Data entry has its roots in the early ages, first humans and then typewriters were used for this purpose. Normally papers and files were used to record that information. Then inventions and continuous innovations made things a little easier, now computers can store millions of paper information in just one flash drive. This brought an evolution to the corporate sector by saving their time and human efforts on manual data management.
But there was a problem which was how to digitize the previously typed papers. Humans can be used for data entry purposes as it will take hours, days, or even weeks for this. There was a need for some automatic and digital solutions that can convert papers into computer editable forms.
ICR Software – An AI-Powered Technology Recognizing Handwritten Papers
Intelligent character recognition technology is the updated form of optical character recognition technology that is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques. The AI algorithms help the ICR system with different handwriting styles and fonts. It can learn new styles and enhance its text recognition and accuracy.
However, when analyzed with OCR the accuracy of ICR is still low, the reason is it is still in the learning process. ICR needs to be mature which can be done by giving it new datasets for training. ICR software is learning new neural networks by AI algorithms. The more it gets trained, the better and accurate the results will be.
Working of ICR
All many mobile apps that use ICR Technology (embedded into them). The working is the same as OCR, but the process of data extraction is different. Let’s have an example from the digital customer onboarding process to understand the functionality of ICR software.
- The document to the ICS software in the form of an image or PDF file. It will scan the image and then extract details from it like name, mobile number, date of birth, and address
- Some businesses require the customer to upload a handwritten written consent. ICR will extract data from the consent note also
- The extracted information to be confirmed and stored in the database
ICR services are widely used in the IDV industry where users upload their identity documents and the data is captured using ICR Technology. The document verification is only possible through ICR technology Because the user-entered information is cross-verified with the extracted details. Handwritten consent verification is the new security measure used by financial institutions to eliminate frauds and scams. The consent is written on paper and a picture is uploaded holding that note in hand. The Consent can be conclusive handwriting styles that can be understood by normal humans or traditional character recognition technologies. ICR technology can scan and capture the handwritten information in the constant verification process.
The consent note can be used as future proof. The constant verification process has helped banks in maintaining secured customer profiles. There were cases where customers deny that they tried to open an account.
Intelligent Word Recognition
IWR is the recognition of unrestrained handwritten words, it focuses on the entire word or phrase instead of capturing characters like optical character recognition. IWR compares the captured words to the dictionary, essentially eliminating character mistakes present on the document.
It means if some person has written a misspelled word on paper, it will correct that word. For example, the incorrect word “Londan” will not be typed as it is but the correct spelling “London”.
Optical Mark Recognition
The technology that can capture manual marked data from documents such as surveys or reports is known as optical mark recognition. The tick signs, filled circles are recognized by optical mark recognition.
Wrapping it Up
ICR software can be used on a commercial level by businesses that need to digitize hard paper daily. Just like a bank or a hospital that has to deal with thousands of paper documents. Human typing can have numerous errors but the efficiency of ICR software is at the highest level, a business can trust it blindly. It can work on both structured and unstructured data, it does not require extra technology for this. It can work efficiently on colored documents and recognize all languages. Not only that, but it gives ICR the ability to understand multilingual papers also.