Reading Handprint, Checkmarks, and Forms with FlexiCapture and Vantage

ICR – Intelligent Character Recognition

Intelligent Character Recognition

  • Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) is an extended technology of the optical character recognition (OCR ). While the OCR technology is designed to extract machine-printed characters, the ICR technology retreives information provided as hand-printed characters
  • The ICR technology can extract hand-printed characters that are separated and written as individualcharacters in areas/zones – these areas/zones needs to be specified as fixed fields of a machine readable forms. Alternativelly, they need to be automatically detected.

Example of a form containing hand-printed characters:

icr-form-illu.png

Important note: ICR is not able to extract texts in “cursive handwriting” as in this example:

old-handwriting-illu.png

  • In most cases, the ICR technology is linked to Field Level / Zonal Recognition and forms processing.
  • To enhance the ICR recognition accuracy, it is recommended to use meta data, for example regular expressions, dictionaries or database lookups.

ICR in ABBYY SDKs

The following ABBYY SDKs and products support ICR

  • FineReader Engine
    Since the version 12, Release 3, ICR is as well included in the Linux version. Since the Release 4 of the version 12, it is as well included in the Mac version of FineReader Engine (in lower versions, the ICR technology was only supported in the Windows version.
  • FlexiCapture SDK – this SDK is designed for forms processing and data extraction, ICR and template matching for fixed forms are part of the default feature set. In addition, ABBYY offers this technology as a product in form of the FlexiCapture platform.
  • Cloud OCR SDK – the ABBYY OCR service, allows reading zones that contain hand-printed, separated characters. This online OCR service […]

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.

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 […]

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:

    […]

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 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.

 

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 […]

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 […]

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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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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