Information has always been a key corporate asset that underpins the success or failure of a business. In today’s frantic business environment however, the method of obtaining and storing this information dictates how well its value is realised.
It is amazing how many businesses still try to conduct their operations using paper when in fact, a large majority of their operations are actually digital. For example, many business clients request information, make reservations, purchase products, and order services using online digitised forms.
Paper documents are no longer part of many business processes and a move towards automated document capture and document digitisation is currently the most effective and efficient method to realise the value of corporate information.
People are notoriously bad at mundane, repetitive tasks and data entry is no exception. Even though it is arguably one of the simplest tasks completed by office staff, it is one where errors can be catastrophically expensive. Fortunately, it is no longer necessary for this type of work to fall under the purview of people.
Technology exists that allows us to shift the responsibility of monotonous, data-entry tasks away from error-prone humans to computers. OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, allows a piece of software to analyse images to extract characters and convert them into digital information. Once extracted, the data can be put to work.