Data Entry, Data Mining Information

Data Entry General Information

Data Entry Clerk – job description
What is data entry and what does it involve? Data entry involves a data entry clerk or typist who reads hand-written or printed records and manually types them into a computerized database. Some data entry clerks are temp workers, while others are regular employees. Larger companies have enough data entry work to keep full time employees busy.

Typical jobs for data entry clerks might involve typing in tracking numbers of shipped goods, typing reference numbers for shipped goods that didn’t reach their destination, data input of medical information.

Optical character recognition technology allows a data entry clerk to read a report generated by an optical character scanning machine. The data entry clerk is still responsible for reviewing the results of the report for incorrect or omitted information.

Data entry work outsourcing is done heavily in many parts of the Philippines and India. Employees in those companies enjoy much higher than average salaries which affords them a lifestyle that includes restaurants, travel, entertaining, and other niceties that are not possible for the average person in their respective countries.

Many BPO companies in India do only Data Entry and data related services. But, many other BPOs in India offer a mixed bag of services including call center, data entry, and a variety of other back office services.

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Data Mining Introduction
Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from particular data and is commonly used for marketing, surveillance, and fraud detection. One example of data mining is when a computer program or human extracts email addresses from a large directory type website, and compiles a list of email addresses to spam. Data mining has been used for centuries to find hidden patterns in data. One interesting example include the computer programs that look for mystical word and letter combinations / patterns in the Torah which originally was a really long scroll of letters with no spaces between the words.

Data Mining in Business
Data mining is used heavily in customer relationship management. Many businesses realize that identifying patterns of customer tastes and behaviors can help them to provide better and more targetted services to their customers. Since its expensive to contact customers, it is practical to identify which customers would be ideal to contact for specific purposes. If you are having a special on hotel rates, contacting customers who travel once per year might not be as efficient as contacting customers that travel once per month. If you are offering a discount on drinks at a bar, contacting teetotaling vegetarians will net you a big fat zero, while contacting avid wine connoisseurs might work better assuming your wine list is up to par. Mass mailings are done with the same principle – by identifying individuals who would be most reponsive to a particular message.

Identifying Ideal Customers or Employees
If you crunch the numbers, you might be able to create algorithms to identify which employee is the best and why. You have to look through data of many employees to find this information. Certain customers are worth more than others too. Some customers spend more than other on high profit items, while other customers spend very little and tie up your phone lines with endless bickering. Data mining can help you determine who is who which can help you figure out who to target to be your customer or employee, and can even tell you how much effort its worth to win someone over. Unfortunately, through data mining, we can put a price tag on everyone’s head. By the way, you (the reader) are worth exactly $5.28 to me! Just kidding – you are worth much more than that!

Profiling
Customer data can be analyzed to learn about spending trends and customer profiles. This is why supermarkets such as Ralphs have Ralphs cards. It helps them develop not only customer loyalty, but helps them analyze who is buying what. Are you a single white male who buys lots of Gatoraid and Ramen noodles? Or are you the head of an Asian American family who purchases twenty pounds of pasta sauce per year? You may think that Asians eat won-tons, but those who understand data mining and data analysis know that behind closed doors, Asians are really eating pasta with marinara sauce and cheesecake in unbounded proportions– at least in California (just a hypothesis based on observation). That way, after interpreting customer data, a company who is advertising in an Asian neighborhood in California can have a smiling Asian lady who is devouring pasta; and display a bottle of tomato sauce with the name of the company on it. That, my friend is market segmenting and profiling in a nutshell — or in a pasta sauce jar.

Other Uses
Data mining can also be used to study educational research to see how students learn most. It can also be used to study drug safety issues, equipment testing, and even genetics. Gene mapping can be studied with techniques that include data mining.