What Are the Key Benefits of Implementing OCR in Your Business Operations?
ByJulian Gette
Workast publisher
Workast publisher
In today's technologically revolutionized era, OCR technology is proving itself useful in various fields of life. From schools to law firms, from corporations to government officials, OCR is useful wherever written documents need to be scanned.
Just like this, OCR technology is helping people elevate their businesses’ productivity. Businesses are using OCR technology to copy text from images and physical documents to using them in their digital form.
This technology has helped improve the accuracy, efficiency, customer experience, and other things that we will talk about in this article, for many business hubs.
Before discussing the key benefits that OCR provides by implementing it in your business operations, we need to understand what OCR technology actually is.
So, let’s find out…
OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, is a technology used to scan and recognize written or printed characters on an image and convert them into digital texts.
OCR is a broadly used technology that recognizes written text in an image or in handwritten form and copies it and converts it into digital form. These digitalized copies, then, can be easily modified, shared, and kept safe.
OCR technology uses software to find and scanned written text in images. These texts can be symbols, letters, words, and numbers.
The technology detects, scans, and then transmits it in form of digital signals to convert them into digital form.
These digitalized documents are very useful. It is always easier to handle them on your computer rather than handle hundreds of files and folders of physical documents. This convenience increases the work quality and productivity of every field of work that uses this technology.
But our focus, for this article, is to point out the benefits you can get by using this technology in your business. Let’s discuss these benefits now.
Just like in any other field of work, the usage of OCR in business can bring huge benefits. We will discuss these benefits step by step. Starting with…
In the business world where one has to process huge amounts of data every day, there is a risk of error associated with manual/physical processing. There is always a possibility that an employee in your business can make an error while processing the data manually.
You must be accurate and precise when processing this data, also considering the time factor.
OCR technology can do this job for you. Its usage will make it possible to process and save data more accurately and in less time.
By processing data automatically using online OCR image to text, you can reduce the risk of errors in your work and get the job done quickly. This improves the efficiency of your business and prevents you from making serious mistakes while processing data.
No matter what kind of business you are handling, if you want to increase its growth, you will have to increase its efficiency and work productivity. OCR technology can help you do so.
To go through hundreds of business documents to find or add something, you have to put in a good amount of time. If you have the same documents available at your computer on your work desk, you won’t even have to leave your desk to access them.
OCR technology makes it possible for you. When all of your employees have the documents and information they need on their computers, their workflow will become more fluent and efficient.
As a result, they can focus on the important tasks related to the business rather than spending much of their productive time browsing through physical documents.
Losing critical data can cost companies a fortune. It has always been important for companies to protect important data.
Keeping important data on paper is risky. These documents can be lost, misplaced, or destroyed during emergency scenarios.
Keeping them safe by using OCR technology can ensure their safety. When text images are scanned and digitized with online OCR tools, they are stored on the computer and these possibilities can be avoided.
By storing data in digitalized form, you can save it from getting breached by unauthorized authorities. Protecting content from data breaches is an important task for any business dealing with sensitive information.
Using cloud storage for digital data can also help secure it.
Hiring data entry specialists for the job of your business can cost a good amount of money and time. OCR technology can do the same job more efficiently while saving your money and time at the same time.
OCR technology works as an investment in your business. Once you have invested in the right OCR tools that work efficiently, you can use them to scan and process data for a very long time.
Also, you can save time and money while sharing your document and business-related information with your customers and other people.
Sharing content in physical form is a time-consuming and tedious task. Compiling and mailing these documents to customers and other businesses can take a lot of time.
On the other hand, it is much easier to share these important documents in their digitized form. This can save you a lot of money and time.
Nowadays, the competition between businesses has become higher than ever. There is always another business that provides services like yours, and most probably, the quality they provide might be similar to yours.
So, what is the thing you can do to become better than them and grow your business? It is keeping your customers satisfied.
Well, to do so, OCR technology can be helpful. Here’s why. When you use OCR technology in your business to process data and cover all the documentation work, you have spare employees that can take care of the customer’s requirements and queries.
The enhanced customer service quality, then, definitely elevates the customer experience.
Another benefit of OCR technology is that it makes the data easier to store, search, and access. When you have all the necessary files stored in your company’s servers, you can access them whenever you want.
It also enables you to access your data regardless of where you are or what device you are using to access it.
Increased accessibility brings productivity to work. You can easily search the dates, addresses, product information, names, etc.
The accessibility factor directly impacts the previously discussed factor of increased work efficiency and productivity. Instead of spending time trawling through folders to find information, your employees can easily find the information from their computers using the digitized data search function.
Switching to more environmental-friendly ways of operating business not only makes a good impression on your customers, but it is also our moral obligation.
If we talk about running a business a few decades ago, using paper for document-related work sounds reasonable since there weren't many options for it.
But in this revolutionary age of technology, using paper in places where technology can be used is not an appreciative approach for a business.
Although the need for the paper will always be there no matter how much revolutionized we become, we can still find ways to lessen its usage. Using OCR technology is one way to do it.
OCR helps you make your business more sustainable by reducing paper usage in your company. Using this to scan and store information in the digitalized form will help using less paper in our business dealings.
Less usage of the stationary that is used to manage these papers like staples, ink, note holders, etc., also contributes to creating a more sustainable environment in your workplace.
Like any other thing, using OCR in business operations also brings its drawbacks along with its benefits. Although the benefits prevail over the drawbacks of OCR usage, it is still important to discuss them in this article.
Some of the drawbacks of using OCR technology in business operations are as follows.
The quality of the results can sometimes be compromised due to the low-quality image used in it. These images are difficult for the tools to analyze and can bring errors.
Sometimes OCR finds it difficult to differentiate between letters. It can confuse lowercase letters like ‘l’ with numbers like ‘1’ etc.
The online OCR tools have a limited image size that you can scan. If your image size is bigger than the limit, you will have to shrink its size first.
OCR finds it difficult to scan the languages that are written in a right-to-left format, like Arabic, Korean, Chinese, etc.
The damaged or poorly printed letters can go unscanned.
The usage of OCR has revolutionized the way people deal with document-related work in their businesses. By using its features in your business operations, you can increase its growth.
By implementing OCR features in your business, you can take advantage of the above said features in this article which include:
You can increase the accuracy of your data processing.
You can increase the productivity level of your business.
You can keep your data secure.
You can save yourself a big amount of money and time.
Your customers can be more satisfied with your work
You can access your data easily
You can contribute to sustaining the environment.