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:

Handprint recognition (ICR or Intelligent Character Recognition) for forms processing.
Advanced rules-based templates for locating common data elements on pages with different layouts and formatting.
Artificial intelligence that is able to use point and click user feedback to train recognition templates automatically.
Natural language processing is able to interpret paragraphs of text and extract meaningful data from them.
Robotic process automation puts back office integration into the hands of power users instead of programmers.
Preconfigured form templates and business rules for common applications like invoice processing and healthcare claim forms.

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 […]

SimpleIndex OCR Workstation

Document capture solution with a one-click interface that automates your scanning and document filing by creating easy-to-find electronic content, saving you time and money. It’s highly customizable to meet even the most detailed needs, with top quality technicians to support your requirements.

SimpleIndex OCR Workstation version
Includes:

basic text and barcode recognition,
ABBYY FineReader OCR Client,
TWAIN and ISIS scanning
1 Year Support & Upgrades

Demos and Additional Materials

Using OCR to capture data from tables and reports

Data that repeats over and over again in a document can be OCR’d to Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and other spreadsheet formats, or a SQL Database like Access, SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle.

Inexpensive Desktop OCR products like FineReader, ReadIRIS and OmniPage can automatically convert data from tables to Excel and other spreadsheets, as long as the columns are standard and don’t “overlap” such that different field values appear in the same column area, like when one row of each record represents one set of columns and a second row has additional column data.

Converted data will require some clean-up before it is usable in any database or software application, and it is difficult to convert large numbers of documents in batches this way. But it’s a good way to produce structured data from large single reports or small batches of similar report data.

For more complex tables, tables with similar data but different formats on different documents (like Invoices), tables with nested structure like header and detail rows, Enterprise Forms Processing software is required to turn these documents into structured data like XML, JSON or SQL database tables.

aaron2022-06-21T14:54:25-04:00Tags: Convert PDF to Excel, Data Capture, Data Extraction, Desktop OCR, Electronic Data Capture, Excel OCR, Extract Text from Image, Forms Processing, Invoice Capture, Invoice OCR, OCR Tables, OCR to Excel, PDF Data Extraction, Scan to Excel, Table Extraction|

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.

aaron2022-06-21T14:58:33-04:00Tags: Batch OCR, Best OCR Download, Best OCR Software, Best Optical Character Recognition Software, Convert PDF to Text, Desktop OCR, Excel OCR, OCR to Excel, Scan to Excel, Zonal OCR, Zone OCR|

Tungsten Automation formerly Kofax OCR

Tungsten Automation formerly Kofax already had a large variety of products for your business automation like Tungsten Capture for high-volume document scanning and data capture, or Tungsten VRS Elite to deal with less then perfect images and to capture even the toughest to recognize documents.

Recently Tungsten Automation formerly Kofax had acquired Nuance’s Document Imaging Division and thus created one of the most powerful family of products for business automation. With products like OmniPage Ultimate or Standard offers you a good versatile OCR packages for small or mid level businesses. There is also an OmniPage Server option for much larger document volumes.

Tungsten OmniPage converts paper, PDF files and forms into documents you can share, edit on your PC, listen to with natural speech, or archive in a document repository. Amazing accuracy, support for virtually any scanner, the best tools to customize your process, and automatic document routing make it the perfect choice to maximize productivity. Improved OCR engines deliver amazing accuracy for document conversion and archiving business critical documents.

Tungsten OmniPage Server is a cost-effective and reliable solution for business process owners to easily deploy a highly scalable, always-available OCR server solution for large volume of documents processing.

Tungsten Power PDF is the smart replacement for Adobe Acrobat for maximum savings without compromise. Power PDF allows you to make changes to PDF files with the fluidity, flexibility and interactivity of real word processing. In addition you can share, edit and discuss document changes using text or voice chat in real-time with multiple people. Plus you can have anywhere, anytime access to your documents using popular Cloud […]

Nikita2024-03-12T15:04:47-04:00Tags: Apple OCR, Compare OCR Software, Convert Images to Searchable PDF, Convert Images to Word, Convert PDF to HTML, Convert PDF to Text, Desktop OCR, MAC OCR, MAC OCR Software, OCR Accuracy, OCR PDF, OCR Tables, OCR to Excel, PDF Converters, Table Extraction|

IRIS IRISmart File

Intelligent software for semi-automatic naming and classification of documents. Designed for personal document management without the headache of manual organization.

Nikita2023-11-22T08:30:35-05:00Categories: Document Management, IRIS, Zone OCR|Tags: AI Classification, Automatic Classification, Desktop OCR, Document Classification, Document Management, Zonal OCR, Zone OCR|

Business card OCR (BCR)

Networking with the right people is essential for the success of any business. Whether you’re meeting a client to discuss a new project or attending an industry conference to pitch your product, establishing connections matters a lot. And nothing establishes professional contacts better, than a simple exchange of business cards.

Is it possible to keep track of all these pieces of cardboard and fancy paper? Yes, if you have a secretary who does this work for you by filing all your business cards somewhere or manually entering the information into a computer. But what if you could do the entire process yourself instantaneously? Business card OCR (BCR) deals with the problem by handing you an almost instant recognition of the business card, allowing you to extract and upload the data into a database for easier storage and retrieval.

The Neat app transforms your device’s camera into a powerful mobile Business Card scanner that’s always at your side, making it easy to stay organized.

There are dozens of other scanner apps available for iOS and Android, with differing features. To help you choose the one that’s perfect for your needs, we’ve rounded up the best business card scanner apps. Here are just a few of them:

ABBYY Business Card Reader lets you scan and store contact information from business cards in up to 25 languages. The company’s award-winning OCR technology makes for accurate recognition of all contact details, such as names, organizations, phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

The app is smart enough to detect the edges of business cards and automatically crops out any unwanted backgrounds. Any data that’s left unrecognized is highlighted in blue and can be manually corrected. […]

Nikita2022-06-21T12:51:16-04:00Tags: Barcode OCR, BCR, Business Card OCR, Desktop OCR, OCR Scanner, Receipt Scanning|

Receipt Scanning

When you’re managing your small business’ finances, filing taxes or just dealing with a results of your shopping spree, it’s necessary to know and record where your money is being spent. But receipts from your purchases may get lost in a sea of other documents and miscellaneous papers.

And when it comes to record keeping, tracking a pile of receipts can become daunting, especially if you travel often for business and need to organize them for expense tracking, or you run your own company and want to write-off all expenses you can.

If you struggle to keep track of your receipts, a receipt scanner can become incredibly useful. Some receipt scanners include online tools and apps that allow you to keep and access your receipts from anywhere, so receipts will be consolidated and you can access them whenever you need them.

At the same time, just having a mobile phone with Scanner App offer a lighter and easier alternative. Receipt Scanner Apps make it easy to scan receipts with any mobile device. Having the ability to transcribe key data and record the information without manual data entry will save you time, and best of all, you can toss those paper receipts.

The Neat app transforms your device’s camera into a powerful mobile receipt scanner that’s always at your side, making it easy to stay organized. The Neat mobile app is especially helpful for tracking expenses while traveling for business or on the road. As soon as you have a receipt or document, just snap a pic and into Neat it goes. At the end of the day, you’ll be able to run an expense report with the click of a button.

Intuit offers a large accounting and record keeping ecosystem Quickbooks. Luckily, […]

SimpleView

Application for managing and viewing scanned documents, images and PDF files.

Unlike other freeware PDF viewers, SimpleView is designed to work with many files at once instead of one at a time. The free version also supports TWAIN scanning and the ability to move, rearrange and rotate pages.

Download SimpleView Freeware

Nikita2023-06-14T11:38:50-04:00Categories: Desktop OCR, Document Management, Simple Software|Tags: Automatic Document Separation, Convert Images to Searchable PDF, Convert PDF to Text, Convert Picture to Text, Desktop OCR, Document Management, PDF to TXT Converter|

MAC OCR Software

apple-ocr-for-automated-document-processing-macOS While 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 […]

aaron2023-06-12T16:19:11-04:00Tags: Apple OCR, Best OCR Download, Best OCR Software, Best Optical Character Recognition Software, Compare OCR Software, Convert Images to Searchable PDF, Convert PDF to Editable Word, Convert PDF to Excel, Desktop OCR, Excel OCR, Image Recognition, MAC OCR, MAC OCR Software, Optical Character Recognition, PDF Text Extraction, Scan to Excel|

IRIS OCR

IRIS is a Belgian company that is the developer of one of the world’s top OCR engines. While more popular in European markets, their OCR and data capture solutions offer great performance and features for the price.

IRIS is offering very competitive pricing compared to OCR alternatives. Plus for the month of March SimpleOCR offers a great 50% discount on new version of IRIS ReadIRIS PDF 22!

ReadIRIS will allow you to convert any paper document, image or PDF into editable and searchable digital files (Word, Excel, PDF, HTML, etc.) using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Simply scan your paper document using the built-in scanning wizard or import image from folders or digital camera. ReadIRIS will instantly convert it to the format of your choice without altering the original layout. Your digital documents will now be easy to edit, archived and shared!

IRISmart File is intelligent software for semi-automatic naming and classification of electronic and paper documents. Ideal for freelancers, microbusinesses and SME, IRISmart will help you carry out long, slow everyday administrative tasks quicker than ever before. Anyone who wants to file a large amount of paper or electronic files and invoices into ordered folders quickly and efficiently will find this intelligent software to be a major ally.

IRIS Powerscan is a full-featured document scanning and data capture application designed for high-volume document processing. Please contact us for a quote or demo of IRIS Powerscan.

IRIS IRISXtract for Documents is THE software system for intelligent, automated document processing, for all types of documents. The product line of the IRISXtract system is designed to handle ALL your data capture needs, from the inbound mail, whether hardcopy paper or electronic, through […]

aaron2023-06-12T16:44:51-04:00Tags: Apple OCR, Compare OCR Software, Convert Images to Searchable PDF, Convert Images to Word, Convert PDF to HTML, Convert PDF to Text, Desktop OCR, MAC OCR, MAC OCR Software, OCR Accuracy, OCR PDF, OCR Tables, OCR to Excel, PDF Converters, Table Extraction|

Desktop OCR

What is TCO (total cost of ownership)?

Total Cost of Ownership

Front-End Cost

Cost of Support and Maintenance

What is OCR?

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 […]

The Neat app transforms your device’s camera into a powerful mobile Business Card scanner that’s always at your side, making it easy to stay organized.

There are dozens of other scanner apps available for iOS and Android, with differing features. To help you choose the one that’s perfect for your needs, we’ve rounded up the best business card scanner apps. Here are just a few of them:

When you’re managing your small business’ finances, filing taxes or just dealing with a results of your shopping spree, it’s necessary to know and record where your money is being spent. But receipts from your purchases may get lost in a sea of other documents and miscellaneous papers.

And when it comes to record keeping, tracking a pile of receipts can become daunting, especially if you travel often for business and need to organize them for expense tracking, or you run your own company and want to write-off all expenses you can.

If you struggle to keep track of your receipts, a receipt scanner can become incredibly useful. Some receipt scanners include online tools and apps that allow you to keep and access your receipts from anywhere, so receipts will be consolidated and you can access them whenever you need them.

Intuit offers a large accounting and record keeping ecosystem Quickbooks. Luckily, […]

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