Automated document processing software for converting scanned documents, PDF files, Office documents and other formats to editable text or structured data that can be exported to CSV, XML, JSON or SQL databases.

Simple Software

SimpleIndex can bring speed and efficiency to your scanning or doc filing no matter the process. Even if all you are doing is hand keying a few basic details about a document, breaking those details into individual indexes and adding tools like drop down choice lists, automatic orientation, and blank page deletion ensure a smoother, more consistent process.

Automation

Here’s where things start to get interesting. From basic tasks like splitting individual documents within at stack of pages by spotting a blank page, a specific mark, or a barcode separator to capturing index data directly from the page or looking up additional details about a document in a database, SimpleIndex has a host of powerful tools to tame your piles of paper or drives full of digital files. Let’s look at a few.

OCR

Optical Character Recognition is the ability to take a scan, which is merely a picture of a page, and turn it into words that the computer can understand and use to index your files. SimpleIndex leverages the power of ABBYY FineReader, recognized as one of the best OCR engines on the market, to accurately capture names, dates, important numbers, document types, and other details about your file. Some products have you set a box and capture whatever information happens to fall in that zone. SimpleIndex takes it further with Dynamic Zone OCR to enable you to set an oversized zone that allows for shifting of the pages between scans, but still captures just the date you need by matching against templates, lists, or even Regular Expressions (RegEx). You can also skip the zones entirely and use the full text of a page to find matches for your index data.

Barcodes

Forms Processing

What is ICR, Survey & Forms Processing?

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

Data Capture Forms OCRForms 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.

It is also possible to use these applications to automate data collection from PDF forms, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and other formats used to fill out forms electronically. Many include the ability to publish forms as paper, fillable PDF and web pages simultaneously to distribute and collect data from multiple sources into one dataset.

Who can benefit from forms processing 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 100 man-hours then it is 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 may not be big enough to justify the expense, but when combined with one or two others it would be.

How much do […]

Document Management

Simple Document Management SystemsThe phrase “document management” is rather broad and can apply to a variety of scenarios depending on the needs (and size) of the business.

Small businesses and departments may only need a system that provides an efficient way to scan paper and save it in an orderly, intuitive structure.

Most projects also require the ability to search and view documents in an integrated viewer or website, and provide ways to annotate images, making notes and markup that other users can see.

Likewise we may be working with more than just digitized paper files. Native born electronic documents such as MS Office docs, PDFs, CAD drawings and graphics files.

There can also advanced records management requirements like access audit trails, document retention, lifecycle and workflow. These features are especially important when dealing with regulatory compliance such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Our document management solutions can fit any budget or support any project requirements. It’s not always possible to do both at once, but we will try our best!

Contact Us for a free evaluation of your document management project and online demo of our software recommendations.

Personal & Small Business

Users within a single department, working from home or who have a small business can simply scan their documents to a folder that is shared to everyone. In this “ad-hoc” scenario you only need some basic document scanning software to simplify and bring consistency to your filing system. Our SimpleIndex software is a perfect all-in-one scanning and document management tool for this purpose.

If you want to move to the next level, there are Desktop Document Management options that provide an all-in-one means for capture, storage, search and retrieval of documents. These solutions are affordable and focused on automating process of organizing and […]

Document Scanning

One Source, Many Solutions

There are many document scanning solutions to choose from. ScanStore offers many of the top document imaging solutions under one virtual roof. ScanStore‘s CDIA+ consultants can work with you to explain the strengths and weaknesses of each option and even provide a demo of the products using samples that you provide.

You’ll find flexibility with each of these products allowing a one-person shop to jump right in, or scale up to enterprise or service bureau proportions. If you need to throw some data capture into the document imaging mix, ScanStore also carries OCR, forms processing and document management tools.

Information and Advice

Take a look at the Scanning Solutions Comparison page to find in-depth information on the features of the available offerings and for more insight in finding the best fit.

And be sure not to miss the detailed comparison of the favorite Batch Scanning solutions in the exclusive Document Scanning Software Review.

What’s Right for You

You want a paperless office and document scanning is part of the path to get you there. Simply buying a scanner and feeding paper into it isn’t going to save you money. Automation of the scanning process is what holds costs down and drives up your Return on Investment.

For example, if an OCR automation costs $3,000 to implement, but by doing so you save a $15/hr employee 10 hours per week of data entry, the feature has paid for itself in 20 weeks.

So how do we automate the data capture? Here are a few possibilities:

  • Full-Page OCR turns a scan into a full-text document you can search

  • Barcodes on each document contain key data like a customer name or invoice number

  • A single […]

OCR Servers

Enterprise OCR servers let you perform Optical Character Recognition on thousands of documents at a time, scaling to meet the demands of the largest document conversions.

Traditional Desktop OCR applications require a person to load the scanned document, run the OCR process and save the output files. This makes sense when you are converting individual documents, but large organizations with thousands or millions of documents need something much more automated and scalable.

OCR Server processing workflow

Typical Enterprise OCR Applications

As the cost of OCR software and hardware goes down each year and the quality goes up, full-text search is included in more and more records management applications. Typical applications include:

  • Data mining
  • Litigation support
  • Full-text searching
  • Document management

Features of Enterprise OCR Servers

  • OCR is performed in the background without a user interface
  • Files are imported automatically from hotfolders
  • Ability to use multiple CPUs and servers for processing
  • Management tools for remote administration
  • Web service & API integration to submit OCR jobs

What is the Best OCR Server?

The ABBYY FineReader Server offers the best combination of features, performance and pricing. It has flexible licensing, including an unlimited CPU-based license that does not limit the number of pages processed.

Foxit PDF Compressor has the lowest entry level pricing, OmniPage OCR and unique PDF compression technology that can dramatically reduce the size of searchable PDF documents, leading to faster viewing and lowered cloud storage and bandwidth costs.

The SimpleIndex Server offers affordable unattended OCR services coupled with advanced data extraction and indexing capabilities that organizes documents automatically or saves metadata to Excel or a SQL database. It doesn’t have the scalability, API interfaces or compression technology that other OCR servers have, but you can bundle the Standard Server version with them to add indexing, […]

Convert Scanned Image to Text Document

The primary purpose of Optical Character Recognition is to quickly and automatically convert scanned images of machine-printed (typed) text – which to a computer are no more meaningful a collection of pixels than any other image, such as a landscape photo – into actual text data that you can search through and modify.

OCR Software comes in many different types, which vary in price range based on their features, speed, and accuracy. One of the main qualities that OCR producers are using to differentiate their products is volume of the documents OCR will allow you to process. That may be a bit counter intuitive but features that are needed to process hundreds, thousands or millions pages a year are rather different ones.

In case of several hundreds of pages (receipts, checks, medical, tax or legal forms, personal memorabilia)  you need to scan for personal use you would need light, highly versatile, easy to use, not expensive software that will convert images just to text. It may not have automation features, and processing data further will be done manually by you. Thou it is not too hard since volume of documents is not very large and you can treat each of them individually.

Small business users usually process thousands of pages a year and require some automation features. Images need to be converted not just to text, but also to spreadsheets to be processed further. Once the system is set up it is assumed that it will run without much of the interference, and people in charge of document processing would be able to do that with certain ease.

Larger companies processing millions of documents require much larger levels of automation when each small, fine tuned feature would save thousands of work hours in a long run. Multiple machines will be processing documents […]

Applications

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.

You can find the various types of OCR software with a description of each below.

Users within a single department, working from home or who have a small business can simply scan their documents to a folder that is shared to everyone. In this “ad-hoc” scenario you only need some basic document scanning software to simplify and bring consistency to your filing system.

If you want to move to the next level, there are Desktop Document Management options that provide an all-in-one means for capture, storage, search and retrieval of documents. Additionally, they provide security, advanced capabilities and ease of use above that of the ad-hoc methods

And let’s not forget cloud-based options that alleviate the need to maintain storage servers or keep software up to date.

Need a simple, no frills OCR solution without spending hundreds of dollars on a professional software package? Look no further. There is a no cost, donation optional, OCR freeware solution […]

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