Title: Developing a data entry productivity and error reporting system

Authors: Roger Nibler, Mark Johnson

Addresses: Hong Kong Baptist College University, PO Box 751, Portland, OR 97207, USA. ' Director of Information Services, Comprehensive Mental Health Center, Tacoma, WA, USA

Abstract: Data entry continues to play an important role in most data processing environments. Recent information shows that data entry represents approximately 20 per cent of the total data processing budget. With the advent of on-line and distributed data processing, monitoring the productivity and quality of data entry operators has become progressively more difficult. To combat this, some firms have begun to install software monitoring systems to measure the productivity and quality. This paper describes a software monitoring system called DEPERS (Data Entry Productivity and Error Reporting System). The ideal characteristics of a DEPERS are described followed by a discussion of a DEPERS which was installed at a data-processing site. The reports from the system have provided diagnostic information which has been useful in pinpointing difficulties in the data entry techniques of the operators. In addition, the information from the DEPERS has been quite useful to the system analyst/programmer in making program enhancements to the data entry software. These software enhancements were responsible for a dramatic increase in data entry productivity and quality.

Keywords: computer science; Data Entry Productivity and Error Reporting System; DEPERS; production management; operations management; data processing; software monitoring.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.1991.062566

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 1991 Vol.4 No.2, pp.103 - 108

Published online: 10 Jun 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article