OCR document scanners are the applications of character recognition technology that has countless benefits for businesses of all industries. But most businesses are not aware of the benefits of OCR technology and how OCR can alter the ways they interact with their customers.
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OCR Document Scanner
OCR is a technology that is used to digitize papers, scanned prints, or images. It just scans the paper, recognizes the areas where data is, and then extracts data from it. Businesses were striving to store their data effectively, which was very difficult with papers and files. The only solution to their problems was the digitization of hard documents. However, the physical documents were in a huge quantity, and typing the data by hand will not be time and cost-effective.
At this time, even common people are using OCR scanners in the form of mobile apps. Such as translation apps that have OCR scanners. The users can click an image of a book page, OCR extracts data from it. Finally, the translation tool converts the scanned image’s sentences into the required languages. As the world is becoming a global village, these apps are getting popular among users. Visitors can translate the menu or guides using OCR-powered translation apps to understand a foreign language.
Here is the process of working of OCR:
- User Click the image or upload a downloaded one
- The OCR document scanner start capturing data from it
- The accurate extracted data is available on the user screen
Benefits of Digitized Data
- The data is easily searchable, and the results are available in seconds. Before that, it was a hectic task to search customer data. For example, if a bank customer demands his data, it can take hours to find his data from the file system. But in computer systems, one just has to type the initials of the data
- Editing or modifying papers often destroys the documents and their beauty also. The companies have to cut or erase and rewrite the words, thus the editing is applicable only one or two times. In computerized documents, editing is as simple as writing. There is no cut or erasing, and it also maintains the beauty of the document
- Storing hard files requires extra room (physical storage). It also requires security against weather and theft
- Data management is not very easy, it needs employees to manage.
How can OCR Services Prove Better than Manual Typing?
The average typing speed of a human is forty words per minute. It is acceptable for one or two pages but as the data can range from hundreds to thousands, the humans can take hours to days to type the data in the computer.
Human typing produces many errors like spelling and format. They often compromise speed over accuracy, as they are paid on how much they have typed. As the data is extracted from papers there is no chance of errors in it. The OCR scanner just copies the text from hard documents and pastes it into the computer. Modern OCR applications are powered with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and NLP (Natural Language Processing), they can correct spelling mistakes of handwritten documents and will type the correct spellings. While extracting data it will look for similar words in the dictionary and use the most resembled one.
Businesses require some character recognition technology like OCR to automate their data. Normal scanners face problems while digitizing the data like cursive handwriting and unstructured data. This is not an obstacle for OCR scanners as they can read handwriting and even the cursive styles. Mostly hard data is unstructured and unsorted which takes more time for capturing data.
Paying data entry operators is an additional expense for businesses. It can ultimately affect the revenue of the businesses, also correcting mistakes will take more resources.
Wrapping It Up
Businesses can cut extra expenses and save their time on manual spending by using OCR technology. Human efforts can be used on other productive activities. Currently, the IDV industry is using OCR technology for extracting data from identity documents. OCR has streamlined the verification process. The consent verification service of IDV is only possible through character recognition. Other industries can also get similar benefits and explore new opportunities by using OCR.
