It is everywhere and used every day, but what is OCR Technology?

Technology boffins may have heard what OCR is and how it operates, however, those that are not as well-versed within the sector may struggle to know what it is and how it has a major impact on a number of everyday life tasks that many will have taken part in.

Let’s take a look at what OCR is in detail and provide you with all the answers you need to ensure you know what it is and how beneficial the technology has become over the years.

What is OCR?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition and it is a technology that is widespread throughout a number of different key and important industries. OCR has the ability to be able to recognize text inside images and is used to convert almost any kind of image that contains written text into machine-readable data.

The technology has managed to develop since the 1990s when it first became extremely popular as people used to try and digitalize historic newspapers. Of course, it has continued to grow and develop as it can provide near-perfect results when used.

Which industries have benefited from OCR?

One of the biggest industries to have managed to benefit from the introduction of OCR technology and its continued development is the live casino sector.

The technology used effectively monitors the rooms in which live casino games are being played by using the specialized cameras to capture the raw data that has been provided from the game, as well as analyze the cards, suits and symbols. Once this happens, it is cross-referenced to a rapid response database that will then display the results on the screen, thus allowing bettors to make more informed decisions.

The game experience has also been improved for dealers as well as players as they are able to deal with the cards as if it were a traditional casino game and without the need of having to scan each individual card, whilst players will notice that time between games has dramatically shortened.

Other industries in which OCR can be experienced include the banking sector as financial institutions will use the technology available to help them deal with the amount of paperwork that they continue to come across in their daily workloads, whilst it will also allow for handwritten checks to be read, scanned and managed effectively and without someone having to manually input any of the data.

The healthcare sector is another major industry that can benefit from the tech as hospitals and doctors’ surgeries will need their paper documents – such as patient files – to be converted as easily as possible to a digital database whilst OCR will also allow for better diagnoses being made to patients.

The financial sector and the investment industry are just a couple of others that have managed to greatly benefit over time, although it could be argued that almost everyone has been impacted by its introduction at some point.

What are the advantages of OCR to businesses?

As already established, there are a number of specific benefits that OCR technology can provide to businesses within a variety of different sectors, however, there are also a number of wider and more general advantages that can be experienced.

These are just some of them:

Reduced manual identification: OCR can be used to automatically extract customer details and identify them immediately, rather than require it to be completed manually and in a time-consuming manner.

Reduced cost: With less human effort required, there is the potential to reduce costs by introducing OCR technology within the business. Additionally, fewer human resources will be needed, thus saving on costs being spent on individuals.

Make the business more efficient: With the pace that OCR can work, businesses can be more efficient and will be able to work more effectively, thus allowing them to ultimately speed up their operations and increase revenues brought into the company. Furthermore, the productivity level can also be increased and improved.

Error-rate reduction: Unfortunately, humans are prone to making mistakes, it is in our DNA. However, technology will have typically learned not to, thus allowing for a reduction to take place.

Conclusion

If you were not already aware of the role that OCR technology plays, how important it is and how it has an impact on everyone in their daily lives, it is pretty evident that it does and is vitally crucial to businesses in all sectors.