When it comes to digital conversion, the example of a watch is commonly used. First, the time was understood by analyzing the position of needles, but now numbers have replaced them. One can see and know the exact time through a digital clock. The same is the case with document digitization.

Is there a need for Document Digitization?

OCR technology has been used for decades to convert papers into computer-readable digital documents, also known as soft documents. These documents have given countless benefits at enterprise or business scale. Before that businesses have to deal with numerous problems ranging from data processing to data security.

Data Processing

Data processing means applying queries to get the requisite results. The processing of data is done manually and automatically. Data sorting is like classifying student data by age. The data is converted into the desired form in this case.

Usually, data processing is done by computer through queries or commands. They are also used to save, delete, update and replicate data. Data processing creates a different and usable view of data that can be used more effectively. Normalization gives ease in the view of data, business can have precise data tables. It makes data more consistent and removes redundancies. All the problems and issues that are created during data input are solved in this step.

Data processing is only possible if the data is on a computer. It works on tables, rows, and columns by rearranging, moving, and changing their appearance. If the data is not digitized, it can’t be processed.

Data Security

Maintaining data security for hard documents takes more resources and manual efforts. It requires physical protection to make it secure. Hard documents are stored in rooms in the form of files. It needs safety against fire, water, and natural disasters also. Once the documents are damaged or burnt, the process can’t be reversed. Making a copy of a hard document is only possible by rewriting.

Sending Document

Letters, faxes, and sending emails are modes of communication. Sending a paper document can only be done by postal services or fax machines. It is a tedious process, letters may take one or more days to reach the right door. While fax machines can only send computer typed documents. Handwritten documents or signed paper can be sent using a fax machine. The fastest and most reliable way to send documents is by email. But they need the document to be in the soft form or an image of it.

AI-Powered OCR: Digitizing Paper Documents in Seconds

OCR is character recognition technology that is used to transform hard documents into digital forms. OCR technology translates manually typed characters into computer editable digital documents. It is used on printed papers and images too. Handwritten documents which raise the difficulty level of understanding and interpreting can also be automated through OCR. The range of data extraction for OCR has no borders, it can understand all types of writing styles. OCR technology can be utilized in cursive handwritten scripts and fonts. Being powered by AI, OCR is known as ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition)

Like other technologies, OCR is also powered by artificial intelligence now. The primary benefit of AI is self-learning. It means whenever a new script or style is experienced by OCR, it will increase the rigor level. But once it trains itself on this new data, there will be no difficulty the second time.

AI changes the ways of how optical character recognition extracts data. Now the OCR works on each word level, if there is any spelling mistake OCR will correct that. AI-powered OCR concentrates more on the particulars in the papers. It can also be employed for real-time data extraction. Like extracting data from books or newspapers by just placing an OCR application over it.

Concluding the Above

As AI is the future, its use by OCR can help in giving more accurate and precise results. The time of data extraction or digital conversion can be reduced. Because of AI, OCR can similarly be applied to unstructured data. Businesses can use OCR for business services to digitize bulks of paper documents.