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 […]

Document Processing via Email in FineReader Server

In this video, learn how to configure a workflow for document input and processing via e-mail on FineReader Server.

See how in a few simple steps you can configure this workflow. You can even edit the e-mail subject and message. Watch how to setup usage scenario: Centralized document conversion service in this video.

From the document input to the document output, including the document processing, FineReader Server is designed to simplify, optimize and fasten your worflows. Scalable and easy to configure, FineReader Server can adapt to all your needs.

How to convert several emails from MS Outlook into PDF?

In order to convert several emails into a PDF file, you may use the virtual printer PDF-XChange 5.0 for FineReader.

Follow the steps below:

Select the needed emails in MS Outlook.
Press File>Print.
Select PDF-XChange 5.0 for FineReader as a printer and press Print.
Save the PDF file.

How to set up the import from the Gmail mailbox using the IMAP Image Import Profile?

In your Gmail, create the folder (mailbox) that you want to import from.
In your Gmail, create the folders (mailboxes) for the Exceptions and Processed emails.
Enable the IMAP protocol in Gmail settings.
Turn on the Less secure app access option in the Security section of Google Account Settings.
Create a new Image Import Profile (open the project in the Project Setup Station > Project > Image Import Profiles > New). Choose Hot Folder: IMAP Server.
Specify the address of the IMAP server: imap.gmail.com.
Click settings and specify your Gmail login and password. Choose Type of encrypted connection: SSL.
Click Browse and select […]

Catherine2022-06-21T14:51:19-04:00Tags: Automated Invoice Processing Software, Automatic Document Separation, Batch OCR, Document Management, Document Processing Software, Email OCR, Server OCR|

Tungsten Kofax OmniPage Server On-Premise

Tungsten Kofax OmniPage Server turns OmniPage into a true server-based OCR solution that is scalable to any volume by load-balancing across multiple servers. OmniPage Server is perfect for high-volume conversion projects or for distributing OCR throughout the enterprise.

SimpleIndex Pro Server 1M PPY

SimpleIndex Pro Server 1 million pages per year – ABBYY FineReader OCR Server, Accusoft Barcode Engine 1D/2D Client, DTK Barcode Engine 1D/2D Server & ISIS Scanning

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.

Demos and Additional Materials

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

Enterprise OCR Applications

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
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.

ABBYY FineReader Server On-Premise

ABBYY FineReader Server On-Premise

Innovative server-based OCR software for performing centralized enterprise-wide OCR processing. Allows anyone on the network to submit files for OCR. Complex XML job specifications can be submitted to control output. Support available for Arabic and Asian languages.

Available in CPU, Total Page Count and Pages Per Year licensing models.

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, […]