What is OCR: A Step By Step Guide For Data Extraction

Data entry can often turn tedious and inaccurate if done manually. You can avoid this cumbersome process with an automated optical character recognition software. What OCR does is, it uses machine learning to scan each character on a page individually. It allows the documents to be uploaded as text documents instead of images. Any kind of printed document, be it receipts, invoices, contracts, utility bills and much more can be scanned easily and promptly with this solution.

Data extraction steps using Infrrd OCR

How is Infrrd’s OCR different from Traditional OCR?

Our OCR solution is different in two ways:

1. We don’t use templates but NLP for recognizing entities in a document. This helps us identify business names, bank details, amounts, prices etc. irrespective of where they are placed in the document. Read more here on why templates are a bad idea.
2. We use Machine Learning to fix what traditional OCR’s cannot figure out, by building an automatic context around the document being handled. Watch this video to understand how Infrrd OCR solution scans in a fine-tuned manner.

How does Infrrd OCR work?

Step 1: A unique API key is generated for you when you first integrate our optical character recognition software with your mobile or desktop. Even for a trial use, our representatives offer you this key so that you’re all set to scan your documents.

Step 2: Upload any document in the format of PDF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG etc. to the software. You can use Infrrd’s software as a white-labeled mobile app, on your desktop or as a cloud solution to start scanning.

Step 3: Our software starts extracting line items and other key fields such as logo, expense type, merchant name, date of the transaction, amount, currency VAT/GST, business name etc. We can even customize it to extract any other information that you might need. The OCR software provides character-level and word-level confidence scores. These scores are indicators of whether the OCR software believes the extracted information to be accurate.

Step 4: The extracted data is made available to you in formats like XML, CSV, JSON etc. as per your requirement.

What add-ons do you get with OCR Text Recognition Solution by Infrrd?

1. Self-learning software: Unlike other OCR solutions, Infrrd OCR doesn’t have a fixed template. You don’t need to manually fill in the details left out by your regular image text recognition tool. Our solution uses AI to understand the specific details in your invoices, receipts, bank statements or even handwritten forms and extracts them in a defined way.
2. Recognizes major world languages: It can comprehend documents in French, Dutch, German and Spanish apart from English.
3. User-friendly in a remote location as well as on the go: Whether you’re sitting in your office or you are in transit, this invoice scanning software is available via cloud solution and mobile app.
4. Freedom from templates: Infrrd OCR doesn’t follow a set template. It identifies line items and key fields like tax, amount, quantity, business name, and other details automatically which might have been left out by the other OCR tools.
5. Functional across different business verticals: Be it finance, education, insurance, retail, logistics or warehouse, this document extraction application for enterprises can be applied to any sector. Wherever you need a little help in processing humongous chunks of data, our solution will be there to aid you.

So, why wait? Get a free demo of Infrrd OCR for your invoices, text or images now and organize your data! Our support staff will guide you through every step.

Ready, set, scan!

Originally published at infrrd.ai on April 17, 2018.