Your team’s time is being wasted.
They’re stuck retyping claim forms, survey responses, invoices, the works. It’s slow, repetitive work. It takes focus away from everything else they’re supposed to be doing. Even with the best people on it, mistakes happen.
You’re paying skilled staff to do data entry, and they’re burning out doing it.
If it feels like a low priority, it might be worth a second look.
What manual data entry takes away
Manual data entry isn’t the best use of anyone’s time. But when it’s part of the day-to-day, it’s easy to miss what it’s costing you.
Let’s look at a typical day for someone on your team.
9:00am
They open their inbox. A long list of scanned documents waiting to be keyed in. Some handwritten. Some barely legible. All need doing before anything else can move forward.
10:30am
Still on it. Flicking between two systems. Copy, paste, recheck. Something doesn’t quite match. They pause to reply to a customer who’s chasing an update – the same update they’re still working on.
12:00pm
They grab lunch at their desk. It’s that kind of day. While scrolling, they spot a mistake in something they entered earlier. It’s small, but it means going back and fixing it across multiple places.
3:45pm
Finally, something more complex lands on their desk. A case that needs their knowledge and experience. But now there’s not much time left to give it the attention it deserves.
The compounding effect
None of these moments look dramatic in isolation.
Put them together over a month and you start to see the pattern:
- Work that should take minutes stretches into days
- Staff who care about accuracy feel like they are always behind
- Customers notice the lag, even if they never see the reason
- The budget for “innovation” quietly disappears into manual admin
Most teams don’t decide to run things this way. It just happens over time.
That is why manual data entry is so hard to tackle. It feels like background noise. In reality, it shapes everything.
If any of this sounds a bit too familiar, it’s a strong sign the problem isn’t the people. It’s the way the data gets into your systems in the first place.
The fix: intelligent forms processing (with AI)
There is a simpler way forward, and yes, it involves AI. We know it’s being pitched as the answer to everything right now. But this is one of the jobs it genuinely does well.
Instead of your team rekeying data from scanned paperwork or PDFs, intelligent forms processing (powered by AI) pulls the information automatically and puts it straight into your systems.
How?
It uses OCR (optical character recognition) and machine learning to read the document like a human would but faster. It picks out the important stuff (names, dates, numbers, checkboxes), checks it for accuracy and sends it where it needs to go.
What kind of documents?
Standardised forms, handwritten notes, PDFs, surveys – it handles both structured and messy layouts. If your team can read it, the AI probably can too.
How long does it take?
Seconds or minutes, not days. That means faster decisions, quicker responses, no more long waits because someone’s still “working through the forms,” and fewer errors creeping in when everyone’s under pressure.
Is it hard to set up?
No. Most systems (like Tungsten’s TotalAgility) come with pre-trained AI and a user-friendly interface. You can start with one high-volume form and build from there.
What changes when you stop typing
With intelligent forms processing, a few things start to shift. You can see it in places you look at every day.
Your team
The person who used to live in spreadsheets has time to breathe. They’re not spending whole mornings copying from one screen to another. Their energy goes into tricky cases and real decisions, not line after line of the same form.
Your customers
They get answers sooner. They don’t have to send the same information twice because of a typo somewhere in the chain. From their side it simply feels smoother and more reliable.
Your data
What goes into the system matches what was on the form. You’re not constantly finding little mismatches that need fixing. Audits feel less like a hunt for where things went wrong.
Your costs
Fewer hours disappear into low-value admin. Less overtime just to “get through the forms”. More of your budget goes into work that moves the business on.
“What does this mean for my job?”
Introducing AI and automation can raise big questions for the team. But the goal of intelligent forms processing (and any automation) is to take away the drudgery, so that humans can do what humans do best. To reduce fear, you could say:
“We’re bringing this in to take the boring, repetitive stuff off your plate, not to get rid of anyone. The system will read the forms first and do the basic input. You’ll still deal with the complex cases and talk to customers. If anything looks off, it will still be you who spots it. We’re giving you more time for the parts of the job that need a real person.”
If you decide to fix this, you want it done properly
Adopting intelligent automation with AI is a journey and you shouldn’t have to do it alone.
When you partner with us, you’re gaining a supportive team dedicated to making automation work for your specific situation. We bring deep experience with Tungsten’s TotalAgility and use it to build intelligent forms around your real workflows rather than a generic template. We will:
- Review how your team handle forms today and pinpoint where time is being lost
- Highlight early wins so you see value quickly
- Configure and test the setup with you so it fits existing systems and feels familiar
- Build in access controls, audit trails and compliance checks from the start
- Work with your team so they feel confident using the new tools and have support when questions come up
TotalAgility gives you the tools, and we help you apply them where they’ll make the biggest impact.
Ready to ditch the data entry?
Reclaiming your team’s time and sanity from manual data entry is something you can start right now. The technology is ready. The benefits are proven.
Let’s help you implement intelligent forms processing in a controlled way that fits your team.
We’d be happy to show you a demo or just have an open chat about your challenges and how we can help.