Optical Character Recognition (OCR): A Key Ingredient For Digital Transformation
Businesses understand the advantages of turning digital: quick and simple access to relevant information, as well as the capacity to share information with people around the world in near real-time, allowing employees to be more productive and collaborate more effectively. They're also fascinated by the prospect of automating business operations and using big data and analytics platforms for their vast digital data sets. After all, who doesn't want to make better judgments, save money, speed up operations while reducing errors, and have happy customers ?
However, they will need actionable data to do so.They require OCR(Optical Character Recognition).
What Is OCR?
Computers can't read the paper or decipher what all those characters imply; they can only "see" scanned and electronic documents as images. In other words, as far as a computer is concerned, the pixels that make up the language on a contract aren't much different from the pixels that make up someone's eyeball in a snapshot. OCR software analyses input and convert picture characters into computer-readable text using machine-encoded text. OCR is used in most organizations to translate hardcopy documents and computer images into searchable, editable file types like the ever-popular searchable PDF.
Reasons why Digital Transformation would fail without OCR Software
- Data analytics are fueled by OCR.
A company's data is one of the most illuminating sources of corporate knowledge. These data vaults include massive volumes of data that are simply too large to be processed manually. And it's the sheer size of these data stores that give them statistical power: the more data included, the higher the accuracy and potential for hidden insights; however, for many businesses, this potential is locked in paper and other unstructured formats that can't be accessed for machine processing. Enterprise-grade OCR technology effectively unlocks data that was previously unreachable, converting previously unusable photos into fully searchable, easily analyzed text-based documents
- OCR promotes innovation.
Little indications that can disclose new business lines, goods, and services, as well as lower the research and development expenses of bringing new initiatives to market, are typically hidden within unstructured data types. According to a McKinsey report, the United States healthcare system could save $100 billion per year by better leveraging and integrating data from prior and ongoing clinical drug studies to speed up the development of new medicines.
There are several instances across industries of how data may be used to detect customer needs for existing products or services and speed up the development of new ones. This is only possible if all relevant data has been digitized, including the conversion of inaccessible formats to readable formats using OCR.
- It facilitates Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
RPA has a digital transformation potential that is underutilized. It entails the use of software to accomplish jobs that would otherwise be performed by humans. It can be used in rule-based workflows. RPA will help organizations save time and direct people to tasks that are more valuable to the market. The success of this depends on having documents that are clean and machine-readable. Only OCR can be used to create these documents. This only emphasizes the significance of OCR in the digital transformation process.
- Improves the consumer experience.
For a long time, having access to a single source of consumer data has been the norm, yet that one source is frequently incomplete. If a customer's journey began with a paper application completed in-branch or in-person, or a transcribed phone conversation, it's likely that not all of the information included within made it into the database. Should the customer later seek a new product or service through a different channel, it's possible that some relevant information is left inaccessible to other branches or phone reps.Businesses can guarantee that staff has every tool they need to give the greatest customer experience at every interaction by making OCR a normal step in establishing unified customer records.
- Regulatory risk is identified by OCR.
While there are numerous advantages to digitizing all of one's content, the storing of such massive volumes of digitized consumer data does raise regulatory problems. Companies must take all reasonable steps to identify and secure sources of personally identifiable information ( PII ) and other sensitive data in order to reduce risk exposure. Failure to do so may result in significant fines as well as irreversible brand damage. However, before an organization can take steps to secure data subject to compliance rules, it must first recognize it, which necessitates the use of OCR technology to illuminate so-called "dark data."