Every company uses data to pursue successful decision-making, long-term growth, and daily operations, with most of this data being processed by hand. Human error is accountable for up to 90% of workplace mishaps. And while many companies use helpful tools like OCR to automatically extract data and save time, data entry mishaps still happen, putting the success of any organization on the line. Below, we'll explain what OCR technology is, how Artificial Intelligence (AI) improves upon it, and how innovative companies use it today to run a more successful and efficient business.
What Is OCR?
OCR (optical character recognition) is a tool meant to identify text within documents and convert it into a digital format. OCR tools are helpful for many businesses, but there are limitations in their utility.
While this technology can extract data from documents, it does so unreliably. OCR simply transcribes its interpretation of document data without understanding it, so it cannot discern the context of documents to avoid simple mistakes such as missing information and formatting errors. OCR tools also can not distinguish variability in structure. They are typically programmed explicitly for each document type and don't allow for flexibility regarding document formatting.
OCR is a step in the right direction toward workplace optimization, but these drawbacks limit its capabilities. Businesses that use OCR tools can extract data but can't understand the meaning of that data or whether it's even correct. This means a human is required to verify and input the data, although, as previously mentioned, humans are prone to errors themselves. However, more recently, AI-powered document understanding has begun to harness the potential of OCR technology while eliminating its margin for error. This solution solves the problems presented by OCR technology while maintaining its main goal of eliminating manual data entry and improving business process efficiency.
What Makes AI Different?
AI-powered document understanding solutions can correctly identify which type of document and key-value fields they are processing and, thus, extract data in the proper format. Even if a document is simple enough for an OCR tool to pull text out, OCR tools don't understand what they are evaluating. OCR is simply looking for the text alone, while AI-powered tools can intelligently identify the meaning of data. AI-powered solutions better understand where data belongs regardless of format, consistently producing more accurate results. Unlike an OCR, which approaches each document with a clean slate, AI-powered solutions learn from every document they analyze and adjust their outputs accordingly.
Introducing Intelligent Document Understanding with Base64.ai
Base64.ai is a revolutionary AI-powered intelligent document understanding solution. Its no-template design makes it capable of handling all document types, including those with unstructured data or complex forms. This document understanding model allows the platform to learn from every document it processes and enables it to work with new documents it has never seen before.
The platform's easy integration options make it accessible to business owners regardless of their tech knowledge. While other solutions take days or weeks to get started, Base64.ai can be integrated in less than five minutes in most scenarios. And the platform is already capable of handling 700+ common document types out-of-the-box, meaning it's already likely able to handle your business's document processing needs. However, if that's not enough, Base64.ai is probably one of, if not the only, document understanding solutions that our team can easily modify to handle your most complex documents.
Base64.ai can distinguish variations in each document, adequately adjusting its analysis with an impressive 99%+ accuracy. For instance, it can identify a single form such as an ACORD 25 certificate in an extensive PDF, because it knows what to look for. It can also understand skewed or rotated documents, a feature that most traditional OCR tools lack. As mentioned above, OCR tools only understand structured data, which is data that is clearly defined with easily identified patterns. However, with most data on the Internet currently unstructured, Base64.ai's deep learning solution becomes more crucial than ever for any business serious about scaling their document understanding and data entry efforts.
Base64.ai allows companies to meet their document processing needs today while maintaining peace of mind for the future. Some innovative companies already see their document processing time reduced from days to seconds because of this powerful yet easy-to-integrate technology. Try the free online demo today to see how Base64.ai can help your business automate document processing with AI.