such as ERP or CRM.

The REALLY cool part is that Power Automate has an AI (Artificial Intelligence) engine that is both self learning and can be 'taught' so the more it processes the higher the accuracy.

So although not likely to be a perfect solution, with some basic email and spreadsheet rules and a data import mechanism, together with some basic OCR many organisations are likely to have an element of Data input automation available to them.

Please feel free to connect for more sharing.

www.dhirubhai.net/in/dthrelfall

#digitaltransformation #RPA #OCR #Microsoft #PowerAutomate