OCR Scanner Software: 5 Benefits over Traditional Scanning

Do you still keep paper records? Are you scanning those documents, or considering having those document scanned?

Regardless of whether your paper situation is fully under control (or if it’s gotten way out of hand) simplyscanning documents with the nearest scanner isn’t all that helpful.

Instead, using a scanner that's integrated with OCR technology provides many benefits over traditional scanning.

Here are 5 Benefits of Using OCR Scanner Software over Traditional Scanning:

Benefit #1: Traditional Scanning Puts Businesses at Risk

Some of the risks that traditional document scanning poses to organizations include:

• Where will the scanned documents be stored?
• How do I know if I got all of my scanned documents?
• How will I find my records?
• How can I secure any sensitive data?
• It's more time and cost-consuming to search through a computer than to just go find a paper file
• What happens if I lose the data?

The list goes on and on.

But OCR scanner software and intelligent document processing overcome these problems to securely store scanned documents in the location of your choosing.

Benefit #2: Smart PDF Storage and Organization

When documents are scanned, they’re typically saved in PDF format. PDF is great because it works on any computer without expensive software. 

Traditional document scanning is great for reproducing paper in PDF digital format, but it doesn’t solve your deeper problems (and sure doesn't help with formats like microform).

Traditional scanning does not make it easier to:

• Find
• Organize
• Or securely store your documents

In fact, it adds complexity and risk of losing important information.

However, document scanning with OCR converter software is the safe and smart alternative to traditional document scanning as it solves all of these problems.

Benefit #3: Your Business Information Systems Understand What Data and Information You Have

To understand the difference between scanning with OCR scanner software versus traditional document scanning, think about the last time you saw a web page or article in a language you didn’t know.

You could see the content just fine, and recognize the letters, but the content didn’t have any meaning to you. So when you scan documents without creating an awareness of the content, it’s the same thing.

Your information systems have no clue what’s there. And it makes sense.

There’s all kinds of different documents you work with. It's not thousands of copies of the same form.

How’s a computer to know what’s what?

Intelligent OCR processing software not only reads your documents, but understands the content and moves specific information into your information systems along with a human-readable PDF image.

It’s like going back in time and capturing everything in a software application instead of just on paper.

OCR scanner software is the singular solution to eliminate both fear of digitizing records and cost of manual data entry (because, let's face it - you could hand-key everything, but that is time-consuming, painstaking and can have errors).

In addition to OCR scanner software, document scanning services that use OCR software also exist to make document scanning even easier.

Benefit #4: Accurate Data that You Can Trust Scanned with OCR Software

You have to be able to trust the data that was recognized and extracted, which is the OCR accuracy. In order to assure that high-quality data is entered into your information system, the software performs validations like financial and date calculations, and flags any discrepancies for human review.

Additionally, your existing databases can also be used to validate known information like:

• Invoice / account / case / matter numbers
• Costs
• Totals
• Names
• Any other specific index

Benefit #5: Streamline Workflows, Increase Profits and Cut Costs with OCR Scanning Software

So, now that you have all of this extra data, how do you use it?

You choose how to integrate document data and where it goes. But the possibilities to improve your organization (and decrease costs / increase profits) are numerous:

• Merge information into existing databases
• Better understand internal operations, and where inefficiencies are
• Learn more of how third-party vendors are treating your business
• Scrub confidential data
• Create multiple versions of PDF documents (maybe you need the original and also one with redacted info)
• Create spreadsheets
• Integrate data into business intelligence platforms to see past data and identify future trends

What is OCR Scanner Software?

OCR scanner software is a technology that leverages a scanner to capture an image of a document and optical character recognition technology to then identify and recognize numbers and letters on those scanned documents, photos, or images. OCR scanner software can recognize machine-created text or even handwritten text (by using intelligent character recognition).

That text is then processed and transformed into machine-readable text that can be imported, stored, and analyzed in business intelligence software. This enables a much easier document management strategy, whether it's in cloud storage or in another system.

Why OCR Scanner Software is Important for Machine-Readable Documents

The first step in getting OCR software to read like a human is converting documents to a machine-readable version. Humans understand the intent of a document just by looking at it.

Tables, cells, the structure of the document, and labels tell us everything we need to know. But software can’t read documents so easily.

Here's an example of how machines have trouble reading documents:

The best attempt so far at getting machines to read documents has been with OCR scanner software. And it doesn’t work all that great on paper documents. It tries to interpret everything on a document as a letter or number.

For example, the letter “I” is easily confused with a 1, or an l or L or an i. And when OCR sees lines or other non-text marks on a document, the results are ugly. You can’t trust this data or make business decision on it.

Check out this article which does a nice job showing real-life struggles on a simple receipt.

How Software Makes Data Recognition Easier for OCR Solutions

In order to create a machine-readable version of a document, everything must be removed that isn’t text.

Then, the important elements that make up the structure of the document must be added back in because they provide the context for how the software will interpret text on the page.

This part of the process is simple, as the software will:

• Remove everything that isn’t text
• Read the text
• Then add back in the document structure and interpret the meaning of the text

How OCR Software Engines Help Recognize Other Fonts and Handwriting

And to do a really good job of reading the text, the machine will need to use multiple OCR tools (we call them engines). One OCR engine might be better with handwriting, while another is better at reading those odd fonts on checks. 

This image is an example of a document that has different fonts (and even handwriting) on one page:

Now the software knows what’s on the page and the meaning of specific data elements like:

• Dates
• Numbers
• Quantities
• Line items
• Addresses
• Checkboxes, etc.

Your job is to tell the machine how you want to integrate the data within your information system(s). Easy!