How AI-backed OCR sets the Pace for Automating Online Businesses

In today’s rapidly evolving digital setting, everything happens within a blink of an eye. From quick customer onboarding to verification procedures during checkouts, the technological upheaval is taking over major business operations. Traditional businesses need to adopt the emerging technologies in order to compete with their market rivals otherwise they will be outwitted by smart competitors.

According to research conducted by Unit 4, office workers invest almost $5 trillion yearly in administrative tasks while 67% of the subjects were of the view that incorporating digital technology is necessary for competitive advantage. Another study by Mckinsey Digital states that workplace automation could save 64% of corporations almost 30% operational activity time. Introducing automated systems for carrying out manual and tedious tasks could substantially reduce business expenses.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is one of the technologies which can totally revamp how a business performs its daily operations. OCR solutions have been used by businesses to perform scanning of documents for customer verification and building secure relationships with other business entities. According to KVB research, the worldwide market size for Optical Character Recognition is expected to record almost 12.6 billion USD at the end of 2025. This will help online businesses benefit from increasingly popular online OCR technologies and build better customer loyalty. 

AI-powered OCRs employ machine learning and artificially sound models that are helpful in identifying fake and illegitimate documents that are forged, photoshopped, or have missing holograms. This software is sometimes referred to as ICR because characters are processed using modern character recognition systems which also check or document formats to validate user authenticity. Below are a few benefits of employing AI-based OCRs for online businesses:

Traditional OCRs have a number of potential problems including misinterpretation of characters, long processing and uploading times, and missing data features while reading text. Improved OCRs backed with artificial intelligence reduces the load of errors. AI character recognition solutions use intelligent machine learning models to learn document format and their intricacies. The Application Programming Interface (API) is integrated into the verification software or web platform which performs user authentication services for the users. 

Modern state-of-the-art ICRs allow easy adaptations with multiple document formats around the globe. With multi-lingual support, unstructured documents in any language could be decoded into image formats for future data retrieval. Formats of Handwritten documents, receipts, business records and papers, and officials letters could easily be fed into the AI system to recognise any unauthorised verification attempts. These improved solutions come with better accuracy and reduced error rates and help track down unoriginal and illicit documents. 

Customers are the backbone of any business or a financial organisation. Without a good user experience, any organisation is on the verge of losing its market reputation and customer base. When talking about customer satisfaction with a service, product, or business, it is important to consider the usability delivered to the end-user. Usability is a measure of how easy it is for the customer to use the end-product and it plays an important part in determining the overall customer experience.

Powerful OCRs with intelligent solutions not only ensure that businesses practice Know Your Customer (KYC) standards which are essential in knowing customer identities better but also complying with Anti Money Laundering (AML) obligations which play a significant role in stopping criminal activities for illicit purposes. These help in secure data verification of onboarding customers by performing verification checks against their identity document photos. 

For online enterprises to survive, striking the right balance between combined business expenses and penetration of income is essential. Disruption at any end could prove disastrous and disturb the equilibrium ultimately resulting in revenue loss for the company. Maintaining a steady flow of business operations and an increasing income amount is necessary for a business to thrive. AI-driven OCR systems offer cost-effective solutions to cut business operational costs by replacing manual verification tasks performed by heavily paid personnel.   

Managing employees and performing other administrative tasks becomes an uphill task when automated systems don’t have your back. With ICRs, keeping a check on customer record-keeping has become easier and operational activities optimised. 

The digital data stored on online databases acquired through OCR is safe and secure and could be readily retrieved when required by authorised entities. With better turnaround times distributed data retrieval online businesses could provide their customers with a seamless experience.

Online businesses need to perform KYC verification of their customers to ensure their identity is genuine. Apart from customer identification, it also acts as a deterrent against criminal funding and terror financing. KYC procedures are a must to follow when cash flow is a part of daily operations since the loss of capital is always imminent. 

With modern OCR solutions, performing KYC is not an uphill task anymore. Online KYC, for verification purposes, uses OCR technology to extract data from identity documents in a matter of seconds. Incorporating these solutions not only helps maintain sound KYC standards but also makes the process, swift, secure and smooth. 

To sum it up, business operations could be automated using emerging OCR solutions powered with Artificial Intelligence to perform document authenticity checks, secure customer onboarding, and optimise business operations.