Every workflow begins with data. But what if that data is incomplete, incorrect, or simply not usable? From onboarding forms and scanned contracts to customer-submitted Excel sheets, businesses are flooded with incoming information—and most of it isn’t ready to use. The result? Delays, rework, compliance issues, and poor customer experiences. This post shows you how automated data validation prevents these problems, improves your processes, and protects your bottom line.
Why Data Validation matters
Poor-quality data isn’t just annoying; it’s expensive. Studies show that bad data can cost companies up to 20% of their revenue. Mistyped form fields, missing attachments, outdated product info—all of it creates downstream chaos.
Key risks of unvalidated data:
- Wrong decisions based on false or incomplete input
- Higher support effort due to manual correction
- Compliance violations from incomplete records
- Failed automations or integrations
By validating data before it enters your systems, you avoid these risks and ensure every decision is based on clean, reliable information.
What Data Validation actually means
Data validation means checking whether incoming data is:
- Complete (no missing required fields)
- Correct (formatting, spelling, logic)
- Compliant (according to rules or regulations)
This applies to structured and unstructured formats alike: Excel, PDFs, DOCX, images, scans, web forms, emails.
Real-World pain points across industries
- Healthcare: Billing issues due to missing or incorrect CPT codes on CMS-1500 forms.
- Logistics: Delays because of unreadable shipment slips or missing barcodes.
- E-commerce: Failed imports due to empty or misformatted product attributes.
- Finance: Rejected applications because of incomplete ID documents or outdated forms.
Manual validation doesn’t scale
In many businesses, data validation still means opening files, reading them line by line, copy-pasting into a system, and manually checking for issues. This is slow, error-prone, and doesn’t work at scale.
Common manual steps:
- Download the file from email or form system
- Open and read the document
- Manually verify fields and values
- Write follow-up emails if data is missing
- Wait for corrections and start over
Multiply this by 50, 500 or 5,000 documents per month and you see the problem.
Automated data validation with Knots
Knots builds smart validation workflows tailored to your inputs, systems, and rules. Here’s how it works:
- Detect format: Recognizes PDFs, scans, DOCX, Excel, etc.
- Extract content: Uses OCR and parsing to extract relevant data
- Validate rules: Checks logic, required fields, formats
- Notify automatically: If something’s wrong, sends a personalized message
- Loop and complete: As soon as corrections arrive, validation resumes
- Ready-to-use output: Clean, structured data enters your CRM, support tool, or ERP
Important: Not a Rigid App, but Flexible Automation Unlike boxed tools that only validate web forms, Knots supports diverse input formats and connects to your existing stack—including Zendesk, Salesforce, SharePoint, Dropbox, HubSpot, JIRA, ServiceNow, and custom systems.
Use Case: Health insurance claims
- A scanned CMS-1500 form arrives via ticket
- OCR extracts the fields: diagnosis, treatment codes, provider ID
- Business rules check: are CPT codes valid? Is signature present?
- If not: patient gets auto-email with exact missing info
- Upon upload, system re-validates and forwards to billing
Results from the field
Customers using Knots validation workflows report:
- 70% fewer manual data checks
- 60% faster processing times
- Fewer errors and follow-ups
- Happier teams who no longer have to “clean up messes”
Ready for clean data and scalable workflows?
If you’re drowning in incoming documents, forms, and attachments, it’s time to automate your data validation. We offer:
- A free audit of your existing validation process
- A guided trial with your real-world data
- Expert workflows tailored to your industry and tools
→ Talk to our team to start validating smarter today. Want a quick overview instead? Check out our data validation landing page.
