Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technology that allows you to convert your paper documents into editable digital documents. Whether you have printed pages, contacts, PDF files, or even images captured with your smart phone or digital camera, optical character recognition software can, in just a few minutes, easily convert them into a digital format.
But OCR software doesn’t just create an image of the documentation for you to view on your computer; it actually extracts and repurposes the data in the document. By singling out the letters in the image, it can create words and then sentences, leaving you with a final product that can be accessed and edited just like any document you created on your computer.
6 Benefits of Optical Character Recognition Technology
Save Money – OCR technology can eliminate the need for paper records, which removes the need to spend money on filing, archiving or long term storage of your paper records. Not to mention the cost of the paper itself, and the ink you’re printing onto it.
Save Time – Processing paper documents takes time. Combine the time required to locate, retrieve, scan and refile each document and you’ve got a significant drain on resources. Best of all digital documents are really easy to attach to an email.
Save Space – A single CD can hold around 20 thousand scanned pages which is the equivalent of 2 filing cabinets worth of documents. And that’s just a CD – imagine how many you could fit on your business’s promotional USB drive!
Save the Environment – Less paper = less impact on our environment. Plus, digital documents can be emailed instead of sent via mail or fax which reduces your carbon footprint.
Back up Easily – Storing your documents digitally means that you are much less likely to lose business critical information in a disaster like a fire or flood. Instead you can store your data on network servers with multiple fail-safes in place.
More Secure – Digital documents can be easily password protected to protect them from prying eyes, and backups can be encrypted to safeguard against theft or misuse. Best of all you no longer have to worry about lost or misfiled papers – just invest in some document management software and you’re set.
