OCR in business has transformed how employees handle documents, providing a range of benefits that mainly improve productivity and efficiency. It has become a crucial business tool. Moreover, text recognition is used in data entry, document scanning, and business process automation applications. It is helpful for companies still processing business tasks through physical papers. These firms usually need to be searched and digitized as it helps them to accurately and quickly convert the documents into digital format.
Companies can understand the importance of ocr services through these research figures. From 2014 to 2025, the market share of OCR is forecasted to reach 14.5% in China.
What is OCR-Optical Character Recognition?
Optical character recognition software converts a text image into machine-readable formats. For instance, when employees scan a receipt or form, the computer saves it immediately into an image file. One can not use a text editor to search, edit, or count the text in the image. However, they can use an OCR text scanner to transform the picture into a text document that stores text data.
Working Of OCR Scanner
OCR is a digital framework that uses automation to transform scanned documents into shareable and editable PDF files. Scanning physical documents removes the hassle of finding documents from bundles of files. Let’s see how OCR works through the following steps:
- Image Acquisition
OCR text scanner reads the extracted information and converts it to binary data. Then, categorize the dark part as text and light as background.
- Pre-Processing
The text recognition software cleans the picture by removing errors and preparing it for reading. A few cleaning tactics are mentioned below:
- Remove any digital image spots or smooth the boundaries of text images.
- Tilt the scanned document to fix alignment problems during the scan.
- Clean image lines and boxes.
- Script recognition for multi-language OCR technology.
- Text Recognition
Pattern matching or feature extraction are two major algorithm types that OCR software uses to recognize text.
- Pattern Matching
Pattern matching functions by separating a character picture known as a glyph and comparing it with a stored one. Pattern recognition functions when the stored glyph has the same scale and font. This technique works well by scanning document pictures typed in the recognized font.
- Feature Extraction
Glyphs can be categorized into characteristics such as closed loops, line directions, and intersections. Then, these characteristics are used to search for the nearest or best match among its stored glyphs.
- Post-Processing
The best online OCR analyzes the data and then transforms the fetched data into computerized. Many systems create standardized PDF files that involve after and before versions of the scanned data.
Few OCR Technology Use Cases
OCR can be used in different industries, such as:
Banking
Check deposits, loan documents, and other financial transactions can be quickly executed by processing and verifying paperwork through an OCR image reader. Due to this facility, companies can prevent fraud that automatically improves financial security. For example, many companies finance small and medium-sized firms. It uses a cloud-based OCR service to make a product for SMBs.
Healthcare
Patient records such as tests, insurance payments, and treatments can be quickly processed through OCR technology. It helps to minimize manual work and streamline workflow by keeping patient records up-to-date. For example, many companies provide medical and health insurance to more than one million users and receive thousands of claims per day. Their users take an image of their medical invoices and submit them through any app. Further, ocr apps automatically process these images so that firms can approve claims instantly.
Logistics
Logistics organizations use text recognition to keep records of invoices, receipts, package labels, and other essential documents more effectively. Conventional entry of these organizations’ documents is error-prone and time-intensive as users must enter information in different accounting systems. With OCR technology, users can read data more efficiently.
Why are OCR Services Important?
Many organizational workflows include having data from print media. Business process includes invoices, printed contracts, paper forms, and scanned legal documents. But, this large paperwork volume takes a lot of time and energy to manage and store information.
Moreover, digitizing the document generates image files with the text hidden in them. Image text can not be processed through word processing systems like text documents. Therefore, OCR technology solves the issue by transforming text images into data that can be analyzed by other organizational software. Employees can use this data to streamline operations, improve productivity, automate procedures, and conduct analysis.
Final Verdict
E-business scans the invoices of their clients after extracting them through the software. The imported data is validated to inspect its accuracy and credibility. Thus, the slip is classified accordingly and shifted to the accounting software. This is the process of automating the whole process after inspecting the content and transferring it to the related set.
OCR technology can manage any business quickly. With its incredible accuracy of real-time results and accuracy, text recognition helps firms automate the data extraction process.