Notice
We and selected third parties use cookies or similar technologies for technical purposes and, with your consent, for other purposes as specified in the cookie policy. Denying consent may make related features unavailable.
You can consent to the use of such technologies by using the “Accept” button, by closing this notice, by scrolling this page, by interacting with any link or button outside of this notice or by continuing to browse otherwise.
No items found.

4 things to know about OCR - Understanding key automation technologies

Julianna Rice
August 26, 2022

Welcome to week four and the final installment of ‘Understanding key automation technologies’, this week our focus is Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

As with the other articles in this series, our aim is to provide bitesize introductions to the complicated technological methods used in the automation world.

All previous articles, covering Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning and Cognitive Computing, can be found here.

Let’s dive into OCR.

Definition:

Optical Character Recognition is algorithms that identify text (printed and handwritten) in digital images (photographs, scanned documents).

OCR identifies the text and converts it

  • OCR technology recognizes characters (letters, numbers, symbols) in an image and converts the text within the image into ‘machine-readable’ text (meaning a computer would recognize the document as text, not an image), which can then be exported.
  • Some OCR software will simply export the text files, whereas others can make the text in the converted files editable, searchable and possibly even translate into further languages.

OCR Uses

  • OCR is often used to recognize text in scanned documents and convert this into text files, which can be very valuable for data entry scenarios.
  • One amazing use of OCR is the Google Translate app – it can identify and translate text both in photos and through the camera. It can detect languages, or you can select the languages ‘from’ and ‘to’ translation and it will provide the translation for you.

Advantages of OCR

Accuracy and Speed

  • With regards to scanning documentation, before OCR existed, it would have been a manual process to re-type and re-create the scanned document into another program (Word or similar) to make them editable. This is not only time consuming but likely to come with transcription errors.
  • Now, OCR can identify text in images and convert the document in seconds, (in theory); we’ll come back to this a little later.

Improve Productivity

  • In office environments with high volumes of paperwork (cross checking information, scanning documents etc.) OCR can provide immensely useful support and give hours back to the team to focus on pressing business areas that need their attention, such as problem solving, customer service and engagement.

Searchability

  • Once the text is lifted from the image and converted to be machine-readable, it can be searchable. This has been a revolution for digitizing newspaper archives and ancestry records, opening this information up to whole new generations.

Security

  • If documents can now be scanned and secured safely digitally, the physical paper copies may not be needed any longer. Therefore, the risks of physical copies getting into the wrong hands or being filed incorrectly are removed.
  • If companies historically outsourced documents to be manually re-created for digital use, with OCR this is no longer a requirement, so it ensures sensitive documents do not need to be shared unnecessarily with third parties.

 

OCR, when carried out effectively, comes with many benefits. However, not all OCR solutions are created equally, and some could still require a fair amount of human input. Many off-the-shelf solutions rely heavily on good quality scanned documents or the bots cannot read the documents effectively. High quality scanned documents are not always possible, especially with older records. If this happens it can lead to frustrations as the new technology is not working as hoped.

That’s why, at Roots Automation, we’re building our own OCR capabilities as we don’t believe customers should settle for forms to be read with only 70% accuracy. We are focusing our efforts on a subset of forms, which are very widely used in the US, and training our bots to read these forms - even with poor quality input and scanning- to over 99% accuracy, in seconds.

One example: Most OCR software would not count these boxes below as being checked but we have trained our bots to infer if the box is checked by looking at the data around the box. Here we show our tool identifying an ‘X’ and appropriately recognizing the box it belongs to, even though it was not in the box!

Could your business benefit from OCR, or any other automations we’ve discussed in this series?

Continue the conversation with us on Twitter and LinkedIn or reach out to us with any questions and to book your free demo here: info@rootsautomation.com.

Thanks for reading!

See also: 4 things to know about ML - Understanding key automation technologies

See also: 4 things to know about CC - Understanding key automation technologies

 

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Fusce non convallis mi. Curabitur nec rutrum orci. Etiam vitae diam ut tellus venenatis ultricies. Fusce vitae ipsum sed urna tempor tempor et vitae dui.
Fusce vulputate molestie est

Fusce non convallis mi. Curabitur nec rutrum orci. Etiam vitae diam ut tellus venenatis ultricies. Fusce vitae ipsum sed urna tempor tempor et vitae dui. Aliquam nibh ante, tempus vel ultricies nec, tempus sed felis. Nullam et efficitur velit. Aenean odio nulla, facilisis a commodo eu, suscipit at augue.

Aliquam rutrum dui sapien. Aliquam pulvinar lectus accumsan est dictum, et faucibus justo ornare. Mauris placerat placerat consequat. Donec commodo consectetur nunc, et posuere orci lacinia sed. Duis mollis, eros quis porta laoreet, mi est euismod lectus, vitae volutpat quam enim congue tellus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin ornare laoreet consequat. Integer at accumsan lacus, eget ultricies augue. Vestibulum semper sapien at venenatis pretium. Integer nec iaculis lacus. Sed elit nisi, luctus sit amet vehicula nec, mattis nec purus. Nulla facilisi. Nam ornare in justo eget facilisis.

  • Praesent sit amet lectus quis metus sagittis tempor.
  • Sed mattis ipsum vitae turpis laoreet condimentum
  • Sed orci erat, rhoncus efficitur eros a, sollicitudin commodo tortor
  • Sed accumsan ex viverra est tincidunt bibendum a non nulla curabitur eget ligula mauris
  • Nam ut sagittis velit suspendisse ullamcorper quis lorem vitae hendrerit
  • Vivamus diam orci, dignissim ac nulla hendrerit, porttitor posuere risus

Cras vel leo mattis viverra tellus eget vestibulum est

  1. Praesent sit amet lectus quis metus sagittis tempor.
  2. Sed mattis ipsum vitae turpis laoreet condimentum.
  3. Sed orci erat, rhoncus efficitur eros a, sollicitudin commodo tortor.
  4. Sed accumsan ex viverra est tincidunt bibendum a non nulla curabitur eget ligula mauris.
  5. Curabitur sit amet auctor tellus, at scelerisque sem. In sit amet convallis arcu, id vulputate velit. Proin feugiat interdum nulla, eu malesuada massa commodo quis.
  6. Vivamus diam orci, dignissim ac nulla hendrerit, porttitor posuere risus.

Cras vel leo mattis viverra tellus eget vestibulum est

  • Etiam arcu metus, vestibulum et consequat sit amet, imperdiet at augue donec condimentum risus at consequat sollicitudin.
  • In sit amet nisi vitae odio tristique posuere integer vel magna dignissim, sodales mauris a, tempus odio nullam orci sapien, posuere non posuere et, laoreet vel velit.
  • Quisque eleifend tempor eros aenean et tempus neque nam ut porttitor velit maecenas consectetur, lacus at commodo efficitur, est neque tincidunt leo, et dictum nunc lorem a est.
  • Maecenas viverra turpis vitae eros tempus porttitor nulla tempor nunc eros, eu elementum arcu dapibus a etiam a tristique metus.

Share this post

GET IN TOUCH

Let's make work more human, together.
Contact Us