How Does OCR Technology Help In Business Activities?

Business activities require a lot of tech to work properly. So, how does OCR fit into this narrative?

OCR or optical character recognition is a remarkable technology. Once it was available as a physical tool, used to aid people hard of hearing in reading or scanning texts on a book. Nowadays, it’s available as tools and used by many people in different facets of life.

For our topic today, we’re talking about the role of OCR in businesses. From data indexing to converting important information to readable text, OCR is a vital tech for many businesses. So, how exactly does it help? Let’s find out.

What Is OCR Technology?

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technology that can automatically extract text from an image. OCR software can read the text in scanned documents, books, newspapers, and other printed materials. It is used to convert images of text into editable or searchable electronic text.

OCR is a technology that extracts information from images of text and converts it into data that can be processed by a computer. The extracted data can be processed by a computer for further editing or searching.

This technology has been around since the 1960s, but it was not until recently that it became more affordable and widely used. Today, the OCR tool is in many shapes, such as:

• Downloadable software on PCs and Macs;
• Online tools in the shape of websites;
• Downloadable apps for Android and iOS.

These factors make OCR one of the most employed technology today. In fact, experts predict the compound annual growth rate of OCR to go up 15.4% in the next 5-6 years. This should tell you how OCR is becoming common in many facets of life, such as business, academics, etc.

Defining OCR Types And Their Purpose

OCR employs various types of itself to capture the text present within a document or an image. In order to understand how it works, it’s important to understand its various types, which are:

• Optical Character Recognition – the primary type of OCR.
• Intelligent Word Recognition – uses advanced algorithms to identify crude, blurry or handwritten text.
• Intelligent Character Recognition – ICR is used to identify hand-written or crude text.
• Optical Mark Recognition – OMR is used to identify marks, signatures, and other non-words in a text.

However, each type of OCR is used to identify different text types on paper. For instance:

• Optical Character Recognition analyzes and finds text on printed documents, images, etc.
• Handwriting Recognition is done with the help of IWR or ICR,
• Whereas Signature Recognition is done with the help of OMR.

Each of these types allows us to understand the objective of each OCR brand.

How Does OCR Technology Help In Business Activities?

We know that OCR technology is a process of converting the digital images of printed or handwritten text into machine-readable text. That’s why OCR technology is now being used in business for a variety of purposes. Such as:

• The OCR technology helps a business convert scanned images of paper documents into a computer-readable format.
• It helps reduce the time and cost required for manual data entry and processing, which are necessary to make information available electronically.
• Many companies use OCR technology to digitize paper records, which can be stored on computers and then searched more easily.

OCR technology also helps businesses that need to quickly scan large amounts of data and convert them into digital files. That’s one of the reasons OCR has been around since the early 1920s, but it has seen a resurgence in recent years.

6 Ways That An OCR System Can Enhance Your Business

A business can use OCR in many ways. To help you understand that, here are six cases where OCR systems can be implemented and help a business:

1. Index Important Data Into Virtual Storage

In order to import text from documents and use them for virtual purposes, many companies and businesses require extensive levels of virtual storage. That’s one of the reasons they use various tools to convert images to text.

So, the implementation of OCR, in this case, isn’t only a life-saver and a huge time saver. It can help them import necessary information into virtual storage for present and future use.  That’s one of the major reasons OCR tools are commonly and enthusiastically used by many people around the globe. As they can help you efficiently convert important images to text quite effortlessly.

2. Turn Important Documents Into Editable Text

Important documents and their indexing is one of the key things for any business today. Using an OCR tool, in this case, is particularly helpful for two main reasons:

• It scans content quickly;
• It turns it into editable text.

So, suppose you’re looking to copy text from images, of important documents. In that case, your business needs OCR tools in its arsenal.

3. Convert Physical Bills And Invoice Into Virtual

Physically printed bills and invoices are some of the messiest things a business has to handle. These invoices can be from other companies, customers, etc. On top of that, a company that has been around for years can build up piles of these papers.

It’s neither efficient nor time-saving. That’s one of the reasons they can use OCR to convert physical bills and invoices into virtual text. It won’t take more than a terabyte of storage unless it’s way too much text.

4. Efficiently Convert Important Images Into Text

One of the main reasons behind using OCR tools is the time that it saves. However, what’s more, important is that it can copy text from image that might not be readable. So, if an image is blurry or crude, it can extract the text from it.

5. Digitally Secure Data For Ages

Data in paper form is never secure or safe. Besides that, it’s prone to losing itself because of age, becoming obsolete, unreadable, and most of all, extremely difficult to find. Using the OCR tool allows you to secure your necessary data in digital platforms for ages.

So, saving an important document in a discreet Gmail account after scanning it through OCR will be the same after 10 years. That’s why OCR can help you secure data for ages.

6. Productivity Improvement

Productivity is one of the first things harmed by physical documents. In order to improve that, businesses can implement OCR tech so that employees can use printed text whenever they like.

That’s important not only in businesses but academies as well. And that’s why many have created virtual libraries out of their physical storage for books and other literature.

Conclusion

These are some of the main reasons OCR technology is vital: it can help business activities unlike any other. That’s why it’s vital to use it at every turn possible and implement it wherever a business can use it.

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