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Data and document capture is one of the most labor-intensive processes for mid-size and enterprise businesses, and this comes with major investments in the form of time, money, and man-power. This means that demand for ways to expedite or automate the process has always been high, and businesses are constantly looking for new tools and technology to lighten the load on their data staff.
Optical character recognition (OCR) and AI are two technologies that have provided astounding steps forward in data capture automation, often combined within cutting-edge tools that allow businesses to simply scan a document and have all of its data captured and organized without the need for human intervention. Many can get confused by the different roles of OCR vs AI within these tools, what came first, and what functionality each of them brings to the table.
In this guide, we will cover:
- What OCR is
- What AI is (specifically regarding data capture)
- The best ways to use them for data capture
Let’s dive into each to get a better understanding of what each of these technologies do on their own, and how they can be combined to provide maximum value to your business.
What is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?
OCR technology is software that allows a computer to identify alphanumeric characters on a scanned document. While scanning a document provides an image of the document that can be downloaded, shared, and read by a user to improve access to that particular document, OCR goes a step further by enabling the computer to identify and index that text so that it can be searched, copied, or otherwise manipulated in ways that other digital text documents can.
The significance of this process is that it takes a document that only human users can read and opens it up to be read and interacted with by software tools. Although, it is important to note that the OCR technology doesn’t actually do anything with the information on its own. For this reason, OCR tools almost always pair it with another function that makes some use of the information, with even the earliest omnifont OCR technology being leveraged by a machine that also used voice dictation technology to read documents aloud for the blind.
To maximize the value of OCR for data capture, though, it has historically been sold within a larger data management platform that also helps organize documents in a database and allows for advanced searching based on the data within the documents. More recently, though, AI has expanded the functionality of OCR data tools through more complex automation that carries far more of the workload for existing staff.
What is AI for Data Capture?
AI makes an office workstation a complete data partner, with OCR acting as the eyes and AI acting as its arms and legs. While OCR technology can allow a computer to read a scanned document, AI is what enables the same software tool to automatically organize and index documents, store their information in a database, and even perform basic tasks based on what they find– and that is just a surface-level look at what it can do.
AI Data Capture Use Cases
The following are more examples of what AI can do when used in data capture processes:
| Document Digitization with Machine Learning-Paired OCR | Pairing AI with the aforementioned OCR technology allows text from any document—typed or handwritten—to be read, indexed, and organized in a database. |
| Automatic Data Capture | After documents are indexed with OCR technology, automation software can learn how to identify a document’s type, the data fields it includes, and where to input that data. This allows data to be captured automatically and accurately. |
| Cloud Storage | Cloud storage eliminates the need for extensive physical storage assets like hard drives and servers, allowing enterprise businesses to simplify their IT infrastructure. It also makes stored data easier to access during weather emergencies that could cut power to local servers, with cellular data connection being perfectly capable of maintaining a connection to a remote cloud database. |
| AI-Automated Data Security | AI can improve and automate the security of captured data by providing automated alerts when data security procedures haven’t been followed. It can even perform some data security best practices automatically when data is stored by ensuring it is hidden behind the proper permissions. |
| Centralized Source of Truth | Enterprise businesses often suffer from disconnection between different departments. Automated data capture within a unified data capture platform allows for a single source of vital data that can be shared with departments on their own software tools with far better accuracy than manual entry, ensuring that all departments are operating on the same information. |
These functions can take basic data management software, and turn it into a cost-saving automation tool that can cut the workload of existing data staff in half, allowing them to focus on tasks that require human discretion and the unique skill that experienced workers provide.
Benefits of AI for Data Capture
The use cases of AI, when implemented through a high-quality data capture software or outsourcing team, provide all of the following benefits for businesses that leverage them:
| Faster Data Capture | Digitized documents can be indexed and have their data stored automatically by AI tools, allowing for near-instant data capture processes. This makes data capture much faster than manual processes. |
| More Accurate Data | ML-paired OCR is extremely accurate, providing a better baseline accuracy than manual processes. It also allows existing data staff the time to focus on data auditing, improving your business’s ability to catch and correct misinputs. |
| Better Data Security | AI-powered data security keeps staff more accountable regarding data protection best practices and provides real-time warnings about potential breaches. It can also scan digitized docs to determine what type of document they are, and how they need to be handled, without the need for manual document labeling. |
| Easier Access to Data | Cloud-based storage and full document indexing make it easier to organize and search for data contained within documents. This makes it easier for connected apps to automatically find and utilize data contained within digitized documents without the need for manual inputs. |
| Digitization of Handwritten/Older Documents | One of the more unique uses of cutting-edge ML OCR technology is its ability to extract data from handwritten documents, and older documents with less in-tact text. While these docs will require a bit more auditing, modern ML-paired OCR does a far better job parsing through harder-to-read documents than any technology before it, allowing it to automate processes in ways that simply weren’t possible a decade ago. |
These benefits save a significant amount of time, money, and man-hours for businesses, and they scale very easily with the volume of data that a business needs to operate. This makes it easier and more cost-effective to focus on growth since businesses don’t need to hire as many new data analysts as they expand.
This begs the question: What is the best way to leverage OCR and AI to provide all of these valuable benefits?
The Best OCR and AI Data Capture Strategy
OCR vs AI isn’t the best way to analyze this tech since OCR and AI must be leveraged together in order to maximize their value to businesses searching for data automation. Outsourcing to a third party not only provides the necessary technology but also experienced staff members that know how to operate these cutting-edge technologies, and don’t need to be trained or onboarded. This makes outsourcing the most cost-effective strategy regarding both money and time.
Swap OCR vs AI for OCR & AI with iTech
We at iTech pride ourselves on our cutting-edge machine learning OCR software, top-of-the-line onboarding experience, and ongoing support. We also offer 24/7 access to support personnel and senior account managers to maximize visibility and peace of mind, eliminating the “black box” approach to outsourcing.
To learn more about OCR vs AI, fill out the contact form below.
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IDS Commander iTech2021
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