Survey and form design is an important first step in the data capture process.
For automated data capture software to read, interpret and extract data from your data capture forms, you will need to create structured form templates, either from your existing designs or as new forms.
Our data capture systems automate the entire process of collecting, evaluating, validating, and storing form data. It can help you create forms, distribute them, and automatically evaluate the returned data. After interpreting the results, the system will export the information to a database so that it can be used by your organisation immediately.
We recommend designing data capture forms in the data capture software to improve the robustness of identification, handprint recognition and processing speed later in the process. However, if you prefer, you can scan existing paper based data capture forms and overlay the structure on top to allow the system to capture your existing designs.
A structured form template improves the processing of the scanned data capture form, reduces manual intervention, and increases capture rates. It can utilise page furniture such as cornerstones and identifying barcodes to improve recognition, whilst constrained-print fields capture human hand-print in the most efficient way.
A drag-and-drop form designer provides an object library of fields, components, and graphics to quickly build new form templates. An intuitive user interface allows you to design data capture forms in a variety of styles.
Powerful features allow you to setup data entry fields to capture data from paper forms, perform lookups, enforce data validation rules, and set-up automatic exports. You can define image zones, pre-fill fields and setup automatic page linking.
You can even add your logo, change the fonts, and use your corporate colours to match brand guidelines.
Once form templates are created, information from a database may need to be merged with fields on the form prior to distribution via PDF, print, fax, or eMail. Common examples include:
Once the data has been merged, the forms are automatically faxed, eMailed, or printed for manual posting to recipients.
We can design and process surveys, questionnaires, and forms for many diverse industries including:
Loan applications, credit reports, new account opening, underwriting, claims, reinsurance and many more.
Patient enrollment, insurance claims, release of information, case report forms (CRF), patient surveys, patient encounter forms, patient consent, prescription orders, pathology forms, adverse events, clinical trials and many more.
Student applications/enrolment, financial aid, student transfers, grants, exam scripts and many more.
Tax forms, vehicle registration, business licenses, benefit forms, market research, census, service requests and many more.
Engineering change orders, sales order processing, IT system access, records management, work order processing and many more.
Customer satisfaction surveys, feedback questionnaires, and many more.
Employee onboarding, review and approval, new hire process, timesheets/timecards, holiday requests, employee expenses, travel request approval, and many more.
Site visit reports, equipment checks, safety incident reporting, inspection logs and many more.
A structured form template improves the processing of the scanned document, reduces manual intervention, and increases capture rates.
The phrase structured form template refers to the consistency of objects on a template. Most templates are highly structured with form ID blocks and data entry fields are in the same place on every copy of the form. For example, one “timesheet” will have the same structure as every other “timesheet”, even though the data entry fields contain different values.
Add a choice field to your form to accept a single choice (e.g. yes/no) or multiple choice (e.g. select option A/B/C/D).
Choice Fields consist of a single column, or row, of choices and offer an array of different styles including bubbles, boxes, underlines, responses and brackets.
To improve OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) accuracy, it is recommended to use bubbles and boxes rathar than circling a response or marking within brackets.
Cornerstones will assist with page alignment, de-skewing images and adjusting for print or scan size variations.
Handwriting is most effectively read by ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) technology when it is laid out in a constrained print field, with one character per box.
Form designers can add a constrained print field to gather data such as names, dates, and numeric figures. The boxes act as guides for the person filling out the form, with one dedicated space for each letter, number or character in the response.
Capture Zones are typically used to capture blocks of cursive handwriting or other unquantifiable data. They are presented to the operator to allow high-speed coding or re-keying of the content. Advanced features, such as mark identification or predictive typing, help speed up this process.
Image zones can capture machine-print text, barcodes and pictures. This element is often used to capture printed address labels, barcodes or provide images of handwritten comments.
Form identification blocks help with page rotation (where the sheet is scanned upside down) and answer sheet identification for reconciliation. It will also help with version control should future versions of the form need to be used in parallel with older but very similar forms.
Data capture software can recognise all standard barcode types, including 2D matrix barcodes. These can be added to your form to identify respondents.
Please click on the thumbnails below to view examples of data capture forms:
ALSPAC Parents’ Questionnaire 2020.
This was completed by the original study mothers and fathers (G0) with questions about health, faith and beliefs, feelings, reproductive health (females only) and future data collection thoughts.
Programme review - student questionnaire for further education programmes
Automation of the bonus timesheet has been a major step forward. In the past, it took one-person 2½ days a week to manipulate the data and manually key the information into payroll. We’ve reduced this time by almost two days already, but we anticipate further efficiencies in the next phase...
Richard Churchill, Productivity Support Manager, Next Distribution Ltd
We select the best data capture systems to meet your requirements.
TeleForm automatically captures and indexes data and images from any form type, using handprint (ICR), machine print (OCR) and checkbox (OMR) recognition technology, ready for export to a database.
It aims to reduce manual data entry time by 90% or more and can eliminate hundreds of operator keystrokes.
ABBYY FlexiCapture is a highly scalable forms processing solution for intelligent and accurate extraction of data from structured, semi-structured and unstructured forms and documents for input into backend applications for further processing and archiving.
Based at the University of Bristol, the ‘Children of the 90s’ study uses TeleForm to capture data from the paper versions of their questionnaires.
Following a OJEU tender process, the British Council commissioned Civica as the prime contractor to deliver an on-screen marking (OSM) solution to mark up to 2.25 million ‘pen and paper’ IELTS tests each year.
As part of the agreement, Civica appointed ePC as its sub-contractor for the script capture, processing and verification work.
Keele CTU saves time by capturing data from paper-based clinical trials with TeleForm.
