OCR Solutions - The Secret To Conquering Mountains Of Data From Printed Documents!
In the digital age, businesses that quickly adapt to new technology will have a competitive advantage. OCR, optical character recognition technology, is the key to opening the door to digitalization for businesses.
Do you know how much time and money your business is “losing” every day to process paper documents? Do you want to search for important information in a thick set of documents but don’t know where to start? If the answer is yes, then you need OCR. This optical character recognition technology will help you solve those problems quickly and effectively.
What are OCR Solutions?
OCR or Optical Character Recognition, is a technology that allows computers to “read” text from images. Simply put, OCR turns images containing text into editable text on computers.
OCR solutions is a set of tools, software and services based on OCR technology, helping users convert documents from image format (such as JPG, PDF) to editable text format (such as DOCX, TXT).
How does OCR Solutions work?
The OCR process can be divided into the following main steps:
1. Image preprocessing
- Image cleaning: This step helps remove impurities, noise, adjust brightness, contrast to make the image clearer, easier to recognize.
- Sectioning: The image is divided into text-containing areas, separating the text from other elements such as drawings, tables.
2. Character recognition
- Feature extraction: The computer will analyze each character, extracting features such as stroke thickness, height, width, curves, etc.
- Compare with the database: These features will be compared with a huge database containing known character samples. The computer will search for the character sample with the most similar features to the character being considered.
- Using algorithms: To increase accuracy, machine learning algorithms, neural networks are used to analyze and recognize characters.
3. Correction and optimization
- Grammar checking: After recognizing characters, the computer will use grammar rules to check and correct errors in the text.
- Error handling: Algorithms will be applied to handle special cases such as blurred characters, characters that are stuck together, or errors due to the recognition process.
4. Output results
- Convert to text: Finally, the recognized characters will be converted into editable text, usually in popular formats such as TXT, DOCX, PDF.
What are the types of OCR Solutions?
1. Based on recognition algorithms
- Template Matching OCR: This is a traditional method, comparing each character in the image with a database of known characters. This method is quite effective with clear printed text, but has difficulty when faced with variations in font, size and image quality.
- Feature Extraction OCR: This method focuses on analyzing the structural features of characters such as curves, edges, spacing between strokes… to identify characters. It is more flexible than the template-based method, and can handle many different fonts and variations.
2. Based on document type
- Simple OCR: For clear printed documents, without much noise. Simple OCR algorithms focus on recognizing basic characters.
- Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR): For handwritten or poorly printed documents. ICR uses more complex algorithms to analyze handwriting, variations in writing style and provide more accurate results.
- OMR (Optical Mark Recognition): For forms with pre-marked marks such as multiple choice questions. OMR focuses on recognizing these marks to provide results.
3. Based on the level of recognition
- Character-level OCR: Each character in the image will be recognized individually.
- Word-level OCR: Recognizes an entire word, helping to increase accuracy thanks to the context of the word.
- Line-level OCR: Recognizes an entire line of text, helping to determine the spacing between words, lines and layout of the text.
4. Other types of OCR solutions
- Area OCR: Focuses on recognizing text in a specific area of the image.
- Barcode recognition: Converts barcodes into computer data.
Benefits of using OCR Solutions
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) has become an indispensable tool in the current data digitization process. OCR solutions bring many significant benefits:
1. Increase information processing speed
- Fast digitization: OCR helps quickly convert documents such as invoices, contracts, books, etc. into digital format, saving significant time compared to manual data entry.
- Instant information retrieval: With a digital data warehouse, searching and retrieving information becomes easier and faster than ever, helping employees save working time.
2. Improve work efficiency
- Automate processes: OCR solutions help automate many repetitive work processes, minimize human errors and free up employees to focus on higher value-added tasks.
- Improve data quality: Data digitized using OCR is often more accurate than manually entered data, ensuring the integrity and reliability of information.
3. Save costs and time
- Save costs: By automating the data entry and processing process, OCR helps to significantly reduce labor costs. In addition, digitizing documents also helps to save storage costs, reduce the need for office space and costs related to managing paper documents. Moreover, OCR helps increase work efficiency, employees can handle more work in the same amount of time, improve work efficiency and reduce operating costs.
- Save time: Instead of spending hours manually entering data from paper documents, OCR allows us to convert text into digital format in just a few seconds. This significantly increases productivity, reduces errors due to manual data entry, and frees up employees to focus on more value-added tasks.
4. Enhanced information security
- Data protection: Digitized data is stored on computer systems, which are easier to secure and back up than paper data.
- Prevent data loss: Digitization helps minimize the risk of data loss due to fire, natural disasters, or other factors.
5. Increased flexibility and adaptability
- Remote access: Digitized data can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, facilitating remote working and collaboration.
- Easy information sharing: Sharing information between departments and partners becomes simpler and faster.
6. Improve customer experience
- Fast request processing: From OCR solutions, customer requests can be processed faster and more accurately, improving customer satisfaction.
- Professional customer service: Quickly retrieving customer information helps employees provide better customer service.
OCR is constantly evolving with improvements in accuracy and recognition capabilities. In the future, smart document processing technology solutions such as OCR or IDP will play an even more important role in building a digital society where information is shared and processed quickly and efficiently.
Are you ready to experience the power of smart solutions? Contact AFusion today for advice and implementation of the most suitable solution for your business.
Email: sales@afusion.ai
Address: 55-57 Bau Cat 4, Ward 14, Tan Binh, HCMC, Vietnam