OCR can digitize text from scanned materials, allowing you to search and index documents without tedious transcription
If you’ve looked into digitizing documents, you’ve probably come across the term “OCR.” Optical character recognition is the long-form explanation of OCR meaning. When you scan papers with written text, OCR is the technology that can digitize that text and make it searchable, indexable, and even editable. It’s easy to see how using scanning software with OCR functionality can save time, prevent transcription errors, and help build databases.
OCR can benefit any organization that works with a lot of paper-based information it needs to store and/or be able to access in the future. Businesses with backlogs of paper records can convert them into digital formats with minimal effort. Companies that receive dozens, hundreds, or thousands of new documents on a daily basis can scan and index new files almost instantly. From healthcare to finance to education, OCR can help collect and organize valuable data.
Once you understand how the technology works, you’ll also understand how it can streamline your workflows.
For a deeper dive into optical character recognition technology, read OCR Made Simple: A Guide to Understanding Optical Character Recognition.
What is OCR?
Some readers reading through scanner descriptions may find themselves asking “what is OCR” or “what does OCR stand for?” The most basic answer is that OCR stands for “optical character recognition.” This technology is a way to convert printed text into a digital equivalent. A similar technology, Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), can convert handwritten text.
Consider the following example of how OCR works:
Let’s say an employee has a receipt for a business expense. They scan the paper using an OCR-enabled software suite. The new digital copy has selectable, searchable text, meaning that the employee can simply copy and paste the vendor and price when filing for reimbursement. Alternatively, the reimbursement software could extract this information from the file automatically.
By default, every piece of scanned media becomes an image file. Through pattern analysis and algorithmic matching, scanning software with OCR can identify letters, numbers, and symbols. In other words, a program recognizes known characters and converts them into digital text. OCR accuracy therefore depends on both the image resolution of the scanner and the quality of the software.
Did You Know?:The RICOH fi-8170 scanner comes with PaperStream software, which boasts sophisticated OCR features. With scanning speeds of up to 70 double-sided pages per minute, your business could digitize thousands of documents per workday. Click here to learn more.
Benefits of OCR for your business
Simply knowing how the technology works may not capture the full OCR meaning for your business. Instead, it may be helpful to think about how OCR can streamline everyday clerical tasks. Over time, it could help make your whole workflow more efficient.
Consider the major benefits of OCR:
- Saves time: Since OCR digitizes text, there’s no need to manually input information from physical records. This could save your team hours of clerical work each day. It also streamlines data entry, letting staff members copy and paste information into digital databases.
- Reduces workload: Desktop scanners can handle dozens of pages per minute. OCR can convert text within seconds. Your staff can use this saved time to complete more intensive or specialized work.
- Minimizes errors: Accurate OCR technology captures exactly what’s on the page. It won’t leave fields blank or put information in the wrong place. Good scanning software can also name and organize files, reducing the risk of duplicated or missing data.
- Improves retrieval: Digital records without OCR can take just as long to read through as their physical counterparts. With OCR, you can search for specific text and find it within seconds.
Imagine a scanning software suite as a hotel and each document as a guest. Just as each document has unique information, each guest has unique preferences: favorite foods, pillow firmness, wakeup times, and so forth. Without OCR software, you’d have to enter information from each document manually, just as a hotel manager would need to visit each room manually and speak with the guests to confirm their information.
The end result is a long, tedious process that may also be inaccurate. Sticking with the hotel metaphor, a concierge could write down the wrong food order, spell a name wrong, or mishear a wakeup time. You wouldn’t know about these problems until it’s too late to fix them. The best OCR software, on the other hand, has captured exactly what each guest wants, in their own words.
How OCR works in different industries
OCR has some industry-specific benefits as well. While this is not an exhaustive list, consider how the technology could help in these fields:
Healthcare
Nearly every stage of the healthcare process involves paperwork. Patient intake forms contain names, addresses, dates of birth, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and more. Insurance cards have group IDs and individual IDs. There are waivers to sign, prescription forms to fill out, and bills to pay. Compiling and organizing all of this data by hand can be slow and prone to error. Using OCR scanning software can speed up the process and make it more accurate.
Did You Know?:PCMag gave the RICOH fi-8170 four out of five stars and a coveted Editors’ Choice award. The publication praised the scanner’s “accurate OCR,” as well as its fast scanning speeds and robust software suite. Read the full review here.
Finance
Today, many financial institutions offer robust online tools. However, some transactions still involve pen and paper. Opening a new account at a local bank, applying for a loan, signing a mortgage, filing taxes, assessing property values, or cashing large checks may all involve some physical paperwork. Scanning these documents is vital, as physical copies are easy to lose or damage. If you use a scanning software suite with OCR features, you can also index the data on each form as you go. This way, if anything happens to the original copy, you can use a keyword search to help you find the backups.
Education
OCR scanning software can be an invaluable tool for archiving old documents. Libraries and universities often have decades-old letters, articles, and records. Digitizing these documents preserves them for future generations, particularly since the originals may be fragile. OCR can help make these documents even more accessible, though. Copying and pasting the text in modern fonts can make it easier to read. Archivists can also upload the text online, which can help other researchers find the material via search engines.
Our recommendation: RICOH fi Series Scanners
Now that you have a full understanding of OCR’s meaning and functionality, you may want to invest in a scanner with a software suite that can digitize text. We take great pride in having spent the last 50+ years researching, designing, and developing some of the most advanced and powerful electronics in the world, including our professional grade fi and SP series of scanners.
Built to purpose for the most demanding document handling jobs, fi and SP scanners are capable of processing tens of thousands of pages per day at the highest levels of accuracy. Their intuitive integration capabilities with all existing work suites minimize time-to-value for businesses looking to invest in tools that will pay dividends for years to come.
The RICOH fi Series scanners come equipped with powerful PaperStream software. PaperStream’s robust OCR features can quickly and accurately digitize text from scanned documents. You can also configure OCR options manually for even higher levels of precision. Many ScanSnap and fi Series devices can scan dozens of double-sided pages per minute, allowing you to build rich digital databases while minimizing tedious busywork. Click here to learn more or shop the rest of our production scanner line.
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