AI in Document Management: The Power of OCR and ICR
It doesn’t matter whether you have a huge document-intensive business or are just another guy who wants to sort a few classified papers. Document management is a skill that you may have to develop at some point in your life.
As it has simplified countless other processes, the advent of modern technology has streamlined document management. Especially with the rise of AI, this has become even simpler, and this article will show you exactly how.
If you want to learn the latest techniques for sorting data from paper-based documents, this post will help you greatly. So, let’s start by introducing two main technologies that form the basis of this process of document management.
What is OCR and ICR?
Optical Character Recognition is a technology adopted by various tools and software to identify uneditable text. By ‘uneditable,’ we mean text that cannot be modified or is hard-coded. For example, text in images cannot be changed.
To deal with such types of text, you can use OCR tools that analyze the text and convert it into a normal and editable format. This converted piece of text can be altered as per the user’s requirements.
Intelligent Character Recognition takes this a step further by incorporating artificial intelligence into the process. With ICR, tools can adapt to things like format changes, text size, spelling errors, handwritten content, and much more.
In simple words, ICR is OCR with a few added perks and relatively higher accuracy. You can use both of these technologies these days based on the nature of your documents. Generally, if you have a diverse collection of documents, then ICR would be a better pick. However, if you have similar fonts and formats in your papers, then OCR will work just as well.
Benefits of Using OCR and ICR for Document Management
We have explained what the technologies under discussion do. However, the particular advantages that these provide are yet to be discussed. In the following section, we have listed the combined advantages of both OCR and ICR.
Digitalization of Documents
The main advantage of using character recognition for document management is that it allows the digitization of papers. In other words, these technologies allow you to convert piles of hard copies into computerized files that are much easier to access and work with.
All you need to do is take pictures of the desired documents and enter them into relevant tools. These tools will convert them into editable documents that you can download and organize in a folder. Some people take it a step further and store their data on online platforms for increased benefits.
Security of Digital Documents
When you use an OCR or ICR software to convert documents, you make them more secure. In order to protect a physical document, you require a storage space that is safe and locked properly. On the other hand, a digital document only requires a little bit of digital space. It is almost free and much harder to access by unauthorized personnel.
Editability of Computerized Documents
In one of the previous sections, we said that digital documents are easier to work with. By that, we meant that they are much easier to edit or modify. As you know, physical papers have printed words that are impossible to alter. If a change is required, you have to create a new one from scratch.
In comparison, OCR-based conversion makes those same documents editable. If you want to make changes to them, you can do so in seconds. Additionally, this also saves a lot of printing costs.
Shareability of Files
As the trend towards online work is increasing, the need for completely digital databases is increasing as well. The reason for this is that file sharing is now usually done via online mediums such as email and other platforms like Slack.
This can be made possible by using either OCR or ICR technology. Once the digitization of documents is done, they can be shared easily both among your own workers and with other businesses if need be.
How to Use OCR and ICR?
Both of these technologies are present in similar tools. So, the method of using these technologies is the same. In the following, we will use an online picture to text converter to elaborate the process.
Go to your tool and insert the image of your document.
You can upload using any of the given methods.
Once the image is uploaded, click on the ‘Convert’ button.
This will start the conversion of your document into editable text.
You might be required to verify a captcha after this step.
At the end of this process, you will get access to a modifiable piece of text, which will be the same as your inserted document.
You can either copy this text or download it as a file.
In these six simple steps, a physical document can be converted into a digital file. Now, you can enjoy all the benefits discussed above. Also, as mentioned before, the process of using online OCR and ICR tools is more or less the same.
Final Words
Throughout the article, we have emphasized the importance of these character-recognizing technologies. We have given ample reasons as to why we say so. In the end, we would like to encourage you once more to incorporate these into your work for the sake of productivity and efficiency.
By using these tools for document management, you can complete a number of different tasks in much shorter times. You can even innovate and introduce automation of some sort to save even more time and focus on more important tasks.
