Archives: Case Study

Retail Receipt Processing App

• Data Verification
• Data Entry
• Custom workflow and scheduling

A start-up company had developed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to take a picture of a store receipt and upload the image to the company’s system for storing and managing the receipts. The client’s system uses recognition technology to capture information from the receipts allowing shoppers to easily search and retrieve the receipts. Shoppers no longer had to keep paper receipts and could retrieve them instantly for returns and promotions. Shoppers using the app also received store coupons and other promotions sent directly to their smartphones by the retail stores.

Axion’s job was to verify the accuracy and completeness of the information being uploaded to the system. The receipts would not be visible to the shoppers until such verification had been completed, and the client required that verification be completed within 30 minutes of the receipt being uploaded. Furthermore, Axion was required to perform verification 365 days a year for 20 hours each day.

In order to staff the job properly, shopper traffic patterns had to be identified by day of the week, hour of the day, and week of the month, for each month. Using this information, Axion developed a computer model to determine how many staff members were needed for each of five 4-hour shifts for each day of the week.

During times of excessively high shopper traffic staffing was periodically insufficient, especially for the period between Black Friday (the day following Thanksgiving) and the week following Christmas. In those cases “reinforcements” were called into action in order to avoid or reduce an unexpected backlog. In no case was a backlog ever carried over to the following day.

Mobile Restaurant App

• Internet Research
• Data Verification
• Data Entry Staffing & Management

This start-up company is the creator and owner of a restaurant search engine app designed to provide quick and easy access to restaurant information including detailed menus, dietary information, and hours of operation. The company, based in New York City, contacted Axion to perform research and data entry into their web-based system.

For over 5,000 NYC restaurants, Axion collected online information for as many as three daily menus per restaurant, menu names, menu items, descriptions, links to online ordering and reservation systems, dietary information, hours of operation, and photos. This was mainly achieved by doing a Google search of the restaurant name and locating the website of that specific location. Using the Client’s restaurant entry system and the actual restaurant menu (found on the website) the data entry operator then enters all required information. Initially, Axion started with a staff of six operators. As time progressed and the project grew, Axion had a staff of eighteen data entry operators working on this project.

To ensure accuracy and consistency, the client asked Axion to perform data verification whereby several skilled data entry operators sight-verified 100% of the data entered into the system and made any necessary corrections.

To ensure the app always included the most current information, a proprietary system created by the company’s tech team was designed to “crawl” the web every night and pull back any changes to menus already in their system. The following day a team of operators was tasked with matching up those changes to existing menus and updating the system.

The app was ready for release in March 2020 when COVID-19 shut down all the restaurants in NYC and elsewhere, so the release of the app is still pending.

Banking Services Client

For 10 years a company providing property appraisal services to mortgage lenders outsourced their entire data entry operations to Axion. The project entailed transferring information from scanned images of property appraisals into a third-party software program used by the client to assist their banking clients make lending decisions.

The learning curve on this project was steep, and accuracy was critical given the purpose of the documents. Once trained, it took our staff between 45-90 minutes to complete a single appraisal. For the majority of this engagement, the client provided 40-45 appraisals per day for Axion to complete which were processed by a team of 8 data entry staff managed by one project manager.

However, in anticipation of expected decreases in mortgage rates, Axion was advised to increase its staff. Daily volumes increased from 40-45 appraisals to over 400 per day. To accommodate this increase, a second project manager joined the team and together the two managers hired and trained 60 data entry staff within a 4-week period. Throughout the duration of the refinance boom, Axion never carried a backlog of uncompleted appraisals.

While this experience was stressful and chaotic, we proved to ourselves and our client our dedication to doing whatever it takes to get the job done right!

Credit & Collection Data Management

• Data Verification
• Internet Research
• Data Entry Staffing & Management Services

This company is a full-service accounts receivables management firm that began their partnership with Axion in 2015 for Axion to perform verification services within the company’s web-based creditor judgment inventory management system (the System). The System stores data to facilitate the verification of information pertaining to individual creditor judgments.

There are three functions that Axion performs – Image Verification, Enhanced Research, and Audit Verification. At the start of our relationship, the company had its own staff of people performing all three tasks but decided to outsource a part of the Image Verification work to Axion. After five years, all work for all three tasks is performed and managed exclusively by Axion staff.

Image Verification

The System captures information from judgment image files uploaded by creditors. The system displays a data entry screen and the image associated with each account. Verifiers are responsible for entering or correcting all fields that are available using the judgment image displayed, following the guidelines outlined for the applicable State as documented in manuals on the Company’s Verification SharePoint site. In this phase, only basic research may be required to obtain a county or proper court name.

Enhanced Research

Enhanced Research is the second function Axion performs. In this phase of work, accounts that do not have judgment images provided must be researched. Axion verifiers are required to search across multiple states using predetermined court websites, third-party legal research sites, and public information websites to obtain judgment information. Once found, the media is uploaded into the System and then verified by entering the data.

Audit Verification

Originally, this function was performed by the Company’s internal team to audit the work performed by Axion. Later, the roles were reversed whereby Axion audited the work performed by both in-house and Axion staff. Eventually, all three functions were outsourced exclusively to Axion. Our auditors are given a set of accounts that were flagged for either random audits or “rule breaks”, accounts that do not fit normal parameters. Axion auditors are responsible for checking the accuracy of all data points of prior verifications. If errors are found, they are sent back to the verifier with an explanation. The fact that the company utilizes Axion to perform all three tasks is a significant indicator of the trust the company has in Axion.

Department of Homeland Security Form I-9

• Programming to protect PII
• Programming to apply specified business rules
• Custom workflow to ensure accuracy

Axion has been engaged by a Fortune 1000 company to perform data entry of information extracted from The Department of Homeland Security Form I-9, which is intended to document the eligibility of a person to be legally employed in the U.S. It asks for the person’s name, address, date of birth, Social Security Account Number, phone number and email address. The prospective employee must provide specific types of documents to support their identity, and information for those documents is also recorded on the I-9 Form, for example, driver’s license number and expiration date, passport number, etc.

Due to the sensitive nature of the data, the client asked that we design a program that would prevent a single data entry operator from viewing all the Personal Identifiable Information (PII) on a single form. In response, Axion created three separate programs, each one displaying only a portion of the PII from the scanned image and each program assigned to a separate team of data entry operators.

Also, because accuracy was so critical on this project, for each of the three programs, the information is keyed twice by two separate teams, and any differences identified by our system are then reviewed by a supervisor who determines the proper value. Thus, each form is processed by six independent teams and three to six supervisors.

Since the form’s introduction in 1987, there have been 16 revisions and 7 major format changes. Until 2013, the I-9 was a single-page document, thereafter it has been a 2-page document. Axion had to develop a program to accommodate all 7 formats. Furthermore, the client established a lengthy set of complex rules to specify proper handling of exception situations frequently encountered. To the greatest extent possible, Axion built programmed procedures into the data entry program to handle such exceptions; otherwise, it is up to the data entry operators and supervisors know and properly apply the rules.

To date, Axion has processed over 2 million I-9 forms.