Data Capture For Retail

Data is a key asset in the retail industry, whether that be information for mailing lists and loyalty schemes, customer surveys or voucher and coupon information.

It allows you to understand and reach your customers better and can be a valuable tool in engaging your customers and encouraging them to buy.  In such a fast-moving industry, engaging your customers as quickly as possible is essential.

However, gathering this data is not without its hurdles. In the retail industry, paper forms are still relatively common and transferring this information to a digital system often requires manual data entry. As a result, a lot of time is wasted and mistakes are made. 

Intelligent data capture provides a solution to this problem. With its state-of-the-art OCR technology, Cleardata is able to quickly and accurately capture key data from retail forms and documents so that you can utilise the information as soon as possible, saving your business time and money.

How is data capture used in retail?

Automated data processing is used to capture data from sales order forms, customer satisfaction surveys, client disclaimer forms, loyalty card forms, coupons and more. Documents are scanned in and key data is captured using intelligent data capture software. Cleardata carries this out at their dedicated scanning bureau and returns the captured and compiled data back to the business.

This means there is no longer any need for your staff to use up their time manually entering data. Plus, the confusion of entering data into multiple different systems and spreadsheets, and potentially making mistakes, is eliminated. Data capture is a quick and efficient way to process all the key data you need to optimise your business.

Forms and surveys – design and processing

Information needs to be in a certain format in order to be captured by OCR technology. It must be recorded on specially structured forms that can be easily processed. Cleardata can help here too – we will work with you to design forms that will work with our OCR scanners.

Whether it’s forms to sign up for loyalty cards, customer surveys to gain valuable customer insights or any other kind of form, Cleardata is there to help you gather, capture and verify the information and return it to you in a usable format. Additionally, as Cleardata offers a whole range of document and data management services, if there are additional fields for handwritten comment, Cleardata’s professional data entry staff can record this digitally for you as well. 

Find out more about Cleardata’s retail survey and form design services here.

What are the benefits?

Automated data capture presents a wealth of benefits for retail businesses. Firstly, you will save staff time by removing the need for manual data entry. This frees up employees for other, valuable work. And of course, this will save you money too.

Increased accuracy is another plus. Intelligent capture technology is extremely precise and captures data in a consistent manner.  Quality is also of the utmost importance to Cleardata, so all captured data is checked and verified.

Another very important benefit is speed. Processing of data is much faster than manual entry, so you won’t lose any extra time that you could be spending on reaching out to customers, analysing feedback and pushing your business forward.

Data Capture and Processing Services

As mentioned, Cleardata offers a comprehensive range of services, so you can add supplementary services to maximise what you get out of your data capture. For example, with Cleardata’s digital mailroom service, surveys, coupons or forms can be sent directly to Cleardata, where it is opened, scanned and validated in our secure mailroom facility. Data can be returned in any required format via SFTP or uploaded to our secure cloud document management solution, ready for your team to process.  

Our cloud document management system allows all scanned documents to be stored securely and easily accessed as and when required, with fast search and retreival functionality. The system has an advanced, efficient indexing system so that you can filter and find files according to any required key data.

For more information on how data capture could benefit your retail business get in touch with Cleardata’s team today or call 0800 046 8083.