OCR & ICR

OCR – Optical Character Recognition

Optical character recognition, is the mechanical or electronic translation of images of typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text. The accurate recognition of Latin-script, typewritten text is now considered largely a solved problem. Accuracy rates exceed 99% and higher making the technology extremely robust.

ICR – Intelligent Character Recognition

Intelligent character recognition, is the mechanical or electronic translation of images of handwritten text or marks into machine editable text Systems for recognizing hand-printed text on the fly have enjoyed commercial success in recent years. Accuracy rates of 80% to 90% on neat, clean hand-printed characters are now achievable making the technology useful in the commercial arena.

Automated Document Processing

Automated Document Processing typically involves a three stage process of capturing an image of the form by using either a digital pen or by scanning,then pre-processing (enhance and clean up) to enable the recognition engine to give best results, then capturing the information using the recognition engine with inbuilt OCR and ICR technology and finally post-processing the results into the required output format.

Example 1

CHALLENGE

Improve the efficiency of a Fund management firm by reducing the organization’s reliance on information tied into papers located throughout the offices resulting in a tedious search for the correct papers.

SOLUTION

Scan and convert the documents into searchable PDF files enabling instant computer data access.

RESULT

Searchable PDF files save the company large sums of money and lost time. Locating key documents is now possible in seconds via a computer instead of the old tedious process of searching through cabinets full of paper for hours.

Example 2

CHALLENGE

Improve the efficiency of a market research firm in the collection of its survey data

SOLUTION

By carefully designing the form to support ICR scanning, marketeers can now get subjects to fill in a form, have the formed scan onto the server and then have pre-set fields from the form converted into workable computer text, ready for data manipulation.

RESULT

The firm has saved vast amounts of time and resources in getting its results back to it’s customers.