E-commerce businesses operate in highly competitive markets; therefore, accurate product data entry is essential in terms of customer engagement and brand image. Product data entry refers to uploading comprehensive information—descriptions, prices, specifications, images—and even minor errors can damage customer trust, search visibility, and your brand image. Companies that are forward thinking realize that outsourcing this fundamental function will provide significant business benefits while eliminating the need to maintain an internal team to perform these functions.
Take control of your e-commerce data today.
Talk to our product data entry experts.
Call: (800) 670-2809
Product Data Entry and Its Importance
Consequences of mistakes made during data entry: a misspelling in a product’s name makes it less visible in search, wrong prices annoy customers, lack of full specifications results in returns and bad ratings. If this situation is applied to thousands of SKUs the overall damage to the company’s finances and reputation would be considerable.
While many e-commerce teams understand this conceptually, it is common for them to overlook the fact that employing a team for product data entry can result in indirect and fixed costs including: employee compensation and benefits, training expenditures, licensing fees of software, space to work, and overhead to implement and monitor the quality of the data entry services provided. What’s more, while your employees are busy doing full-time data entry, they could be focusing that time on improving marketing strategies, customer relations, or even developing the long-term strategy of your company.
This is where product data entry outsourcing becomes valuable.
- Cost Savings Due to Reduced Operating Expenses
While cost savings is the initial reason many companies consider outsourcing, it’s just one of the many benefits they continue to enjoy.
Typically, outsourced product data entry services results in a cost savings of 40-60% compared to hiring and retaining an equivalent number of employees internally. But the financial advantages extend far beyond base salaries. When you outsource, you eliminate:
- Employee salaries, benefits, and payroll taxes
- Training and onboarding expenses
- Software licenses and platform subscriptions
- Workspace and equipment costs
- Quality assurance staff
Instead, you pay per project or on a transaction basis. The “variable cost” nature of outsourcing will allow you to scale your spending up during peak months and down during slow months.
Example:
An online retailer with an inventory of 5,000 SKUs spends $60,000 to $80,000 per annum for its in-house data entry team. But, the same retailer would only need to pay around $25,000 to $40,000 to an outside contractor. The savings are even more significant as the contractor would charge the retailer almost nothing for adding another 10,000 new items to the current 5,000.
- Reduced Opportunity Cost and Increased Productivity
Opportunity cost is significant when your team members are bogged down in data entry tasks and can’t do higher value tasks.
Professional data entry contractors operate using highly efficient processes built over many projects. They are experts in optimizing workflows and allocating personnel and managing projects. It may take your team 2 weeks to complete a project that a professional partner completes in 5 business days.
Time is important when you are rolling out new product lines, completing an acquisition that adds a large number of items to your catalog, or dealing with the annual spike in product quantity.
You can make your catalog available faster than competitors, launch products before major holidays, and react to market changes much more quickly.
Using a service provider frees up your staff to support customers, run marketing campaigns, and improve user experience—instead of dedicating 20–30 hours weekly to routine typing.
- Better Quality Data
Where outsourcing really adds the most value is in quality improvement. The input inaccuracies cascade into problems: poor product descriptions frustrate customers; poor information hurts search rankings; missing specs lead to returns and service tickets. The total cost of inaccuracies extends far beyond the initial upload itself.
Professional outsourcing contractors employ QA experts to find and correct errors through a multi-tiered system comprising initial validation, second-level review, machine-verification, and final auditing. This keeps error rates under 1%. Error rates for in-house teams typically exceed what a data entry outsourcing contractor can achieve because in-house teams have so many competing priorities.
Professional contractors have knowledge of category-specific requirements and industry best practices. Electronic categories differ from apparel; Amazon differs from eBay and Shopify. This expertise prevents entire categories of errors that in-house teams miss.
- Access to State-of-the-Art Technology and Expertise
Growing e-commerce companies find it challenging to justify the capital investment for high-tech tools such as AI-driven automation and RPA, which also require regular maintenance costs.
Since professional BPO providers serve dozens or hundreds of clients, they are able to distribute the costs of acquiring state-of-the-art technology among their clients. As such, they are willing to invest heavily in:
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to convert paper-based or image-based product data into usable data.
- AI data entry platforms that automate routine tasks and identify exceptions for human review.
- API integrations with your e-commerce platform(s), and/or your inventory management system(s).
- Data validation and deduplication tools.
- Multi-language translation and localization capabilities.
Your business gains access to the latest technology, while the contractor absorbs the cost of acquiring and maintaining it.
This also means your business gains access to specialized expertise, not just advanced technology. Specialized data entry contractors employ professionals that understand your industry, your e-commerce platforms, and the best practices associated with product information management. Building this type of expertise in-house is very costly and difficult to maintain.
- Increased Data Security and Compliance
There are legitimate concerns about entrusting your business data to third-party contractors. However, there are many ways to ensure that your business data remains safe when working with professional external teams.
Professional service providers can provide security that is superior to what your small business can afford to provide internally.
To keep your data safe and secure, professional outsourcing partners apply strong security measures that comprise of the following:
- Encryption of data at rest and in transit
- Access controls that restrict access by employees to authorized information only
- All contractor personnel sign non-disclosure agreements
- Conduct regular security audits and penetration testing
- Background checks on and periodic reviews of contractor personnel
- Compliance certifications (SOC 2, ISO 27001 and more) and industry-specific standards
- Disaster recovery and business continuity planning
If your company handles sensitive client information or is working in a strictly-regulated area, a vendor’s professional-level security might lower your risk in comparison to depending on the in-house security systems.
- Flexibility to Meet Increasing Demand
E-commerce organizations do not grow in a predictable, linear way. Your business may go through spikes, seasonal surges in demand, or even the need to add an equally large number of items to your catalog. In each case, your in-house team struggles with variability in demand. You either waste money by employing excess staff or you fall behind in meeting demand during peaks.
External partners provide flexibility. Do you need to upload 10,000 new items in six weeks? The contractor will deploy the necessary resources. Are you entering a slow period? The contractor will scale back costs accordingly. Is your company entering new markets that require localized product data for three new countries? The contractor will have the required capacity and competencies to cater to your needs without you having to employ permanent staff.
By outsourcing your data entry needs, you can continue growing your e-commerce organization without worrying that this ability to manage such volumes of product data will lag behind.
Real-world Examples: Why Outsourcing Works
Fashion Retailer: Succeeding During the Holiday Season
A common problem faced by a fashion retailer: loading 8,000 new SKUs in ten weeks with only a three-person in-house team, which meant neglecting other critical work. The retailer enlisted the help of a content agency. A team of 12 experts completed the task in 8 weeks with 98.9% accuracy. The retailer saw a 34% increase in holiday sales compared to the previous year.
Marketplace Seller: Achieving Uniform Product Information across Multiple Channels
A wholesale distributor selling on Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and their own website struggled to maintain consistent product information across all channels. Each channel required different formatting of product data, different ways of categorizing, and different forms of compliance. The distributor employed a data entry contractor that demonstrated experience in multi-channel requirements for its services. The contractor standardized all 12,000 products across all four channels, properly formatted for each channel, and achieved compliance of 99.4% vs. 76% previously. The search visibility of this distributor increased and it resulted in a big reduction in marketplace suspensions from 8-10/month to less than 1.
International Expansion: Providing Localized Products to International Markets
A European retailer of home goods wished to extend its business internationally, but without any capability to localize product data in support of these new markets. They engaged a specialist that had experience localizing product data for international markets. The contractor performed translations, adapted formats, and localized cultural content for 15,000 products across three new markets. The retailer launched on schedule with properly formatted, culturally appropriate product data and achieved high customer satisfaction in new markets.
Selecting the Right Contractor
Not all contractors are created equal in value to their customers. When choosing a contractor, here’s what you want to consider:
- Experience in Your Industry: Does the contractor have experience dealing with your kind of product categories and e-commerce platforms?
- Quality Metrics: Ask for error rates, quality assurance procedures, and service level agreements that ensure performance.
- Technology Capabilities: What do they use, and will it integrate with your current systems? Do they use automation and AI data entry solutions?
- Unicode Transparency and Communication: How easy is it for you to access real-time progress reports? How responsive are they to questions and changes?
- Scalability: Would they be able to cope with existing needs and grow along with the business? Can they flex up during peaks and down during slower periods?
- References and Experience: Request a list of client references, particularly in businesses similar to yours.
Choosing the Right Path for Your Product Data
Deciding to outsource your e-commerce product data entry is not a decision to be made casually. Most growing e-commerce organizations will find the benefits (reduced costs, faster processing, more accurate information, new technologies and knowledge, increased protection, scalability) of transitioning to an outsourced model outweigh the costs of maintaining their own internal processes.
Many e-commerce companies have seen strong results with this model. The real question is whether you’re ready to redirect the time and resources spent on routine updates toward areas of the business where you can create greater value through growth and profit. Your customers deserve accurate product information. Your business deserves to grow without being constrained by operational bandwidth. Your team deserves work that challenges and develops them rather than consuming their time on routine tasks.
Outsourcing product data entry can deliver all three.
