Our emphasis on the value of “humans in the loop” at Information Evolution sometimes obscures the heavy lifting that automation performs in our customers’ data supply chains. Of course, these days “AI” is the most often discussed type of automation, but there are several other more common tools that actually do the majority of our automated work.
- Custom Applications. For more than 15 years we have built custom web-based interfaces for our research teams. For example, automated logic checks highlight anomalous data for human review.
- Telephone Research Automation. We use auto-dialers and auto-transcription for automated phone number validation and call dispositions, improving the efficiency and reliability of our tele-research operations.
- Leveraging Metadata. For instance, “confidence indexes” (a 1-5 ranking of the ‘confidence’ the researcher has in the accuracy of the data entered) is deceptively powerful, identifying problem areas that need focused QA.
- Change Detection. Automated monitoring of static URLs and large data repositories allows human researchers to review and update our client’s b-to-b databases in virtual real time.
What all these tools have in common is that they allow us to improve turnaround times, reduce man-hours, and improve quality metrics. In other words, our tools make us better, cheaper, and faster.
