How Does OCR Technology Add Value To Your Document Capture Solution

Whether professionally or for studies, the usage of OCR technology has become one of the critical elements of success in today’s world. It’s an outstanding technology that allows the user to extract text from images, documents, manuscripts, etc.

The Austrian engineer Gustav Tauschek developed it back in 1929. Since then, it has gone through significant uplifts, and nowadays, it’s readily available on our phones in the shape of an app. Employing the camera, the apps read characters present on an image and allow you to use the text.

But, besides images, it captures documents and various other vital texts for professionals and students both. So, how exactly does all that add value? To understand this technology’s inferences, let’s dig in deeper.

What Is OCR?

OCR or optical character recognition is the optical reading technology, which identifies text present on a paper. The technology scours through pages, reading each character, one after the other. Then, once it scans through, it formulates words and turns them into on-screen data.

The technology identifies each character through optical technology, whether printed or handwritten. OCR is a sum of two major elements: hardware and software. The hardware’s job is to read texts on papers, manuscripts, books, receipts, etc.

While the software program converts those characters read by the hardware into words, then sentences, passages, essays, et cetera. This process is a combination of these two techs working together. This allows the user to capture data from both physical and virtual mediums.

A few common and evolved types of OCR include:

IWR: IWR or intelligent word recognition scans handwritten or crude texts. More present in mobile apps.
OWR: OWR or optical word recognition thoroughly recognizes written/typed text through a device.
ICR: ICR or intelligent character recognition is the more advanced, AI-Driven version of OCR. Present in apps, web apps, and desktop apps.
OMR: Optical mark recognition is akin to OCR, but it identifies marks made by human hands, such as checkmarks, x marks, or other various patterns on paper.

While the OCR technology has evolved immensely over 10 decades, it’s now in perfect shape. Nowadays, OCR programs depend a lot on AI, aka Artificial Intelligence.

The AI thoroughly cleans up any messy readings and turns them into the words these characters are meant to be.

The most common, and perhaps the oldest, application of OCR is in academies. The students and tutors use this technology to scan books and manuscripts and have easy access to said text. That’s why OCR is a necessary technology in professional and academic settings.

7 Ways It Adds Value To Your Document Capture Solution

OCR is a remarkable technology, that much we know. But, how exactly does it help us? OCR is not only a necessity; it’s essential for better productivity, vast databases, and easy access. For people in various facets of life, it has different applications.

It has many implications for a business, a writer, a tutor, or a student. Each one helps them in one way or another, and that’s why it’s important to understand just how it provides solutions when needed. So, how does it add value to the document capture solutions needed by all those people?

In order to understand that, let’s see the seven ways one can apply it in today’s world.

Allows You To Capture Data Quickly
Imagine being given the task to rewrite a whole book into a computer. We’re talking 200-300 pages of a novella, each one teeming with 250-300 words. That’s days, maybe weeks of work even for the most skilled data entry specialist. The typing speed and the accuracy they’d need will be immense.

Moreover, the strain on wrists and fingers after all that would be immense. Now, let’s add OCR to the mix, and you’re talking about indexing 2-3 books in an hour. This technology’s immensely fast speed isn’t only essential to save human hours and strain and trouble.

More importantly, the weeks of time turned into mere minutes made it even better. A skilled OCR user would take around 5-10 minutes max at indexing a book through the technology today. So, weeks have turned into minutes, allowing academies and workplaces to capture data quickly.
Enables You To Store Data
Imagine a bookshelf with 100 or so books on it. We’re talking a 5x10 shelve, with many parchments, books, manuscripts, whatsoever. This physical space taken by books might look good in a living or study room of a mansion, but it means more rent and a lot more space taken for a business.

Nowadays, the same data can be stored within megabytes of data on any hard drive. It’s not only highly convenient for businesses, marketers, and academies to benefit from it just the same. In today’s remote-favored settings, academies need to provide virtual data to their students as well.

So, if an academy has a massive book collection, indexing it in online or cloud storage will allow them to give students access to a vast library. It’s convenient for the students and enables the academies to go above and beyond to ensure the quality of studies on their premises.
You Can Create Vast Indexes
For a business or a marketer, quick access to any sort of data is a necessity. That’s why indexing data into virtual storage has become a common practice in businesses today. Storing valuable information, ledgers, receipts, or records of purchase in cloud storage is a viable way to do it.

That’s why businesses spending a good chunk of their money on OCR and database storage technology is becoming common. Two significant benefits to any company today include saving space and creating extensive indexes.

Creating these extensive data indexes with an image to text converter allows you to access vast information at the click of a button. This isn’t only convenient and way simpler than having to read ledgers but also an efficient way to keep a track record of everything.
Search Data More Efficiently
Searching for information through physical manuscripts is nothing less than a pain for writers today. Whether in professional settings or academics, a writer needs access to all the information they can find to formulate great articles.

However, physical manuscripts prevent them from doing just that, as they would simply take too much time. That’s why using OCR tech to store necessary data is a growing practice among marketers, students, and writers of all kinds.

It’s not only for its storage-saving properties but also because it makes it so much easier to search for specific information. By indexing a vast library through OCR, academies and workplaces allow writers to search through data more efficiently.
Data Automation Works Like A Charm
Data automation is one of the standard processes in marketing and businesses today. It’s required in emails, social media content, blogs, and various platforms. However, as the name suggests, data automation needs data and lots of it.

That’s when using old ledgers, receipts, or other business records becomes a necessity for a business. So, using OCR helps them out at this turn as well. Not only because it makes it easier to read from a physical medium but also because it helps them store and use said data for comprehensive automation.
Create Feasible Content
Content writers need access to other content to conduct research and formulate new pieces. However, doing the same from physical or scanned documents is not easy—particularly for an academic writer. That’s when OCR becomes an increasingly valuable tool.

It enables the writer to conduct better research, formulate better data and improve their work accordingly. This feasibility of the content is only possible because of OCR’s ability to extract and index valuable text.
Make It Machine Readable
Machine reading is an extensive requirement of businesses today. Much like their records, ledgers, etc., they need machines to do half their work.

For an eCommerce business, it’s even more critical. That’s when OCR makes any content machine-readable. Allowing the businesses to use said data extensively.

Conclusion

These key benefits of using OCR add value as a document-capturing solution to every facet of life. It’s not only a highly convenient tool; this technology helps save a lot of time. For businesses, marketers, or academia, the role of this tool is undeniable