Facing today’s competitive landscape, businesses need to act swiftly with the right strategy. The ability of businesses to derive real-time data insights for informed decision-making is increasingly important. However, 80% of most company data still remains untapped, leaving behind document piles that hold great potential. This is where the real challenge lies. Businesses deal with vast amounts of documentation every day, yet still struggle to efficiently extract structured data from them.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) comes to the rescue. Advanced by AI, this OCR technology allows automated data extraction. It scans, captures, and converts unstructured data from PDFs or paper documents into structured data quickly in seconds. Read on as this article will tell you more about how to make the best use of it for your business.
Defining Unstructured and Structured Data
Data typically falls into two categories: unstructured and structured. One is messy and difficult to manage, the other is organized and easier to analyze. OCR bridges the gap between two by transforming unstructured data into structured datasets, automatically.
Unstructured Data
This type of data has no fixed format, is often text-heavy, and may include media. This is why managing unstructured data without specialized tools can be challenging.
Examples: PDF documents, paper-based records, emails, and online messages.
Structured Data
This type of data is highly organized and follows a predefined format. It’s lighter to store, easily searchable, and more processable for various business purposes.
Examples: spreadsheets, JSON files, and other machine-readable data formats.
Why Structured Data Is Important
Instead of keeping information in unorganized documents, transforming it into structured data allows businesses to work smarter and make informed decisions. Structured data makes key information accessible for further use and analysis. A recent McKinsey study even found that data-driven organizations are 19 times more likely to be profitable, highlighting just how important a strong data foundation is for business.
Leveraging OCR for Data Transformation
Collecting structured data from a large volume of documents manually can be time-consuming and stressful. OCR is not just a tool, it’s a solution that offers a wide range of benefits for businesses, especially in automating data extraction from documents.
- Streamlined workflow: Stop overworking your employees with endless paperwork. With just a simple request, OCR can automatically extract structured data from documents, giving you a more efficient way to complete tasks.
- Smarter decision-making: Gain access to highly accurate datasets that support your business to make informed decisions and develop more effective strategic plans
- Cost reduction: Finish tasks faster, save time and money, and redirect resources to profit-generating activities.
How To Use OCR to Extract Data Automatically
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology helps businesses seamlessly extract data from multiple document types. By retrieving every piece of data, OCR automates data extraction in a matter of seconds. OCR does more than just speed things up, its high accuracy unlocks access to more reliable data that businesses can trust.
Here’s how you can start using OCR to effortlessly extract structured data from your documents.
- Upload the PDFs or images of your documents
- OCR scans, extracts, and categorizes the data automatically
- Preview the results and make adjustments if needed
- Export or integrate the extracted data into your preferred format for further use
Ready to accelerate your business processes with AI-powered OCR? Fintelite OCR comes with a set of cutting-edge features that allow you to seamlessly extract data from documents—regardless of the type. Whether it’s invoices, receipts, bank statements, or customer forms. Fintelite OCR is designed with embedded fraud detection to check if a document has been altered, protecting your business from potential manipulation. Book a demo to see how Fintelite OCR fits your needs and delivers real value to your business.
