Converting images to text is called OCR (Optical Character Recognition.) It is a process that many software perform to make the textual data accessible for document management purposes.
In today’s setting, many companies use OCR technology to scan and convert invoices, contracts, marketing material, etc., into text form. This allows quick data entry and a smoother workflow for the organizations without committing manual errors.
Such are the reasons why OCR boosts productivity for businesses and individuals. However, these are not all the factors. To explore the possibilities with OCR, we need to take a deep dive into this topic and explore it in further detail.
How Does OCR Technology Improve Productivity?
Below, we’ve mentioned some ways in which image-to-text technology helps productivity for individuals and organizations.
1. Reduces manual errors
Image-to-text technology allows firms and individuals to automatically enter data into their devices without any need for human intervention.
Before OCR tools, the process of converting printed textual data from hard to soft form was completely manual. Workers used to sit long shifts to copy everything written on the documents and save it to digital devices.
However, writing manually introduced a chance of typos, punctuation, and other types of errors. Thus, to avoid such issues, using a free online OCR tool can be the smart move.
The free image-to-text converters can automate the entire process without needing any manual input.
We’ll use the above image with the OCR tool of our choice and see if it accurately gets the job done or not.
As evident, the selected tool has automatically extracted the text from the image and made it in editable, storable, and updatable form.
2. Saves Time
Organizations and individuals save a lot of time while dealing with repetitive tasks as they’re automated with advanced OCR tools. These tasks may include manual data entry, document management, spreadsheet population, and so on.
Consequently, individuals or firms can utilize the saved time elsewhere on making strategies, launching new products, raising capital, etc., making them more productive than before.
For instance, a marketing company can spend time developing fresh campaigns rather than manually inputting data from printed material to the PC.
Similarly, a student can work comprehensively on their thesis research by quickly updating or loading their literature (books) on the laptop.
3. Improves searchability of information
Besides the advantages of reducing labor and being time-saving, image-to-text technology also improves the searchability of information. This means that finding data from hard copies is way easier when they’re digitized to a machine.
For instance, the website Newspaper.com has all the newspaper articles starting from the 17th century, all the way up to the 21st century. These websites have utilized OCR tools to make the knowledge accessible to millions of users worldwide.
Today, users can go to newspaper.com and search for any keywords they want. The online database will show all the related articles to people based on their queries.
Such is the power of OCR – it enables easy accessibility and management of information, improving productivity for many, worldwide.
4. Enhances collaboration
When textual data is organized in Excel workbooks, website databases, word, and .txt files, etc., working together in groups becomes considerably easy.
The consolidated data ensures that all knowledge is streamlined, enabling a smooth workflow for teams and less confusion for project managers.
Besides all this, a universal dataset can confirm uniformity in the quality of the produced end-goods. Collaborators will no longer create sub-divided content amongst departments as everything will be available to everybody at all costs.
Such working practices can ensure that all processes flow nicely for an organization, making them reign supreme amongst their competitors.
Hence, OCR technology becomes best known for its capability of enhancing collaboration with partnered companies, or within an organization.
5. Scans multiple documents at once
Lastly, image-to-text technology enables businesses and individuals to improve the scalability of their operations. The advanced OCR tools can scan and update text for multiple image documents at once.
This allows business owners the liberty to expand their working radar by incorporating more goods, brands, deals, etc., under their banner. They’re able to manage excruciating workloads using the advanced technology.
If that’s not enough, modern-day OCR software contains many more internal processes them that are crucial to an organization.
A simple example could be Google Lens. It can be used to not only scan documents, but also to translate written text, or search it up on the internet.
These features become crucial to multinational companies who have to communicate to and fro in various languages. They need multiple documents scanned and translated simultaneously, and image-to-text technology can do that for them.
Final Words
In this post, we saw how image-to-text technology can boost productivity for organizations and individuals alike. We learned that modern-day OCR tools reduce manual errors and save time by automating data-entry tasks.
We also learned that the advanced technology allows better data management, allowing multiple teams to sync together for bigger projects.
The scalability and searchability of the information causes less confusion amongst the project leaders, allowing a smoother workflow, and hence, better productivity.
That’s all from this post! We hope you enjoyed reading our content!
