DATA ENTRY PROJECTS OVERVIEW

Hello Friend..

Now a days, you may see a lot of ads everywhere, either on
newspapers or on line. They lure innocent and enthusiastic persons who are looking to start a business in BPO/KPO sector, with catchy slogans and claim themselves that you could earn lakhs of rupees pretty easily.

This post is mainly focused on various form filling projects.
We will discuss about the HTML conversion or typing projects in the later posts...

I do not mention any project name here, as it may lead to a panic
situation everywhere, with all the concerned..

Whatever the project name and kind of work may be, you should first try
to clearly understand a few facts...

1. The idea or modes operandi of these projects:
The upfront payment you are paying to sign up a project is the key.
This is a simple business idea. If a hundred people took a project from a vendor with an upfront payment of Rs:2 lakhs each, then the total upfront payment collected into the kitty would be Rs:2 crores. Out of these 100 centers, only a very few lucky centers would be eligible for billing with somewhat accuracy. So, they will pay from this collected amount only. No US Company is going to pay you, a single paise as you think.

2. Accuracy Levels and Errors Checking Methods: You may think that, who pays if one doesn't reach the minimum accuracy levels as mentioned in the agreement. Did you ever have any idea about errors calculation system? Suppose, you had submitted a work with 4000 forms. Out of these 4000 forms, there were 700 errors in various fields, in 100 forms only. You might be in a view that, out of 4000 forms, only 100 forms has errors and the remaining forms are correct, so your accuracy level is 97.5%. No..You are wrong. They never accept this. The errors calculation formula is total number of errors found divided by total number of forms checked multiplied by 100 (in this case, 700errors/4000formsX100=82.5%, that means your project will be terminated, and not 97.5% as you think). To explain this example in another simple way is, if an error occurs in 100 forms, then your project accuracy level will be decreased by 1%percent. Each form contains 30 to 40 fields on an average, and the total number of fields will be 3000 to 4000 and its very simple to find an error out of these numerous fields.

Now, imagine your self how difficult it was to achieve even 90% accuracy
level (average billing) which would meet your running expenses. If
your work has 30 fields in a form, then there will be 30 (fields)X4000(forms)
=1,20,000 fields. Its pretty easy to find out 400 errors out of 1,20,000 fields, to
terminate your project as per the agreement.

3. Checking The Project: Ask your vendor for other running centers with at least 6 or more months payments received. Perhaps no one could show you. You would be referred to centers that had just started work only. You should first come to an understanding that there is no actual US Company or Client as they claim. You could have seen your vendor's office during
consultations and at the time of agreement. You could have been also watched some employees doing some work there. Did you ever guessed what these people were doing there? They would say, there are also doing the same project. But, its not true.. Those employees are busy in checking the submitted works of various centers for errors and preparing errors report, which will be then sent to you, as if it was generated from US with a fake email id.. At most of the times, same nodes of data will be given to one or more centers at once, which will make your vendors work easy to check for the errors.

4. Conforming Whether The Data is Junk Or Not: Open the data files one by one, and note down all the available fields such as city names and their zip codes, and phone numbers of a few records into an MS Excel sheet, and mail this sheet if you have any contacts in US, or show it someone with some general knowledge, or just search online and the immediate answer you would get is 'the data is junk'. You may wonder how it is possible. Because, as they are providing junk data, they arrange all the data fields, one by one, carefully in a specific manner. Thats why, the zip codes and phone numbers would never match with the real existing codes in use which will be easily available on line (US GPO Website) for free.

5. Most of these works are fake.. If someone says their project is genuine, ask them to prove it or ask them to show you the agreement between the actual client and the vendor before making the upfront payment.

6. Be sure before you could sign up with the direct vendor only.. In most cases, a lot of people take projects from middle men or agents.. In such a case, they cannot pay you single paise, as they cannot submit your data to someone and get billing for it.

7. Any business, has its own technical and practical problems and these data entry projects too had a lot of practical problems. You should be an expert in MS Excel, and proficient in MS Access, SQL Server, .Net...etc.

So, the on line or off line form filling data entry projects business is a gambling. You may earn a few thousands or not. If your vendor thinks that he might get a few other persons through you, then you will get billing till he changes his mind. No matter what ever your accuracy level may be, you will get a few thousands of rupees.

In the later posts, we will discuss about a few projects..

Mail me your views, comments and if there is something to include in this post..

Thank You..