In the 21st century, when the flow of information floods us from all sides, and document processing becomes an increasingly challenging undertaking, solutions such as ocr forms processing prove to be an important digital tool, with which the work process is optimized as much as possible.
In today’s article we will talk about how we can manage and process forms with simple to complex structure with great accuracy and precision – Smart Soft’s document Extraction Streamlining Program is an excellent way to save time, reduce costs and improve your company’s reputation. Stay with us and you will know more in the following lines.
How to automate the process of processing large volumes of data?
If in the not so distant past the only option for processing documents was manual human intervention, today there are much more modern and efficient ways to make this happen. Ocr forms processing is a great option that more and more companies rely on when working with documents because the results of integrating software into company structures are really good.
However, before getting down to business with such software development, it is vital to become familiar with its principles, capabilities, and even weaknesses. Ocr forms processing is suitable mainly for the processing of a large volume of data that is received individually in most larger companies – these are contracts, survey cards, insurance policies, contracts and other documents, the structure of which is according to a set standard.
The task of the software is to recognize the type of document and extract data – this is a huge relief not only for employees in the accounting department, but also for company managers in general. Optical data recognition (OCR) is an intelligent way to optimize the process related to working with documents, which often turns out to be quite a difficult task for businesses.
How OCR Technology helps?
We have all seen forms whose structure is very similar. These can be bills of lading, company contracts, insurance documents and others. Their structure often includes signature fields, checkboxes, and other structural details from which information cannot always be extracted without technical errors. For that reason, OCR form processing is even a mandatory software addition thanks to which scanned and pdf documents can be processed with increased accuracy and in a short time.
What types of forms are there and how they can be processed using special software?
It is important to say that the forms have different structures and this is important when processing them automatically with the Smart Soft software. Some of them are unstructured, some are semi-structured and others are well structured and very easy to process. Here’s more on the subject:
- examples of the latter are insurance claims, tax forms and standard vision tests – all these types of documents are usually the same number of pages, and the fields to be filled in are located in the same places on the form. Their predictability and excellent structure make them ideal for processing by OCR forms processing, although they can sometimes encounter challenges that the program has to deal with;
- semi-structured documents are bills of lading, invoices where a more flexible approach needs to be applied to accurately extract information –in most cases, when documents come from the same supplier, their structure (fields, space to fill, etc.) is the same, but there are exceptions too. The role of the Ocr forms processing software is to recognize and capture the data as correctly as possible;
- and last but not least is the automatic processing of data from unstructured documents – here, the available information can be located in completely different places, as it happens with documents such as reports, contracts, official letters – that is, there is no standard layout.
Of course, as with any other modern technology, there are always risks and challenges with Ocr forms processing.
What challenges can arise in automatic document processing?
Many people think that IT technologies work flawlessly and that artificial intelligence easily copes with every single challenge related to automatic document processing. This is somewhat true but in the case of extracting data from forms it is very possible to have difficulties as a result of different documents coming from different sources.
Factors such as printing from or scanning the document with different settings could affect the quality of the image and cause the information to be difficult to process. In this line of thought, the digital representation of the form is essential in its future processing.
What are the steps in processing different types of forms?
There are several basic steps involved in using Smart Soft Invoices – application of the documents and intelligent validation, and then comes the turn of the intelligent validation of the available database. There is also an option to add custom settings as well as enable security when managing groups of users.
