The Top Use Cases of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Technology

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology has transformed how businesses collect, process, and analyse written data. Companies leverage OCR technology to automate data extraction and storage, saving time and costs while enhancing productivity. 

The global OCR market value will reach $39,655 million by 2030 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16% during 2022–2030, highlighting that the technology is here to stay. 

Diving Deeper into Optical Character Recognition Technology

OCR technology digitally recognises and retrieves text from scanned images, documents, and other written materials. The technology uses advanced algorithms to analyse an image’s pixels and convert them into searchable and editable text. 

Here are the basic steps of how an OCR process works: 

1. Pre-Processing: The image is set for data retrieval by removing distortion, noise, contrast, brightness, and alignment issues.
2. Segmentation: The image is divided into smaller segments like words, characters, and lines. 
3. Recognition: Optical character recognition uses machine learning and pattern recognition to identify text accurately. The technology analyses the segments and compares them to defined characters in its database. 
4. Post-Processing: The OCR technology removes any inaccuracies or errors that appear during the recognition process. This includes correcting typos, eliminating extra characters, and formatting the data to match the actual document.

Use Cases of OCR Across Industries

Businesses are leveraging OCR technology to automate their daily operations, and here’s how:

1. Banking

The banking sector uses OCR technology to process and authenticate paperwork for deposit checks, loan documents, and financial transactions. Verifying paperwork mitigates the risk of fraud and enhances transaction security, boosting customers’ trust and building a positive reputation in the market.

2. Healthcare

The healthcare industry leverages OCR for processing patient records, including tests, treatments, and insurance payments. Optical character recognition technology helps the sector keep records up to date, reduce manual work, and streamline workflow.

3. Logistics

Logistics firms use OCR technology to efficiently track invoices, package labels, and other documents. Manual entry of business documents is time-consuming and prone to errors because the workforce has to enter the details in multiple accounting systems. However, OCR can read characters across different layouts more accurately, increasing business efficiency. Many logistics companies use OCR to automate invoice processing. 

4. Travelling

The travel industry uses OCR technology to fast-track passport and travel applications for safety and data security. The technology eliminates manual errors in authentication and processes the information faster than humans. From booking tickets to managing travel expenses, OCR enhances customer experience and brings automation to the travel industry.

5. Government

Many legal industries still use paper trail methods for information processing. Whether registering a licence or voting ID cards, the technology streamlines the workflow. Rather than verifying users’ data manually, OCR technology checks the registered users’ data by scanning their cards and accessing details seamlessly.

6. Food Industry

OCR technology uses machine learning algorithms to help the food industry create a digitised menu and a repository of multiple recipes having calorie details with their intake amount. Thus, OCR improves the customer experience and allows the industry to innovate its daily operations.

7. Retail

OCR technology up-levels the retail sector by offering to help it scan and retrieve the relevant data from bills of payment, invoices, packing lists, purchase orders, and other processes. Moreover, OCR creates structured format data to be accessed quickly and offers end-to-end data processing.

Why Should Your Business Consider Adopting OCR Technology?

• Reduce Costs: OCR technology is replacing manual data entry processes. If the customer has to pay their utility bills online, they must upload a copy of their latest statement with payment details, and the system will continue the rest. OCR technology has removed the need to hire hard-working professionals, reducing costs and boosting businesses’ efficiency. ‍
• Accurate Data Entry: Inaccurate information is what data entry processes struggle with nowadays. With the help of OCR technology, data entry can be done accurately and more quickly. Every business wants to provide its customers with greater satisfaction, which can only be achieved when they have quick access to their data. OCR facilitates this by making documents editable and accessible easily.‍
• Enhance Work Productivity: Optical character recognition technology helps companies increase productivity through instant and efficient data extraction. As a result, the workforce can focus on urgent tasks that need more attention. Moreover, employees can access the documents they want without leaving their spaces, removing the need for excursions to the l records room.‍
• Save Effort, Time, and Resources: Structured documents that follow a basic template, including government-issued documents such as licences, passports,  etc., are scanned, and their data is retrieved quickly by OCR. To further help companies in their administrative tasks, OCR can extract information from non-structured documents, like pictures, handwritten notes, PDFs, etc. Thus, OCR technology can help businesses save effort, time, and resources by automatically pulling information from a pile of documents.
• Protect the Environment: Implementing more environmentally friendly business practices could demand a significant investment of cost and effort. In addition to generating a considerable profit, OCR technology offers businesses a simple way to become environmentally friendly by removing the need for costly and pointless office materials, such as staples, ink, and tape.

How Can Shufti Help?

Shufti is a GDPR-compliant entity offering OCR scanners that help businesses go paperless by automating their data extraction process. Our OCR scanners solve one of the major data entry challenges, i.e. inaccuracy, by extracting data with an unbeatable accuracy rate of 99.3%. Moreover, scanners are not restricted to extracting data from one type of document, but they retrieve information from different documents such as utility bills, invoices, ID cards, driving licences, etc. We support web/desktop, iOS, and Android platforms and offer simple API integration; the customer is good to go. 

Still trying to understand how OCR technology is a good investment in this age of digitisation?