Increase the document processing efficiency of your company with OCR

2016/07/27

Technology is helping every company to more efficiently improve their processes. From a better customer’s response time using emails and instant messaging, to automatically process large volume of paper documents with Optical Character Recognition.

The later (OCR) is use in a variety of sectors to reduce the cost and time of reading text data as well as increase the accuracy of data capture.

What can OCR technology brings to your company process of documents?

Companies have to deal with a large amount of documents, either in the form of digital or printed ones. Let it be a questionnaire or form to complete, an invoice to process through different departments, a document to archive and retrieve later on, huge piles of Business Cards... The cost for the company can rapidly exploded if the data entry is done manually.

OCR (for Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that "read text from images". It is currently used in many sectors of activity to read different kind of information:

• Automatic parking lot will "read" the plate number of cars entering and store the data with the time of arrival. When you leave this parking lot, the plate will be read again and the bill can be automatically calculated.
• Mobile payment (like Apple Pay) have the function to read the Credit Card information, and automatically store the information without the need for the user to type anything. This apply to VIP cards and other fidelity card programs.
• Forms & Invoice Processing can be automatically added to the company process, by identifying the type of document as well as its information and then send to the infrastructure where it will lead to the next step of the process.
• Account opening solutions can “read” different documents like ID Cards, Business Card … and package the data to facilitate the work of reviewing and validating information before opening a Credit Card account.
• Automatic translation “read” the text from an image, send the data to translate and display the result directly to the end-user. It’s practical especially for translating from an Alphabet that the user is not familiar with (Chinese, Japanese, Russian …).
• Business Card Reader, help the user to enter the contact information to their address book by "reading" the bizcard.
• Document archive and retrieval: by extracting the text from documents and populate a database, you can quickly retrieve them by entering keywords.
• Book Library: Google is scanning entire libraries of paper book (including really old scrolls), for archiving as also to provide extract to their search engine.
• Help disable and vision deficient persons to access more documents: by extracting text from images and send to a text reader, this people can access documents that will be out of reach or difficult for them.

As shown, Optical Character Recognition can be found in various activities of our daily life, and can improve any process that have to deal with text capture or image processing of printed text.

OCR software has improved the ability to enter, store and use data by leaps and bounds. Nowadays, data can be easily and accurately converted into digital files, which can later be searched and edited. OCR technology greatly improves the data entry process and helps to eliminate the burdens of using and managing paper and other traditional types of documents.

Many industries utilize OCR; data entry is a major component of banking, finance, education, healthcare, and government jobs. All of these fields contain forms and printed documents that are becoming increasingly digitized. To make the transfer from hard copy to digital format, papers need to be scanned and relevant information needs to be extracted.

You can integrate OCR SDKs to your current software and IT infrastructure and start saving money on large volume of manual data entries.

Yunmai Technology is providing efficient OCR solutions to companies since 2002. Our solutions is used by more than 100 companies worldwide, including Telecom Companies, Mobile Phone Manufacturers, Scanner & Camera Manufacturers, Internet Companies and Financial Institutions.