Compare features and pricing, try and buy the best OCR downloads. Extensive comparison of accuracy, performance, features, language support and more. From PDF converters to enterprise data processing and RPA. Export support available.

Total Cost of Ownership of an OCR Software

What is TCO (total cost of ownership)?

Total Cost of Ownership

The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or service. It is a management accounting concept that can be used in full cost accounting. (Wikipedia).

TCO is a popular concept when it comes to comparing Software. It allows you to estimate the cost of using the OCR software and plan your automation strategy according to your possible workload and budget over time.

There are several aspects that are too circumstantial to be able to include in general cost estimates, but there are some that we know for a fact, and we can combine them in a total cost of ownership for each OCR scenario and compare them to the possible solutions on the market.

Front-End Cost

The first and most obvious element is front-end cost. This is the price that will be presented with the product, and the marketing team will be pointing towards special offers and discounts to cut it down. It is an important factor, but it is far from everything you would need to take into account. And yet, even here, there are different options. Some of the OCR solutions will offer you the “pay and forget” option of making one payment right here, right now. However, lately, the annual cost or subscription model has become more and more popular, allowing customers to spread costs over time and OCR creators to organize a steady flow of income.

Cost of Support and Maintenance

The second element of the total cost of ownership would be the cost of support and maintenance. Theoretically, it is possible to avoid […]

OCR Guide

What is OCR?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition and is the technology that allows software to interpret text on scanned images. When this technology is applied to automating business data entry processes it’s referred to as OCR Data Capture.

Many are familiar with popular desktop OCR applications designed to convert scanned images to editable documents. When this process is applied to specific areas of the document containing data fields it’s called zone OCR. But OCR data capture software is more than just simple zone OCR. Modern applications use some or all of these technologies:

80%

Using the OCR software enables enterprises to reduce the document processing time by as much as 80%

Benefits of using OCR

If not for the trees then do it for the savings on paper, toner, copiers and their services contracts, etc.

How much time is wasted searching for paper files? Digital documents can searched and viewed instantly from anywhere.

Paper is much harder to backup and restore than digital data.

Office square footage and off-site records storage adds to the cost of keeping paper documents.

Government mandates for records retention […]

Digitech Systems OCR

Digitech Systems creates an award-winning digitization and content management software and cloud services that deliver Any Document, Anywhere, Anytime®, organizations of all sizes now securely and effectively extract, manage and automate their business information.

The PaperVision and ImageSilo brands are used by thousands of businesses worldwide from global conglomerates to Main Street to help teams pave the path to more meaningful work by transforming how they handle digital files, processes, documents, and more.

Starting with PaperFlow digitization software, subsequent years brought on-premise information management (PaperVision Enterprise, 1998), the world’s first cloud Enterprise Content Management system (ImageSilo, 1999), business process automation (PaperVision Enterprise WorkFlow, 2002), intelligent data capture (PaperVision Capture, 2009), and AI-enabled forms processing (PaperVision Forms Magic™, 2016). The PaperVision®.com cloud-based information management system was introduced in 2020. These products provide unprecedented ease-of-use and architectural flexibility, while balancing fully featured products with a sensible price/performance ratio and legendary customer service.

PaperVision Enterprise performs dependable electronic document management to automate office environments, conserve paper, time, money, and provide peace of mind. Retrieval solutions provide enterprise scalability and functionality with advanced features that enhance your efficiency and protect corporate data. Electronic information is retrieved instantly with our user-friendly graphical interface that displays a complete overview of all your available projects. View, manipulate, print, fax, export, and e-mail documents directly from your PC. On-premise installation or cloud hosted services available.

PaperVision Direct Scan, import, index, and organize paper documents using your existing scanners and multi-function devices (MFD) to create convenient digital files and securely upload them to the cloud. Start scanning documents right at your desk! Turn any vulnerable paper document into a useful digital file that can be securely managed in your PaperVision.com cloud service.

PaperVision Capture Forms Magic adds handwriting […]

Does ReadIRIS, FineReader or OmniPage support Zone OCR?

The “Pro” versions of most Desktop OCR applications support the creation of zone templates that can be used to OCR specific regions on batches of documents.

Most OCR applications have “Lite” versions that don’t have the ability to manually create zones so it’s important to get the correct version.

With these applications it is often not possible to output this data as “fields” in a structured data file like CSV, Excel or XML. What you typically get a text file for each document with a line of text for each zone. The zones are designed more for excluding regions you don’t want or manually overriding the detection of text, tables and images in the document.

If you need to capture specific data in multiple documents and output them to structured data files or a SQL database, Batch OCR Applications are the best option for this.

If you need to capture data formatted in tables and output to CSV or Excel, desktop OCR applications do this quite well as long as the tables have a regular format with well-defined columns.

To capture handprint, irregular tables, large numbers of data points, or data that doesn’t always appear in the same place on every page, Forms Processing software is what you need.

Batch OCR Software

Batch OCR for Full-Text Conversion & Searchable PDF

Batch OCR PDF to Text, Excel, WordThe primary purpose of Optical Character Recognition is to quickly and automatically convert scanned images of machine-printed (typed) text into actual text data that you can search through and modify.

Batch OCR software allows for the conversion of multiple files at once, usually through a hot folder or watched email inbox method that converts any files added to a particular folder.

The ability to watch a hotfolder and automatically convert documents is included in the complete versions of desktop OCR products, like FineReader Corporate, OmniPage Ultimate or ReadIRIS Corporate.

While automatic processing is available in these applications, they are not designed for true server-based processing since the application has to be running on the user’s desktop. OCR servers are designed for unattended batch OCR processing and high-volume applications that require multiple CPUs and processing workflows.

Those applications are all designed for traditional, full-page OCR conversions to text, Word, Excel, or searchable PDF documents.

Batch OCR for Data Capture

OCR Data CaptureForms Processing OCR Data Capture systems are designed to read specific data points from documents and output structured data like CSV, XML, JSON or SQL databases. SimpleIndex, FlexiCapture and PaperVision Capture all offer batch zone OCR as well as advanced features like AI-based training, invoice processing and line items.

OCR Experts At Your Service

Our OCR experts can help you find the batch OCR software that is right for your project, as well as providing remote installation, setup, training and support that’s not available for most desktop OCR applications. We can also help with enterprise implementations, custom API integrations, […]

MAC OCR Software

apple-ocr-for-automated-document-processing-macOSWhile the majority of OCR software is written for the Windows platform, a few of the major OCR engines have released versions for MacOS systems as well. Mac OCR software are often slightly more limited than their PC counterparts, and may not have the latest version of the OCR engine. However if you need to convert documents to text, Excel or searchable PDF files on your Mac, these are the best software options.

Currently, there are are professional versions of ABBYY FineReader and both pro and corporate versions of ReadIRIS available for MacOS.

When you scan a document that has text or numeric data on it, you are able to read and understand what is written in the scanned image. However, to a computer, the resulting image file is just as meaningless an assortment of pixels as a landscape photo. In order to transform this information into an editable format that you can search through, copy, and modify without retyping it manually, you will need the an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.

There is a wide variety of OCR software available. While they all share the ability to convert images of machine printed (not handwritten) text or numbers into an editable format, the various software often have different features, accuracy, prices, and language options.

Creates editable, searchable files and e-books from scans, PDFs and digital photographs. The most accurate OCR available for OSX, its unmatched recognition and conversion eliminates retyping and reformatting. Sophisticated yet remarkably intuitive, FineReader has an easy-to-use interface that makes even the most complex tasks simple.

Kofax Power PDF for Mac makes it easy to gain […]

ABBYY OCR

ABBYY is one of the leading OCR (Optical Character Recognition) companies in a world. They offer a large variety of document capture and automation products starting with FineReader Pro for individual or small business scale companies and FineReader Corporate. If you need to process many thousands or millions of pages, ABBYY has FineReader Server for full-text OCR and FlexiCapture for OCR data capture. Many companies are using their products for its flexibility and scalability, there is always a way to customize ABBYY OCR products to fit your automation needs.

ABBYY FineReader OCR software helps individuals turn scans of paper documents, PDF files, and digital photographs into searchable and editable formats. Unmatched text recognition accuracy and document conversion capabilities virtually eliminate retyping and reformatting. Intuitive use and one-click automated conversion tasks let you do more with this OCR software in fewer steps. Up to 190 languages supported for text recognition and document conversion – absolute record on OCR/PDF software market!

ABBYY FlexiCapture is a powerful data capture and document processing solution. It is designed to transform streams of documents of any structure and complexity into business-ready data.  Solid recognition technologies, automatic document classification and a highly scalable and customizable architecture, will allow it to help companies and organizations of any size to streamline their business processes, increase efficiency and reduce costs.

ABBYY FineReader Server is powerful server-based OCR software for automated document capture and PDF conversion. Designed for mid- to high-volume batch processing, it enables organizations and scanning service providers to establish cost-efficient processes for converting paper, as well as TIFF, JPEG, and PDF image documents into electronic files suitable for full-text search and long-term digital archiving.

ScanStore and SimpleSoftware are highly experienced integrators of ABBYY […]

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OCR Freeware


About SimpleOCR Freeware

Do you dread having to retype that document you are holding in your hand? If only you had the electronic file, your life would be so much easier. With SimpleOCR, you could easily and accurately convert that paper document into editable electronic text for use in any application including Word and WordPerfect.

Not only is SimpleOCR up to 99% accurate, it is 100% free.

Download SimpleOCR now or learn more its feature and functions.

Accuracy

With optical character recognition up to 99% accurate, there is no better OCR application for the price. This increased accuracy greatly reduces the need for post-recognition proof reading and correction. And after all, isn’t that why you want to OCR the document in the first place? Of course it is!

System Requirements

SimpleOCR works on any version of windows, from Windows 95-10 and beyond! Your scanner need only a TWAIN driver, the driver that comes with a majority of all scanners sold. In short, SimpleOCR will most likely work with the PC and scanner you already have.

Pricing

SimpleOCR is free for all commercial and non-commercial purposes. It may be re-distributed freely, but only in its original, unaltered form.

Download SimpleOCR Now

  • Huge Dictionary – With more than 120,000 words, it is unlikely that SimpleOCR will run into a word it does not know. In the rare event that it does, our improved text editor allows you to easily add the new word to the dictionary. By adding new words to the dictionary, SimpleOCR becomes better with every use.

  • Attention! SimpleOCR does NOT have any handprint OCR capabilities, it will not be able to recognize handwritten text. ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) is rather complicated software usually on a more expensive side.

  • Despeckle – For those documents which are not […]

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