Forms Processing

By making text recognition automatic, OCR has simplified forms processing across a wide span of industries. Many companies and organizations, in industries ranging from health insurance to banking, process a variety of forms daily. Traditionally, the information in these forms has been entered into databases manually, requiring expensive, time-consuming labor. With the introduction of OCR technology, paper forms can now be processed automatically, and the information stored in electronic databases without the involvement of human labor.

OCR can identify fields containing information within a paper form, and recognize the text within those areas. The technology is highly accurate for computer-printed text, but ICR is also capable of recognizing handwritten characters with reasonable accuracy. ICR can identify hand-printed text written in pre-printed text boxes. Forms processing systems differ from standard OCR in that they are used in offices that process similar types of papers more than once. For example, if your office handles invoices from several different companies, a forms processing system can recognize the different formats and extract relevant information from incoming invoices. Other examples of uniform forms that can be processed electronically include applications and surveys. The most important restriction is that every incoming document must conform to a predefined, fixed format.

Forms processing technology is useful to help avoid backlog in private companies and organizations that handle a variety of similar or identical forms. Some examples of such companies and organizations include hospitals, insurance companies, schools, universities, banks, and government agencies. Many are currently implementing forms processing systems to increase efficiency and reduce delays associated with manual input. Once information has been entered into an electronic system, employees can devote more attention to content analysis.