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 […]

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:

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

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 […]

ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK

ABBYY® Cloud OCR SDK is a web-based document processing service that will enhance your enterprise software systems, SaaS platforms, or your mobile apps with the ability to convert documents and utilize textual information from scans, PDFs, document images, smartphone photos, or screenshots.

Combining ABBYY’s latest AI-based technologies for information extraction with the highly scalable processing power of the Microsoft® Azure® computing infrastructure, this secure and reliable ABBYY cloud service can be easily integrated into your application via a REST API—empowering it to precisely convert virtually any number of pages within the shortest amount of time.

Why are the prices of OCR applications so different?

OCR software ranges in price from freeware all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars. What explains the difference between these applications? Here’s the breakdown:

OCR Freeware uses the SimpleOCR or Tesseract engines and provide limited scanning and output format capabilities. Recognition quality is generally poor except for the highest quality document images.
PDF OCR Converters provide good quality OCR engines like ABBYY, IRIS and OmniPage, but limit the output to searchable PDF files. These cost less than $100.
Standard OCR applications range from $100-$200 and provide full OCR capabilities including converting scans to Word, Excel, HTML and other editable formats.
Corporate OCR applications add advanced features like automated hotfolder processing, concurrent licensing and other features useful for business applications. Pricing for these is $200-$500.
OCR Servers provide scalable, enterprise OCR services for processing very high volumes of documents or providing OCR capabilities to users throughout the organization. Prices start around $1,500 and go up based on processing volume.
Enterprise Data Capture and Forms Processing applications are used to capture structured data from complex documents like healthcare claim forms and invoices that include things like tables, handwriting, checkboxes, and movable zones. These solutions can cost anywhere from around $1,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the document volume and complexity of the project.

aaron2021-01-24T18:39:02-05:00Tags: Accounts Payable Automation, Accounts Payable OCR, AP Invoice Scanning, Automate Data Entry, Barcode OCR, Batch OCR, Batch OCR PDF, Best OCR Software for Handwriting, Convert Images to Searchable PDF, Convert Images to Word, Convert PDF to Editable Word, Convert PDF to Excel, Convert PDF to HTML, Convert PDF to Text, Convert Picture to Text, Data Capture, Data Extraction, Document Management, Document Processing Software, Extract Text from Image, Forms Processing, Handprint Recognition, ICR, Image Recognition, Invoice Automation Software, Invoice Capture, Invoice Imaging, Invoice OCR, Invoice Recognition, Invoice Scanning Software, Invoice Workflow Software, OCR Accuracy, OCR Character Recognition, OCR Invoice Processing, OCR PDF, OCR Scanner, Optical Character Recognition, PDF Data Extraction, PDF OCR, Scan Invoice, Server OCR, Simple Invoice Software, Text Recognition|

Can OCR be trained for specific fonts?

OCR training was once a critical part of the conversion process. After a document was read, the operator would review the results to correct mistaken characters and these corrections would be used to train the engine so the next time you read a similar document the results are improved.

Modern OCR applications no longer rely on user training for accuracy unless you have very non-standard fonts. These engines have had decades of development and billions of samples used to train their algorithms. In most cases, the introduction of user training will only diminish the results for any documents that are different than the ones being trained.

The training functions still exist for these edge cases, but they are no longer an integral part of the OCR process.

Training in modern OCR is more likely to refer to enterprise data capture applications that use AI-based learning algorithms to find the locations of data points on documents with various different formats, such as invoices.

aaron2021-01-24T18:39:27-05:00Tags: Artificial Intelligence, OCR Accuracy, OCR Character Recognition, OCR Text, OCR Training, Optical Character Recognition, Text Recognition|

Knowledge Base

The SimpleOCR Knowledge Base contains frequently asked questions and answers, technical guides and general information on a broad range of optical character recognition, handprint recognition, data capture, PDF OCR, AP invoice scanning and zone OCR applications.

Contact Us for FREE Consultation on Your OCR Project

aaron2022-06-16T17:40:53-04:00Tags: Accounts Payable Automation, Accounts Payable OCR, AI Classification, AP Invoice Scanning, Automate Data Entry, Automated Invoice Processing Software, Automatic Classification, Automatic Document Separation, Batch OCR, Batch OCR PDF, Batch OCR Software, Best OCR Software for Handwriting, Check Mark Recognition, Checkbox Recognition, Convert Handprint to Text, Convert Images to Searchable PDF, Convert Images to Word, Convert PDF to Editable Word, Convert PDF to Text, Cursive Handwriting Recognition, Data Capture, Data Extraction, Electronic Data Capture, Handprint Recognition, Handwriting Recognition, ICR, Invoice Automation Software, Invoice Capture, Invoice Imaging, Invoice OCR, Invoice Recognition, Invoice Scanning Software, Invoice Workflow Software, Knoxville TN OCR Solutions, OCR Character Recognition, OCR Invoice Processing, OCR PDF, OCR Scanner, OMR, Optical Character Recognition, Optical Mark Recognition, PDF Converters, PDF Data Extraction, PDF OCR, PDF Text Extraction, PDF to TXT Converter, Read Handwriting, Receipt Scanning, Scan Handwriting to Text, Scan Invoice, Scan to Excel, Scantron, Server OCR, Simple Invoice Software, Test Scanning, Text Recognition|

Tungsten Kofax OmniPage – Ultimate

Tungsten Kofax OmniPage Ultimate has several unique features that make it stand out for a variety of applications. Some of these include auto-redaction, SharePoint integration, automatic filing with barcodes, PDF auto-bookmarking, form data collection and MFP support. Most of these new features are not available in the Standard edition.

Tungsten Kofax OmniPage – Standard

Tungsten Kofax OmniPage Standard converts paper, picture, and PDF files into editable documents to save you considerable time and money by eliminating retyping. Your documents look just like the original – complete with text, tables, and graphics. OmniPage uses superior character accuracy to precisely format your documents so you can easily make changes.

ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Corporate, 1 Year Subscription

ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Corporate, (1 Year Subscription) is an all-in-one business toolset for working with PDFs and document digitization. With FineReader PDF employees can work with both digitally created and scanned paper documents to fulfill various document-related tasks in the digital workplace effortlessly. ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Corporate allows you to view, edit, search, comment and collaborate, sign and protect PDFs or compare document versions in different file formats to identify differences efficiently. Thanks to the seamlessly integrated AI-based OCR technology with FineReader you can also extract information from a PDF or convert the entire document to Word, Excel® for further editing. Document conversion can also be automated to prepare multiple documents for further processing.

Demo and Additional Materials

ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Standard, 1 Year Subscription

ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Standard, (1 Year Subscription) is a PDF software application for working with PDF documents and scans. Powered by ABBYY’s AI-based OCR technology it allows you to convert and edit not only digital PDF documents, but also scanned paper documents with the same ease-of-use. With FineReader PDF you can view, edit, search, comment, sign, protect, extract text from PDFs and convert documents into Word, Excel® for further editing.

Demo and Additional Materials

Document Management

The 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 […]

aaron2025-04-22T12:23:28-04:00Tags: Automatic Document Separation, Convert Images to Searchable PDF, Document Classification, Document Management, Document Processing Software, Human-in-the-loop verification, Knoxville TN OCR Solutions, OCR Scanner, Optical Character Recognition|

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.

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, […]

OCR to Excel

Two Types of OCR to Excel Projects

Convert Image to Excel

Two Ways to Convert Image to Excel

MAC OCR Software

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|

Compare OCR Software

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