a) Faxed

Data can be electronically faxed to an e-fax number. These faxes then get emailed to service provider as electronic images. This is a useful way when small volume of data has to be sent to the service provider from many locations or offices particularly from third party entities like vendors, customers, bank, utility companies etc.

b) Telephone

In this rapidly growing technology world, sending data by clicking picture through smartphones is becoming very popular among small clients. It is handy and easy way if the volume of data is not too much and very popular if the client is travelling or on the move on most occasions.

c) Scanned Form

Scanned documents can be uploaded by the client staff on a website (usually of the service provider). These are then downloaded at the service-provider delivery centre/office. Alternatively, they may also be picked from the client server or just opened remotely by the service provider’ staff. Accessing scanned documents remotely, though the best method in terms of data security, is the least productive method. This reduction in productivity is because the scanned documents open very slowly over even the best internet connections ( just do a simple test of opening a PDF file through your browser and compare it against the time taken while storing it first on your PC and then opening it).

d) Online Access

Client can provide online “View Only” access of bank accounts, credit card accounts, utility accounts, mortgage/ loan accounts and other online data. This is the most convenient way of providing data as the Indian team is not dependant on the client to provide the data in this scenario. This helps the India team to process data on time and also helps in provided better controls as India team can flag in suspicious transactions, large balance changes quickly. At the same time, this method removes the need for customer to maintain staff for scanning the data and also the hassle of timely sending it. However, there will be still data such as vendor invoices, customer statements that may need to be sent to India team through transfer of scanned data.

e) Document Management Software

This method works complementarily to the method outlined in #d above. The Online versions of document management software have been increasingly popular among businesses across North America. Most software allow upload of scanned data and also provide an Inbox where vendors can email invoices. The service provider can then access both these data sets (uploaded files and emails) and readily process them. An alternate method is to scan the documents and leave them on your server or PCs which can be synced with the document management software or the India team can upload them there. The benefits of document management software go beyond ease of operations. These include better data back-ups, easy search of historic data, proper indexing of data and a pocket friendly monthly charge instead of upfront IT investments. Another advantage of this process is that customer can provide “View Only – Restricted Access” of each document, so that security and confidentiality of document remains intact.

The first two methods give clear and magnified images while the latter methods are convenient and fast. Further in a high volume process (where the source documents run in-to hundreds), last three methods are definitely the better solutions compared to fax or telephone based transmission of data in terms of reliability, image quality and even time..