Smart OCR uses artificial intelligence technology that enables machines to recognize printed or handwritten text from images or scanned documents.

Artificial intelligence is used to train Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems for improved accuracy in identifiying common data elements based on context.

Artificial Intelligence allows data capture applications to quickly   determine what type of document is being processed before extracting data from the OCR text.

AI algorithms use text matching, page layouts, and artificial intelligence to train models that are able to identify documents by type even when the formatting and quality varies significantly.

How Simple Software's AI OCR processes documents in 5 stepsA good example of Artificial Intelligence based automatic classification is the LoanStacker application, which takes a complete residential mortgage loan file and identifies the more than 500 forms, disclosures, tax records, and contracts they contain. Once identified these documents can sent to the appropriate workflows for approval, data entry, etc.

While most data capture applications are able to identify document types based on recognition templates, AI classification algorithms are much faster and significantly improve throughput when there are many different types of documents being processed. Trained Artificial Intelligence classification models can also seem to “understand” the common traits of different document types and sort them correctly even when presented with new formats.

Simple Software’s SimpleIndex application provides keyword and pattern matching based document classification at a much lower cost than enterprise solutions.

Our collection of OCR Data Capture applications all have built-in automatic document classification capabilities, including machine learning and script based manual overrides.

Artificial Intelligence OCR training refers to one of two things:

  1. Tuning the OCR Engine to improve recognition of new fonts, languages, or handwritten text.
  2. Training data capture software to identify the correct location of fields on various related documents.

SimpleIndex AP Invoice Scanning

The first type of Artificial Intelligence OCR training was a commonly used feature in early desktop OCR applications. However, modern OCR engines are trained on huge sample sets during development and manual training is more likely to decrease accuracy than anything. It is rarely used outside of the development environment.

The second type of OCR training is used by enterprise data capture applications to automate the creation of recognition templates. The most common application is accounts payable invoices, where every vendor has their own layout and formatting but share the same data fields. These systems can “learn” from user feedback, improving the recognition accuracy until all fields are consistently read.

Smart document processing using AI

Field position training usually starts with a generic template that can identify the fields using the most common labels. Whenever a field is missed or read in the wrong position, the user highlights the correct field position on that document during a manual review. The new position is used by the machine learning algorithm to generate an updated template that correctly identifies the fields on that sample. If the document has consistent layout and decent image quality the template can be trained after just 2-3 samples.

More complex documents and documents that have a lot of layout variation can take many samples to train, and sometimes they can fail to train altogether. AI OCR training is not magic, and there will always be some cases where it is unable to consistently read a document correctly. If 100% accuracy is needed for these documents then it is important to choose a data capture platform that offers the ability to manually override the OCR training.

Simple Software uses aritifical intelligence to do the document processing work easily and efficiently

Many newer OCR systems no longer offer the ability to manually create templates and rely fully on the machine learning function. While these systems can be easier to configure, they will never reach the level of accuracy that can be achieved by one that offers a manual override.

There are also many kinds of documents that can be easily parsed with simple pattern matching, or where an experienced user can create a template that works perfectly in just a few hours. This can save a lot of time, user frustration, and licensing costs compared to machine learning. It is important to know when AI OCR training is really needed, and the experts at Simple Software can help.

FlexiCapture and Vantage Natural Language Processing (NLP)

How to train NLP machine learning model

Today different industries face similar challenges as they seek to extract information from business documents, such as policies, e-mails and legal agreements – and most agree that is costly, time consuming and prone to errors with manual data entry.

In this video you will learn how to train NLP machine learning model in FlexiCapture to extract entities and text passages from Lease agreements.

Converting unstructured documents into structured data automatically makes this information available to your business applications while saving you time, money, and labor in the process.

 

Adding a field which is captured by flexilayout to a NLP-trained Document Definition

You can add the new flexible layout as additional layout to the existing one.
To do that, please open the Document Definition Editor, go to the Section’s properties and load the new layout as additional FlexiLayout.

AI and Machine Learning in ABBYY FlexiCapture and Vantage

How to train NLP machine learning model

Today different industries face similar challenges as they seek to extract information from business documents, such as policies, e-mails and legal agreements – and most agree that is costly, time consuming and prone to errors with manual data entry.

In this video you will learn how to train NLP machine learning model in FlexiCapture to extract entities and text passages from Lease agreements.

Converting unstructured documents into structured data automatically makes this information available to your business applications while saving you time, money, and labor in the process.

Using ABBYY Vantage Document Skills

Processing Your First Documents with Vantage

Learn how easy it is to get started with Vantage – upload your documents and Vantage will take care of the rest.

 

How to Create and Train a Vantage Document Skill

Learn how to use the Vantage Skill Designer to create and train a new Document Skill with just a few sample documents.

 

How to Create and Train a Classification Skill in ABBYY Vantage

Learn how to use the Vantage Skill Designer to train a new Classification Skill. You need just a few samples of each document class.

 

 

How to Automate a Complete Workflow, by Creating a Vantage Process Skill

 

 

How to Edit a Document Skill

Learn how to adapt already existing skills to your specific documents and business requirements.

 

 

How to perform the first authentication in Vantage Swagger UI?

To get a first access token perform the initial authentification using the default client, one does not need to enter any passwords or client ID. The initial authentication is preconfigured. Just open a Swagger page (EU link or US link), click Authorize:

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Select all scopes, and click Authorize again:

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The password should be specified only for a custom client. A custom client can be created after the initial initialization.

References

EU Help: Getting a Tenant Identifier or US Help: Getting a Tenant Identifier

EU Help: Creating a Client or US Help: Creating a Client

Learn more at ABBYY […]

Amazon Textract API

Automatically extract handwriting, plain text or form data from any document using the world’s largest OCR machine learning model based on billions of sample documents.

Amazon Textract is a cloud OCR service that automatically detects and extracts text and data from scanned documents and PDF files. It goes beyond simple optical character recognition (OCR) to also identify the contents of fields in forms and information stored in tables.

Amazon Textract API also lets you implement OCR in your RPA workflows. UiPath and other bots offer connectors that let you include Textract OCR into your RPA process.

Textract is not a “ready-to-use” product. It requires programing skills, experience with AWS systems and decent amount of coding to implement it into your systems, especially once you add user interfaces for scanning and data validation.

Simple Software developers have the necessary skills and experience to integrate Textract into your custom applications. Contact us or click the Request a Quote button to get a proposal for your custom application development project.

Simple Software also offers the ready-to-use SimpleIndex application that incorporates Textract into a fully-featured scanning, indexing and document processing application.

You can learn more about Amazon Textract into SimpleIndex here.

Google Cloud Vision API

Vision API offers powerful pre-trained machine learning models through REST and RPC APIs. Assign labels to images and quickly classify them into millions of predefined categories. Detect objects and faces, read printed and handwritten text, and build valuable metadata into your image catalog.

Automatically extract handwriting, plain text or form data from any document using a huge machine learning model based on billions of sample documents.

Google Vision is a cloud OCR service that automatically detects and extracts text and data from scanned documents and PDF files. It goes beyond simple optical character recognition (OCR) to also identify the contents of fields in forms and information stored in tables.

Google Vision API also lets you implement OCR in your RPA workflows. UiPath and other bots offer connectors that let you include Vision OCR into your RPA process.

Google Vision is not a “ready-to-use” product. It requires programing skills, experience with Google cloud services, and decent amount of coding to implement it into your systems, especially once you add user interfaces for scanning and data validation.

Simple Software developers have the necessary skills and experience to integrate Google Vision into your custom applications. Contact us or click the Request a Quote button to get a proposal for your custom application development project.

ABBYY Vantage

ABBYY Vantage leverages AI machine learning and a huge library of document “skills” to provide out-of-the-box data capture for all kinds of documents.

Vantage provides a simple way to implement new data capture processes without the need for programmers.

It takes the FlexiCapture platform, hosts it in the cloud, and dramatically simplifies the interface. The thousands of settings you can use with FlexiCapture to build templates are managed by the AI, giving you a simple point and click interface to create new document capture workflows.

The “Skills” library gives you pre-configured capture workflows for hundreds of the most common documents. Simply connect them to your import and export destinations and you are ready to go, saving you hours or even days of development time.

Robotic Process Automation

Introducing Robotic Process Automation

RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation and it represents a new approach to business automation that helps minimize the technical hurdles required for implementing new workflows.

Robotic Process Automation of Data Entry

Traditional business process automations rely on application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow systems to exchange data. This approach has two main drawbacks:

  1. The application vendor must make those APIs available
  2. A programmer needs to write custom code to interface with them

If your software vendor does not provide an interface for consuming the data you need to automate, then you’re out of luck. And even if they do, the development costs can eliminate the ROI if the transaction volume isn’t large enough.

RPA tools avoid the API problem by interfacing directly with the application user interface just like a human would do. They use artificial intelligence and machine learning to “watch” the operator perform a task within the application then creates its own program (called a “bot”) to mimic it. This means that:

  1. Bots can do anything a human can do within the application
  2. Users can create a bot without writing code

Practically speaking, an experienced robotic process automation consultant with programming experience is required to roll out an RPA solution enterprise-wide, and most users will only be able to automate small, routine tasks without assistance. Business-critical, high-volume automations will still involve coding. But RPA dramatically reduces the implementation time and avoids the need to retrofit APIs for software applications that were not designed to support them.

Using RPA with OCR Data Capture

UiPath Robotic Process Automation RPA OCROCR Data Capture is one of the most common business processes to automate with RPA. Taking data stored in paper or electronic documents and […]

PaperVision Capture Forms Magic

PaperVision Capture Forms Magic adds handwriting recognition, forms processing, invoice processing or healthcare claims forms templates and business rules to their high-volume document scanning and data capture platform.

OCR Consulting Services

OCR Experts for Any Project

Our unique team of OCR experts are equipped to help out with OCR projects of any size or complexity. We have support specialists that can remotely configure desktop solutions in a matter of minutes and expert systems integrators with years of programming, database design, and robotic process automation experience.

Desktop OCR

Batch Document Scanning and OCRUse our online store to order desktop OCR applications and our staff will be happy to answer your setup questions via email or web chat.

Remote configuration and training services using GotoMeeting are available for a low hourly rate.

Batch Scanning & OCR Servers

Data Capture Forms OCRAutomate document scanning and digital document archival processes using zone OCR, barcode recognition, database integration and other technologies.

Small business systems and single document workflows can be setup remotely via GotoMeeting, usually in just a few hours. Chat now if we’re online or leave a message to schedule a consultation.

Data Capture and Forms Processing

Advanced data extraction solutions that can turn the most complex documents into structured data ready for use in business applications. Each member of our data capture consulting team has over 10 years experience designing and implementing advanced OCR solutions.

We are the most experienced system integrator in the US for our flagship data capture platform, ABBYY FlexiCapture. We saw its potential immediately when it was introduced and now over 15 years later it is the leading data capture solution and no team is more experienced than ours at implementing it. We are the ones that other ABBYY integrators call for their most complex implementations.

While we have designed capture solutions for all types of documents, we have particular expertise in the following areas:

    […]

Can OCR be trained for specific fonts?

OCR training was once a critical part of the conversion process. After a document was read, the operator would review the results to correct mistaken characters and these corrections would be used to train the engine so the next time you read a similar document the results are improved.

Modern OCR applications no longer rely on user training for accuracy unless you have very non-standard fonts. These engines have had decades of development and billions of samples used to train their algorithms. In most cases, the introduction of user training will only diminish the results for any documents that are different than the ones being trained.

The training functions still exist for these edge cases, but they are no longer an integral part of the OCR process.

Training in modern OCR is more likely to refer to enterprise data capture applications that use AI-based learning algorithms to find the locations of data points on documents with various different formats, such as invoices.

Using OCR with Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation of Data Entry
Robotic Process Automation can simulate human user interfaces to allow code-free application integration for data entry workflows

Robotic Process Automation applications like UiPath and Blue Prism have revolutionized the way that enterprises provide systems integrations and automate repetitive tasks. For any task that involves data that comes on a document, OCR is needed to fully automate it.

An example RPA OCR workflow using an Accounts Payable Invoice automation would be:

  1. Bot signs on to Vendor website
  2. Bot navigates to Invoice Download page and downloads invoice batch PDF
  3. PDF is handed off to FlexiCapture for Invoices RPA interface for data extraction
  4. XML is returned to Bot containing header (invoice number, date) and line item data (items, quantities, pricing) for each invoice
  5. Bot opens accounts payable data entry screen in accounting software
  6. Data from each invoice is entered and submitted by the Bot

Since RPA simulates the clicks and keystrokes that would normally be made by a human operator, bots are able to interface with any software, database or website regardless of whether an Application Programming Interface (API) has been made available. This gets around the hardest part of most data entry automation processes–the need to write code.

ABBYY FlexiCapture integrates with RPA applications like UiPath and Blue Prism to perform OCR data capture services that can be called directly from a bot’s workflow.

ABBYY FineReader Corporate and FineReader Server can be integrated for full-text OCR.

Our OCR experts are also UiPath certified and can deliver end-to-end RPA OCR solutions for your project. Please […]

Using Artificial Intelligence to train OCR templates

Modern Forms Processing applications have AI-based training algorithms that let users point and click on the location of data in their documents and create OCR templates automatically.

This bypasses the technical requirements of creating complex OCR templates, especially for varied documents like Invoices where the data doesn’t always appear in the same place.

But how good are these AI-based training systems?

In our experience they work well when you have:

  • Good quality scanned images
  • Clearly labeled data
  • Tables with regular columns

Point and click style training doesn’t work quite as well with:

  • Poor quality images
  • Data that appears within paragraphs
  • Tables with overlapping columns, subtotal rows, etc.

These types of documents can still be captured with OCR but they will usually require an experienced technician to manually configure the template.

For natural language data like legal documents, a new artificial intelligence technology called NLP (Natural Language Processing) is available. These work by attempting to “understand” the language used in documents to interpret the location of data points based on meaning. ABBYY FlexiCapture also supports NLP-based training for these types of documents.

ABBYY FlexiCapture for Invoices Cloud

ABBYY FlexiCapture for Invoices Cloud

ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud delivers ABBYY’s advanced data capture platform capabilities via REST API and web interfaces. ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud customers can rapidly configure and deliver their Content IQ solution, taking advantage of our cloud services to automate and accelerate their document-driven processes. The advanced machine learning and AI in the platform improve classification and data extraction results, enabling core processes to support better, smarter, faster decisions.

FlexiCapture Cloud enables organizations to accelerate digital transformation by complementing their automation systems with new and advanced cognitive capabilities that liberate the intelligence locked in their documents.

ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud

ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud

ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud delivers ABBYY’s advanced data capture platform capabilities via REST API and web interfaces. ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud customers can rapidly configure and deliver their Content IQ solution, taking advantage of our cloud services to automate and accelerate their document-driven processes. The advanced machine learning and AI in the platform improve classification and data extraction results, enabling core processes to support better, smarter, faster decisions.

FlexiCapture Cloud enables organizations to accelerate digital transformation by complementing their automation systems with new and advanced cognitive capabilities that liberate the intelligence locked in their documents.

ABBYY FlexiCapture for Invoices On-Premise

ABBYY FlexiCapture for Invoices On-Premise

ABBYY FlexiCapture for Invoices is an easy-to-use, intelligent software solution for processing invoices. It replaces labor-intensive data input tasks with transparent, manageable, efficient, and automated data capture based on smart document analysis and character recognition technologies.

 

ABBYY FlexiCapture On-Premise

ABBYY FlexiCapture On-Premise – Distributed – Perpetual License PPY 50K Pages

ABBYY FlexiCapture is a powerful data capture and document processing solution from a world-leading technology vendor. It is designed to transform streams of documents of any structure and complexity into business-ready data. And its award-winning recognition technologies, automatic document classification, plus a highly scalable and customizable architecture, mean that it can help companies and organizations of any size to streamline their business processes, increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Enterprise OCR Applications

Enterprise OCR Data Capture Software Enterprise OCR Data Capture Software

Enterprise OCR refers to applications designed with the features and scalability required for large businesses and service operations.

Speed and efficiency are the name of the game at the enterprise level so options like batch processing, multi-user and multi-server workflows, security and compliance auditing are found in these applications.

Enterprise OCR can also refer to Enterprise Site Licensing for desktop OCR applications that allow any user in your organization to install licensed OCR tools without incremental costs. Contact Us for a quote on any Site License.

Enterprise Data Capture Solutions Enterprise Constitution Class Starship

Enterprise Document Management

With the high volume of documents coming out of an enterprise OCR product, there is a need for robust Document Management applications with enhanced features that cover the stricter oversight needs of large organizations. Sorting through thousands or millions of pages can quickly turn digital documents into a quagmire without proper organization, tagging, search and workflow capabilities.

Enterprise Document Management features include:

  • Digital signatures
  • Document life cycle management
  • Version control
  • Advanced keyword searching & full-text indexing
  • Audit trails (HIPAA, Sarbanes compliance)
  • Cloud Based Document Management Apps Cloud Based Document Management Apps

    Email archiving

  • Workflow routing
  • Enterprise Report Processing (ERP)
  • Document access control

Our document management solutions work with any of the enterprise OCR products below to provide a secure end-to-end solution. Contact Us to see how they work together in an online demo or get a quote.

Handprint Recognition Guide

What is ICR, Handprint Recognition?

ICR stands for Intelligent Character Recognition and is the technology that allows software to interpret hand printed text on scanned images.

Forms Processing Software uses ICR technology to automate data entry tasks involving hand-filled surveys, applications and forms. It provides interfaces for scanning, recognition, data verification and export, as well as management and monitoring tools to track large volumes of documents and data through the workflow.

Forms Processing also includes OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to recognize machine printed text, and OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) for check boxes and multiple choice bubbles.

Traditional forms processing relies on constrained handwriting, where boxes on the form force the filler to write with separated, printed block characters. Modern AI technology has dramatically improved the ability to recognized unconstrained handwriting and cursive script. Hand printed notes, free-form comments blocks, non-segmented fields, historic documents, and more can now be converted to text with acceptable accuracy where these were impossible just a few years ago.

Who can benefit from handwritten recognition software?

Any organization that collects data on paper-based forms, surveys or applications on a regular basis can get a very high return on investment by automating the data entry with forms processing software.

You do need to have a significant number of forms to justify the expense, at least a hundred forms per month or more depending on how much data is being captured. If the data entry task can be done in under 25 working hours then it is probably not a good candidate for automation with ICR software.

Organizations that have many separate departments that collect data on forms can share the budget for forms processing software by re-using it for other projects. Your current project […]

SimpleOCR | OCR Software Experts

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Document Scanners
& Scanner Parts

Accurate OCR starts with quality images. Efficient OCR starts with fast scanning. Find Document Scanners built for OCR at ScanStore.

Our Team of OCR experts is here to help! SimpleOCR is not just Freeware, we have every kind of OCR solution from PDF Converters to Enterprise Data Capture, OCR Servers and Handprint Recognition for Forms and Surveys. Live chat with an OCR specialist now or Contact Us for a consultation on your OCR project.

SimpleOCR is the popular freeware OCR Software with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. SimpleOCR is also a royalty-free OCR SDK for developers to use in their custom applications.

SimpleIndex is OCR built for business, offering powerful batch scanning, OCR server, and data capture features with a simple user interface and affordable licensing.

If you like free stuff, freeware versions of our SimpleView Document Viewer (with Tesseract OCR), SimpleCoversheet Bar Code Printer, and SimpleExport CSV to XML Converter are also available.

If you have a scanner and want to avoid retyping your documents, SimpleOCR is the fast, free way to do it. The SimpleOCR freeware is 100% free and not limited in any way. Anyone can use SimpleOCR for free–home users, educational institutions, even corporate users.

If your documents have multi-column layouts, non-standard fonts, tables, poor quality or digital camera images, you will not have much success with applications based on free and open source engines like SimpleOCR and Tesseract. You will need a commercial OCR application to get an accurate read. Our OCR Guide compares desktop and server […]

OCR SDK

The SimpleOCR SDK is a fast, lightweight OCR engine designed to let developers add basic OCR functions to an application with minimal cost and none of the drawbacks of open source solutions.

The ABBYY FineReader SDK is a fully-featured OCR engine with advanced features like handprint recognition, barcode recognition, ID and business card recognition, and support for 200+ languages including Asian scripts, Arabic and Hebrew. FineReader SDK is available in both Cloud and On-Premise versions.

The ABBYY FlexiCapture SDK gives you advanced, AI-based OCR data capture capabilities like document classification, forms processing, invoice processing, and machine learning for training data extraction templates.

You can shop for all of these in our OCR store, and our expert staff will be here to advise and assist in your OCR development project. Contact us to see how we can help!

Atalasoft provides OCR SDKs that can be integrated into your desktop or web applications for manual or automated batch processing of images.  These are an industry proven document transformation engines and add-ons to the DotImage SDK and can save countless hours and significantly improve accuracy. One of the main advantages is that it is mostly royalty free SDK with many different options and engines to choose from. Allowing you to create your own OCR components of your software with just one payment in front. Atalasoft OCR SDK has plenty of plugins to add more features like:

  • OmniPage OCR & ICR
  • Tesseract OCR
  • GlyphReader OCR
  • BarcodeReader 1D and 2D
  • Barcode Writer
  • DotTwain

Google Cloud Vision API offers powerful pre-trained machine learning models through REST and RPC APIs. Assign […]

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