Xtracta Blog

Authored By: Jonathan Spence Data and the internet are becoming ever more critical to the planet’s residents. Even the smallest rural villages in Kenya or India are likely using data services on a daily basis; services whose importance can often be placed far ahead of electricity or even sanitation. The rise of the likes of M-Pesa in what many in the developed world would (arrogantly) consider backwaters is testament to the power of communications and information to transform the lives of all. No matter whether its an SMS message, financial transaction, email, complex business process or cat video, almost all…

In his outstanding book “Automate This”, author Christopher Steiner tells the story to Thomas Petterfy, a virtual unknown who single-handedly revolutionised the stock trading industry and became one of the richest men on the planet in the process. Petterfy was not a trader, nor did he have a degree or experience in finance. Rather, he was a computer programmer with a visionary sense for identifying inefficiencies and developing ways to solve them. Petterfty developed an automated system for share trading so accurate and efficient that within a decade it had completely redefined the stock market. Pits filled with screaming traders…

Businesses face many challenges in the modern business environment. Now more than ever, business leaders need to be constantly on lookout for more effective ways of managing jobs. By staying stagnant and not improving processes over time, will mean both short and long term growth will be affected. You may be thinking “We have done it this way for the last 10 years, why should we change now?” By evaluating your business continuously and investing in more efficient processes such as data Automation and extraction, your staff can spend more time on value added activities rather than lengthy, repetitive tasks….

Accounting automation -it’s a term that has been bouncing around the accounting and bookkeeping industry for the past few years. Automation allows accountants and bookkeepers to spend less time on the manual labour they have traditionally spent a majority of their roles on. That sounds ideal, however there has been discussion within the industry that automation is a tool that will replace accountants completely. And it’s partly true. Automation reduces the amount of time spent on manual tasks, for example data extraction, such as ABM Billfeeds, a service that is offered to all customers of ABM’s accounting software. This service…

Document scanning is often given little thought or consideration. A bit of planning and knowledge about how to approach it can really help the outcomes and make the process faster and more hassle free. Scanner Choice There are a huge number of scanners available on the market. Some are dedicated single function scanners while other are part of a multi-function device with a scanning function alongside printing and copying. When making the choice of what scanner you want to use the three main factors affecting your decision are: Volume of documents you wish to process Your desired image quality level…