Believe it or not, a whooping 60 to 80 percent of digital transformations fail. While some factors may attribute to the failure more than others, one key technology has been sidelined: Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
To put it simply, OCR refers to the technology to convert almost any kind of images containing written text, whether it is typed, hand-written or printed, into machine-readable text data. By transforming business documents into a format that could be conveniently accessed and processed, OCR is the first essential step towards digital transformation. Here are top three reasons why.
OCR enables data analytics and other data processing
Data is at the heart of virtually every digital transformation initiative. Nonetheless, this potential is locked in unstructured formats which cannot be used for automated analytics tools. With OCR technology, data is intelligently captured from mass documents, forms and correspondence to be fully searchable, accessible, and analyzed for meaningful insights. Suddenly, it provides businesses with higher quality information such as customer tastes and preferences, market trends, hidden patterns and correlation to make decisions. (Read more: OCR Among Key Technology Trends to Watch)
OCR is the stepping stone for RPA
Robotics Process Automation (RPA), which helps streamline manual back-office processes, is one of the entry-level strategies to adopt digital transformation. It is designed to boost productivity, improving accuracy while saving cost and manpower. However, the integration of RPA is hinged on clean, accessible, and machine-readable data which is only obtained through OCR. As such, without OCR technology, RPA will not be able to drive digital transformation forward.
OCR improves customer experiences
Digital transformation is all about enhancing customer experiences. As OCR automates documents processes such as data entries or claims and forms processing, employees spend less time needed to do repetitive manual tasks. On a larger scale, it frees up manpower for businesses to work on what matters most: exceeding their client expectations. By making unstructured content searchable, data can be analyzed to identify a problem or opportunity for their customers.
In a nutshell, companies are set to unlock the full potential of digital transformation if, and only if they could leverage every aspect of data at hands. OCR makes this possible through document digitalization and automation. As a result, every digital transformation journey should start with the adoption of OCR as one of the key technologies to drive this initiative forward.
To learn about FPT Software’s OCR platform, visit here!
