Why optical character recognition is important for every business?

Optical Character Recognition is used to convert scanned or photographed documents in text form. The documents that are converted in text from can be read on computer. The image of document is scanned and then from the digitized image, the textual content is extracted in a form that is readable and editable by computers. The biggest advantage of having digital files is that the files can be kept in an organized and secure manner. The digitized data can be easily retrieved as compared to hard form documents.

OCR is a very helpful tool, and it has many uses. For example, if a document is present in hard form and it is required to be transferred to computer, mobile or tablet etc., then the best option is to use OCR software. These documents may include business cards, receipts, invoices, passport information, legal filings and industry articles, etc. Optical Character Recognition is an important software for every business. In this article, necessity and beneficial use of OCR in businesses is highlighted.

The importance of OCR for businesses:

In many cases, it is required that documents must be stored for longer periods of time especially for auditing purposes. The long term storage of official documents is difficult in hard copy, as a large space with optimal environment is required to store these documents. This problem can be solved by storing documents in digital form. An organization may require storage of documents such as applications, permits, reports, financial statements and legal documents, etc. for an extended time period. Some organizations also hire data entry operators for entering of data manually from files into digital format. For example, a data entry operator may enter the table data from hard copy into Microsoft Excel on computer and then convert Excel to PDF for universal sharing of the document. But the manual entry of data can create issues as stated below:

1) Error-Prone data:  If the data is entered manually then there are high chances that data can be prone to human error. As the official documents usually contain sensitive information, even a small error in a document can create major problems for an organization.

2) Time Consuming:  Entering data manually can be an extremely time consuming work which in turn decreases the efficiency and quality of work.

3) Costly: The data entry operators are required for entering data manually. So, this method is not cost efficient as the organization will have to hire many data entry operators for entering bulk of data manually.

All of these issues can be solved by using OCR software. The documents images are scanned by software and the textual content is extracted. The user can then save these documents at an appropriate location. It is recommended to store official digital documents in PDF format but PDF can be converted into other formats by using any of the best PDF converters.

The process of digitizing the data by using OCR takes very little time and work efficiency can be increased significantly by using this technology. Furthermore, there is no need to hire a workforce for manual entry of documents so this technology also provides the benefits of cost efficiency.

Keeping in view the above mentioned benefits, we come to the conclusion that every business should use optical character recognition software for digital conversion of their hard copy based documentation.