ABBYY FormReader™ Helps Fancl Corporation to Streamline Customer Surveys Processing

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ABBYY FormReader™ Helps Fancl Corporation to Streamline Customer Surveys Processing

SUMMARY

Client: Fancl Corporation, Singapore

Project: Form processing for customer feedback surveys

Challenges: Over 3,000 surveys to be processed every month. Before the solution was found, the personnel could process only up to 1500 forms per month.

Solution proposed by ABBYY:
Automated form processing with ABBYY FormReader software.

Fancl

ABBYY FormReader™ saves Fancl Corporation over 70% of the working time on day-to-day processing of customer feedback surveys

Background

Fancl Corporation holds the enviable position as one of the largest and most successful cosmetic and supplement producers in Japan as well as in Singapore. As a caring and responsible skin care company, Fancl deeply understands the importance of using preservative-free and healthy approach to beautiful skin.
Over the years, Fancl’s vision is to create a skincare line that would actually improve skin health, not just cover up flaws. Through extensive research, Fancl wanted to discover what the causes to skin problem irritation are.
Fancl is constantly focusing on their customers’ feedbacks in order to understand their skin problem thoroughly and the results after they used the product. Product development process rests upon the information extracted from the customers’ surveys. Bridging the time gap between the receipt of customer survey and their processing is key to successful product launch and, in the end, to strengthening Fancl’s market position.

Challenge

Fancl gets over 3,000 survey forms from its customers every month.
Initially, all the collected forms were manually processed by Fancl’s administrative staff. However, this traditional method created problems like typing errors and low productivity. This proved to be very inefficient and unproductive as the volume of the forms kept piling up. Given optimal conditions, the administrator could only manage to process up to 1500 forms per month. In order to increase the level of productivity, Fancl would need to spend protracted resources on manpower, office spaces and workstations, thus increasing overhead and IT costs that does little to add value to the organisation in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

Solution

To increase the productivity and to reduce the human-made errors, Fancl decided to replace the manual data entry with automated form processing. Fancl called up several developers of data capture solutions for products demonstration. After 3 phases of product demonstration and evaluation, Fancl decided to choose ABBYY FormReader amongst others software.

ABBYY got involved in this project through its partner in Singapore, Scientific Digital Business (SDB). Scientific Digital Business (SDB) offered Fancl ABBYY FormReader 6.5 Desktop Edition - that enabled Fancl to achieve their goal - process 3000 forms per month. ABBYY FormReader automatically detects machine-readable forms and is able to extract data from handwritten registration forms using a wide range of OCR/ICR/OMR/barcode recognition technologies. ABBYY FormReader provides 100% data processing accuracy due to verification procedures that are performed manually via an easy-to-use verification interface in case there are any uncertainly recognized characters. Once the recognized data are verified, they are then exported into CSV-files and uploaded to Fancl CRM System.

SDB proposed Panasonic KV-S1025C, a scanner capable of processing up to 25 pages per minute, as hardware for the project. The administrator-in-chief now processes 200 forms in less than 3 hours and releases herself and her workstation for other tasks.

Results

After FANCL implemented ABBYY FormReader solution proposed by SDB, they immediately experienced the efficiency boots. Extracting data from customer surveys no longer gives Fancl headaches. ABBYY FormReader saves over 70 percent of the working time spent on data entry compared with manually work. The high recognition accuracy of handwritten character by ABBYY FormReader also eliminates the errors made during manual data entry.

FANCL was impressed and satisfied with the solutions proposed by SDB. A small solution brings them uncountable benefits.

“ABBYY FormReader helped FANCL overcome the inadequate human resources problem and saved a lot of overhead costto process the survey forms. Before FANCL implement our document imaging solutions, they have had more than six employees to do the data entry job. After the solution was implemented, they immediately experienced the efficiency boots. They have reduced from 6 data entry employees to 2,” comments Michael Li, Product Manager of Scientific Digital Business Pte Ltd.

About FANCL
Based in Yokohama, Japan, is one of the region’s leading manufacturer of botanically-based, preservative-free skin care products. For more information, please visit http://www.fancl.com/

About Scientific Digital Business
Headquartered in Singapore, has offices in ASEAN. SDB is a leading Mass Storage, Document Imaging and Printing Systems Value Added Distributor. In each of its businesses, the company represents Top-of-Breed’ software and services. SDB has been recognized as a Channel leader in the region by ‘Channel Asia’, a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulation, UK. For more information, please visit http://www.sdbgroup.com/