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inventory 2 million items on website

by bobmcalister
9 replies
have a prospect who wants his entire inventory online. How would you do that ?
he has no tag system at present , uses an old card system.

thanks for any help . Will pay for the winning advice .
#inventory #items #million #website
  • Profile picture of the author TrafficMystic
    maybe use OCR software to import all the items via a scanner? lot of work though but you could clean up all the imported items using some custom code to import the files of data and read the info from the files and possible categorize them based on some of the information in the data file?

    You would need some sort of auto feeder for the cards though.. or maybe outsource the scanner to possibly some students to make some extra cash.

    ps.. all advice is free
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  • Profile picture of the author stma
    What type of records does he have? Any software tracking used now?
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  • Profile picture of the author Aronya
    Is the info on the cards hand-written or typed? If hand-written, you've really got a project on your hands. I'd look into a data entry service, whether outsourced or you hire someone locally, and put everything into a spreadsheet. The problem is when manual entry is part of the mix, human error inevitably follows. The client would have to somehow verify that everything is correct. Don't let that become YOUR responsibility. In fact, I'd tell the client to get it done before I could put it all online. 2 million sets of data is a huge project.

    The OCR recommendation might work, too, but that software's not infallible, so it would still have to be checked. Also, it's not going to work with hand-written data.
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  • Profile picture of the author bobmcalister
    thanks guys !
    was thinking this could be outsourced somehow. the info is all on hand written notecards...can you believe that ? 10 million a year business run by hand .
    thanks again for the info and advice
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  • Profile picture of the author stma
    Wow. Only way I see of doing it is to hire manual labor to do it. A temp agency could help you get the right folks for a blitz. Only way it's going to happen I would say.

    Alternatively his choice is a slow migration over. All new inventory purchased goes in the database. Stock gets pulled from the hand printed cards first - if none left that match move on and update the database.

    Eventually the hand cards will be gone or can be entered into the databse at a lower cost since there are a lot less of them.
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  • Profile picture of the author JacksonPollock
    The first software that was a registry of all US phone numbers was put in by hand. All 100 million or so of them. The creators paid a Chinese data entry firm to do it. Not only to do it once, but once again to check their work.

    Depending on what kind of money is available to spend on this project, something like this might be possible. If you figure really really conservative estimates of like 1000 entries per person-day, then you would be looking at a total of 2000 person-days. Assume it is going to cost $10 for each 1000 entries one can do in a person day. That is only $20,000 for the first entrance. Another $20k to double check.
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  • Profile picture of the author TrueStory
    Cheapest way to do this:

    a) buy/rent a scanner that can process stacks of papers.

    b) scan relatively high resolution. (you can hire couple college students to do that)

    b.2) Setup secure FTP site and upload all data there.

    c) go to place like oDesk and create a team of data entry. Outsourcing to Philippines or India will cost you A LOT cheaper than having someone locally do this. Let them entry it either in custom database or CSV file.

    one way or another, it's better to find cheapest rate for job that takes the longest.
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    • Profile picture of the author stma
      Originally Posted by TrueStory View Post

      Cheapest way to do this:

      a) buy/rent a scanner that can process stacks of papers.

      b) scan relatively high resolution. (you can hire couple college students to do that)

      b.2) Setup secure FTP site and upload all data there.

      c) go to place like oDesk and create a team of data entry. Outsourcing to Philippines or India will cost you A LOT cheaper than having someone locally do this. Let them entry it either in custom database or CSV file.

      one way or another, it's better to find cheapest rate for job that takes the longest.
      Dat Der is a good idear.
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      • Profile picture of the author OnlineProfitDevil
        OCR is iffy, it depends on how accurate the data has to be. I would assume it needs to be 'extremely accurate'.

        Go to odesk, hire people overseas for $2-3 an hour and they will POUR your data in as fast as they can. Start slow, find a few people who are good at it and use them as a baseline as to how quickly/accurate it can be done.

        From my experience, you can hire people at that rate, often up to 60 hours per week, for very high accuracy from the Philippines.
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