What Are The Use Cases For Document Data Capture Software?
Document capture software has advanced to the point it can acquire data very efficiently and effectively. You may wonder, however, if your planned use case is appropriate for document data capture software. Here are five of the most widely adopted use cases so you can consider how yours lines up.
Scanning Forms
Businesses, non-profits, and government agencies all frequently use hand-filled forms. From applications to compliance forms, people fill tons of stuff out by hand. It can be a beast of a job for you to read the data and enter it into a computer system. However, the right document software can scan the form as an image, recognize written letters, identify them, and compile the results into machine-readable words. If you combine this with a larger data entry workflow, you can process hundreds of documents in the time it might have taken to handle a few before.
Research
A lot of the world's data is still locked away on hand-written pages. This includes a significant amount of research text from decades or even centuries ago. While you might have to take extra precautions with older documents, it's still possible to image them and extract data as long as it's in readable lettering. Even if it isn't a highly modern script, you may be able to devise second-tier scanning of images to train datasets for older languages and get at the data.
Uploads
Many mobile apps now allow people to upload images for data collection. If you've ever used a banking app that lets you upload your checks by snapping a photo and clicking a button, you've encountered this form of document data capture software.
The same approach is useful for nearly any app that has to recognize writing and convert it to useful data. For example, you can scan hand-written purchase orders to feed them into systems.
Reporting
While much of the impressive work in document capture software involves handwriting, there's a place for scanning digitally produced printed documents, too. For example, you might need to turn a stack of receipts into an expense report.
Existing Images of Documents
Not all of the world's written materials are completely ignored. Many archives have images of documents. If you are looking for records and don't want to deal with the scanning part of the job, document capture software is still useful. You simply have to be able to get copies of the images, and you usually can automate the downloading process, too.
Contact a company that offers document capture software to learn more.
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