Even if you haven't heard of Optical character recognition or OCR software before, you've probably already benefited from it. OCR or Optimal Character Recognition is an innovation that allows printed or handwritten text to be converted into electronic form within minutes. The technology has been around for more than a decade, but only recently has it been made more affordable and available to most of us.
What is OCR Software?
If you want editable electronic copies of a newspaper article or a purchasing form, you would probably manually encode the exact contents of the article or the form. Now imagine that you need soft copies of thousands of paper documents, as lots of businesses and corporations do. In this case, data entry would take up valuable time and resources.
Fortunately, there is OCR software. This product lets you scan or take a picture of a document or a page from a book and then convert the resulting image file into file formats with the extensions .doc, .txt, .html, .xls, .rtf, .pdf, etc. The digitized versions are exact copies of their physical counterparts but can be edited, copied, forwarded, indexed, and printed in a matter of minutes.
What are its benefits?
Optimal Character Recognition software allows you to create and repurpose all kinds of documents. When you need a quote or the text from a page of a particular book, you don't have to waste time doing it manually. Scanning and converting using the software takes mere minutes. In businesses and offices, this translates to more efficient customer service and a more organized workflow. The conversion of paper documents into business-ready and searchable data allows for easy retrieval of information and a quicker response time. Having information on a central database where they are updated in real time also facilitates better collaboration on projects.
Having digitized versions of documents instead of hard copies means that you save on space. Precious office floor space previously occupied by cabinets filled with paperwork can now be converted into areas for employees or new projects. Utilizing the software also proves to be a cost-efficient move, as the cost of the software is small change compared to the expenses incurred for document storage facilities, data encoders, and outsourcing data management.
There is also the matter of security. Paper documents are easily damaged and lost, whereas digital copies can be backed up to a secure document database where they are safe from fire, water, and theft.
How to choose the right OCR software
Good OCR software should produce high quality and accurate conversions, fit in with other office management software that you employ, have a fast processing time, and permit access by multiple users at the same time. Before you purchase the software, ask a lot of questions. Will the software require lots of updates? In what formats can the data be stored? Does it perform batch scanning? How easy is it to use? Give it a test run. Note the data extraction time and the number of errors in data, if there are any, and compare with other products before you buy.
