Manual data entry and receiving invoices in paper format stand as the most challenging business processes for employees. Companies that still utilize these two processes are susceptible to poor data management, high processing costs, and inefficient labor use. 

Fortunately, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can be used to solve these time-consuming business challenges. It enables you to reproduce hard copies digitally with up to 99% accuracy for more effortless data transfer and processing.  

In this article, we’ll show you what Optical Character Recognition is and how it can help you be more efficient in your business. 

What is Optical Character Recognition? 

Optical Character Recognition is a technology that recognizes text within a digital image and converts this image into a machine-readable format. This technique typically involves using an algorithm to recognize characters within that image. OCR has been used in the past to convert paper documents into digital formats and enter data, but it has also been adapted for use in cognitive computing, text-to-speech extraction, data mining, as well as on websites and other digital media. OCR can be used to convert scanned documents, faxes, or other printed material into editable text files for processing by word processors and other applications.

So, how does OCR work? The Optical Character Recognition system works by running an image through an OCR program, which can be a specialized printer scanner or your phone equipped with an optical scanner or camera. Firstly, the original image is scanned and converted into a bitmap. Secondly, the AI-powered software recognizes color, text characters, handwriting styles, and languages by using pattern-matching techniques. Afterward, it extracts the text from the image and finally converts it into editable text on a computer screen or into a digital document file.

How is Optical Character Recognition Used in Businesses? 

Optical character recognition is used in a handful of things, and business is one of them. Below are some of the ways that you can use OCR in handling your tasks. 

1. Inputting Business Documents 

Optical Character Recognition is helpful for businesses that are opting to shift from manual to digital data entry. Mountains of physical records in storage will take a lot of time to input digitally. Using a scanner with OCR helps you sort out your records while scanning since you can pre-program your scanner to file documents containing specific words into different folders.  

You can also use OCR for recording manually filled forms digitally. Since OCR makes converting and editing PDF possible, you can scan copies of your physical forms and edit them on your computer for encoding new transactions. 

2. Transferring Calling Card Information 

Using Optical Character Recognition also helps quickly enter contact information from calling cards. Say you are in a business convention, and all your newly-found associates and prospective investors or customers hand you their business cards. Keeping it in your drawer won’t guarantee its longevity, and it will take quite a while to manually enter all that information into your database. With OCR, you can simply scan the business cards you’ve gathered and input keywords (such as Name, Company, Position, Address, and Contact Information) to automatically register and synchronize the information with your automated information database. 

3. Automatic Computation with AI 

Combing Artificial Intelligence with OCR can provide you with even more accuracy.

Using simple scanning software with no OCR and AI capabilities for scanning receipts can lead to miscalculations. For example, your scanner mistakenly captured $100 instead of $1000. Normally, it would take human review to correct this error by calculating the entries from the scanned document manually. With AI-powered OCR, you don’t have to worry about misreadings since AI automatically calculates scanned computation breakdowns to check if it has received the correct information. 

4. Inventory Tracking

You can also use OCR to utilize your merchandise’s serial numbers more efficiently. 

Extracting the serial numbers on your merchandise from a warehouse or retail store gives you a better idea of your stock count. You can do this by equipping bar scanners with compatible OCR software that has been configured to your database. 

Why Should You Use Optical Character Recognition?

Optical Character Recognition can improve your business in many ways, and below are just some of them: 

It’s Faster and Requires Minimal Effort

You save more time using OCR. According to Ratatype, an average person can type more or less 41 words per minute when copying from a source. This means that encoding a 1000-word document will take almost half an hour of typing which could have been used in other business matters. Scanning a physical document for character recognition requires minimal effort and equipment, it can be as easy as point and click. All you need is your phone’s camera with a scanner application or your printer’s scanning function, and you’re good to go. Additionally, software powered with OCR technology is the best suitable solution when it comes to scanning business documents and processing data. 

It Saves You Money 

Having your employees encode physical documents loses not only time but also money. As explained before, you can use extra staff on other tasks as soon as the encoding is finished. When you use OCR for this purpose, task delegation becomes more efficient and productive. 

Furthermore, using OCR also paves the way for a fully digital business workplace. Having a paperless business saves you money as much as it does with the environment. You don’t have to buy as many reams of paper and ink anymore. You can also use the space otherwise, for instance, used as a storage room to expand your workplace. 

Although many people assume that OCR technology may go for a hefty price, the investment is undoubtedly worth it in the long run.  Especially if you invest in an all-in-one automation platform that incorporates OCR technology together with additional advanced intelligent automation tools, then, your investment is worth it, for sure. 

It Gives You a Better Information Database 

Using an OCR system enables you to use your own centralized and automated business intelligence. Think of it as having Google but specialized for your business.  With improved data access, searchability, and usability, you can search for a name and it will show the complete information about that person, such as their contact number, email, and address. You can also find updating and deleting information much easier with a database. Securely dispatching printed documents containing sensitive information requires shredding, while digital information requires a few clicks and bin cleaning.  

Likewise, updating information requires a few clicks and revisions, whereas physical copies must be retouched and sometimes countersigned. Having an automated and centralized database will also improve your customer service. Some customers understandably need quick replies, and searching among piled-up paper trails can be pretty tricky, especially in high-stress situations. 

It’s More Secure With Some Measures

Digitizing physical documents ensures that they’ll be free from damages that they would otherwise get from time and elements. Financial expert Daniel Kurt wrote that natural disasters pose significant risks to businesses regarding physical assets such as loss of equipment, buildings, and physical documents. 

OCR technology also boasts a 99% information accuracy on documents encoded. This leads to lesser human errors, which would be easily overlooked otherwise.  Wrong information entry is particularly problematic in data-sensitive companies such as legal firms and financial institutions. 

Of course, going digital also has its own risks, such as hacking and data corruption. You can easily counter these by employing a data privacy officer and investing in highly reliable encryption and anti-virus software, or on a platform with built-in privacy and encryption features, the ability to set access rights, and so forth.

It Improves Customer Satisfaction 

In addition, OCR helps you improve the customer retention rate. Customers like it when you tend to their needs quickly and efficiently. Imagine searching for piled-up folders while you’re tending to an irritated customer. Surely the levels of stress will burn you out faster than you know it. 

With OCR, it takes a few simple clicks to verify your customer’s questions. Do they need a copy of their receipt from five years ago? Don’t worry, a quick word search of their surname after scanning a document will give you quick results. 

Using Advanced Technology for Further Business Efficiency 

The use of advanced OCR and AI technologies is increasing the business efficiency of every company. In general, technology really does make it easier for businesses to flourish. A good grasp of cognitive automation technologies and the proper automation software will give you the competitive edge needed to keep things afloat and smooth-fairing. That said, Optical Character Recognition is an excellent way to optimize your business for a more seamless operation. 

So go ahead and digitally reinvent your business. Our low-code automation software can help you make the right decisions to increase efficiency. Learn more about how Comidor Document Analyser Models use OCR technology to assist businesses in scanning documents such as invoices and creating digital copies. Talk to us.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in BPM is ideal in complicated situations where huge data volumes are involved and humans need to make decisions. Cognitive Automation is capable of performing complex tasks that require extensive human thinking and activities.

Comidor offers some of the key capabilities of  Cognitive Automation such as:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): the ability to understand language, with Sentiment Analysis 
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR): the ability to read and understand written text, with Document Analyzer Models

Use the Sentiment Analysis element in a workflow to identify and categorize opinions expressed in a text field of a workflow, and determine whether the writer’s attitude is positive, negative, or neutral.

Benefits of Sentiment Analysis within organisations:

• Develop a more insightful marketing strategy
• Understand your customers better
• Measure your marketing campaigns
• Re-think your brand perception
• Give an extra boost to your customer service

 

With Comidor Document Analyzer Models enterprises can scan documents like invoices and create digital copies. In particular, the text that is extracted from the document is saved in a text field and can be used within simple or more advanced workflows.

Use Document Analyzer Models and achieve:

• Higher Productivity by retrieving data quicker
• Cost Reduction
• High Accuracy
• Increased Storage Space
• Massively Improved Customer Service

Sentiment Analysis

To access Sentiment Analysis, go to App Factory Icon > Process Automation > Sentiment Analysis.

1. Click on the + Icon at the top of the screen to open the Create Form.
2. Type a Title to your Sentiment Analysis.
3. Link this Analysis with a Connected Application or select the respective Entity.
4. Define the field in which the Sentiment Analysis should be performed, in Sentiment Analysis Field.
   • Select a text or memo field.
5. Set the Response Field, where the sentiment result will be stored.
6. Select the desired Save option (refer to the Quick Reference Guide).

Edit Sentiment Analysis

1. Go to App Factory Icon > Process Automation > Sentiment Analysis.
2. Select the Sentiment Analysis record to edit.
3. Click on the Edit button to open the Edit Form.
4. Edit the information you want and click on the desired Save option (refer to Quick Reference Guide)
   

   

Test Sentiment Analysis

After creating your Sentiment Analysis model, you can test the sentiment results based on data that you type.

1. Go to App Factory Icon > Process Automation > Sentiment Analysis.
2. Select the Sentiment Analysis record to test.
3. Click on the Actions button > Test.
   • In the pop-up window, type your test data, click on the Test button and you will see the sentiment result (POSITIVE, NEUTRAL, NEGATIVE).

Delete Sentiment Analysis Models

1. Go to App Factory Icon > Process Automation > Sentiment Analysis.
2. Check one or more Sentiment Analysis records.
3. Click on Delete to delete one or multiple Sentiment Analysis records at the same time. A confirmation pop-up box appears.

 

Document Analyzer Models

To access Document Analyzer Models, go to App Factory Icon > Process Automation > Document Analyzer Models.

Click on the + Icon at the top of the screen to open the Create Form.

1. Select the preferred OCR provider (Amazon, Comidor, or HTML converter).
2. Define the Excel Extraction Method(Amazon or PDFTables), if the document you wish to analyze includes tables
3. Type a Title to your Document Analyzer Model.
4. Choose a file type among PDF, JPG, or PNG from your PC to upload the Document for analysis. This Document will be used as the template in the workflow Document Analyzer.
5. Define the Response type to be per Line or per Word.
6. Select the desired Save option (refer to the Quick Reference Guide).

Analyze your Document

After uploading the document, and while being at the view form of the Document Analyzer Model, click on the Analyze button.

• OCR provider: Amazon example

1. The Document has been analyzed per the selected options, and the response is saved in Document Analyzer Response.
2. You can see the preview of the document, marked with blocks, wherever text was spotted.
3. Drag-and-drop the blocks you wish to the right side of the screen and give a name to a parameter to define a section in your document.
   • This parameter will be used in the Document Analyzer Parameters of the Document Analyzer component in the Workflow design.
4. Click on the + icon to create more correlations, or on the – icon to remove a row.
5. Finally, click on “Send” to save your Parameters in Model Parameters.

• OCR provider: HTML converter example

1. The Document has been analyzed, converted to HTML and the response is saved in Document Analyzer Response.
2. Click on the pencil button to add Free text parameters:
   • In the Key type the parameter name. This parameter will be used in the Document Analyzer Parameters of the Document Analyzer component in the Workflow design.
   • Specify the HTML tag as the Document Element Start and Document Element End to define the area of the document you wish to be captured.
     • You can also add [eol] in Document Element End for fetching the text until the end of the current line.
   • Use the Index to limit the area of the document you wish to be captured. E.g. if you want to fetch 19 chars prior to Document element start, add “-19,S”. If you want to fetch 7 chars after the Document element end, add “+7,E”.
   • In case you want the data from your document to be displayed as a table specify is table Yes in your parameter.
   • Add as many parameters as you wish by clicking on the + icon, or remove a row with the – icon.
3. Metadata can also be captured from the document. Type the key of the parameter and choose the desired metadata element from the list (Author, Creation date, Title, Subject, etc)

Edit Document Analyzer Models

1. Go to App Factory Icon > Process Automation > Document Analyzer Models.
2. Select a Document Analyzer Model to edit.
3. Click on the Edit button to open the Edit Form.
4. Edit the information you want and click on the desired Save option (refer to Quick Reference Guide).

Delete Document Analyzer Models

1. Go to App Factory Icon > Process Automation > Document Analyzer Models.
2. Check one or more Document Analyzer Models.
3. Click on Delete to delete one or multiple Document Analyzer Models at the same time. A confirmation pop-up box appears.

---

 

To access Workflows go to App Factory Icon > Business Automation > Workflows

Sentiment Analysis

• Drag-and-drop the Sentiment Analysis element.
• Give a Title to the element.
• Give the Parent Stage which is the stage of the parent process as soon as this step is reached.
• Select which Model you would like to run at this step, from the list of the Sentiment Analysis Models that you have already created.
• Define the field in which the Sentiment Analysis should be performed, in Sentiment Analysis Field.
• Set the Response Field, where the sentiment result will be stored.

  

 

Document Analyzer

• Drag-and-drop the Document Analyzer element.
• Give a Title to the element.
• Give the Parent Stage which is the stage of the parent process as soon as this step is reached.
• Select which Model you would like to run at this step, from the list of the Document Analyzer Models that you have already created.
• Document Analyzer Field: set the binary field where the user will upload the document to be analyzed.
• Define the Document Analyzer Parameters by correlating the variables (parts of the template document that was saved and analyzed in Document Analyzer Model) with the fields where the text of the document should be stored in.
• You can create a text field and set it as the Response Field, to see the response of this component.

Image Classification

• Drag-and-drop the Image Classification element.
• Give a Title to the element.
• Give the Parent Stage which is the stage of the parent process as soon as this step is reached.
• Select the binary field where you would upload the Template File. The image classification component will search for the wanted image in the Template file.
• Wanted image: upload the .png file from your desktop that you wish the image classification to search for.
• You can create a text field and set it as the Response Field, to see the response of this component.
• Add the Actual value that you would like to be returned in case the wanted image is found in the Template file. If it is not found, the actual value would get -1 as a value.

 

---

Find out more on how to create and manage workflows step by step and learn all about Comidor Workflow Elements.