Getting the most out of your document capture solution – Multistream, color dropout for forms processing
Leveraging an investment in scanning hardware and software should always be a priority. After all these are typically not cheap investments although the ROI can be outstanding if implemented properly.
In this blog I would like to share some little known, yet extremely useful, features that can dramatically improve forms processing automation and accuracy. I am occasionally asked about these features and I believe if more people knew these were available then it would help improve efficiency in the capture process tremendously.
Multistream – Multiple versions of one captured image
The first feature I would like to explain is “Multistream”. As the word would indicate this means that for each image captured, the scanner can output two or more versions of the image. Why in the world would anyone want to do this you ask? Good question and the answer is to improve Forms Processing data extraction accuracy. Typically when people use Multistream they will output a color version of the image and a bitonal (black and white) version of the image. The color version is stored for the purpose of retaining an electronic version of the original document. This version of the image is for human’s to retrieve and view images. However, the bitonal version is used for the capture technology such as OCR to process by computers. Bitonal images are preferred for OCR because the color is unnecessary for a computer to interpret pixels and might actually decrease the level of accuracy.
As you can see in the image below the OMR (Optical Mark Recognition – checkboxes), ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition – Handwritten) and OCR (Optical Character Recognition – Machine characters) are much cleaner on the bitonal image on the left. While the color image on the right is good for human viewing but not as good for capture and data extraction.
Dropout Color – Remove form background color
Another useful feature to use, in conjunction with, or just use in general on certain types of forms, is called “Dropout Color”. This means that either the scanning hardware, sometimes the scanner driver or even capture application, can remove the forms background color. In the image below the form color for the Healthcare form is a red color. This red color is a good way to guide humans completing these forms to which area of the form to fill-in information. However, this color is unneccasary and not needed for a computer to read this information via OCR, ICR or OMR. Therefore, we can “dropout” the color to expose only the information on the form that we really care about.
Forms Processing – Automatically extracting data from forms
Now, after using Multistream and/or Color Dropout, as you can see in the image below, you can now expose all the data you wish to capture in a neat manner which a computer can better understand and interpret. The combination of using these advanced features can certainly help improve your data capture automation and accuracy levels.
Gaining value by using tools available to you
Enabling these features is quite simple so I encourage everyone to consider if these, or other features, might be available to you in your document capture solution that might help improve productivity. These are just a few examples of using available functions to enhance process. Within the entire capture process there are many techniques, functions or features that can be incorporated that would make capture much more efficient.
What do you think? Are you getting the most out of your capture solution or do you think that there are possibly areas of improvement had you known about capabilities such as Multistream or Color Dropout?
Increase ECM Automation Processes With Higher Resolution Scanning
Source: Business Solutions Magazine
Written by: Kevin Neal, product manager – production scanners, Fujitsu Computer Products of America
When we talk about software automation, it’s safe to say that we truly live in remarkable times. Automation, as it will be referred to in this article, can be defined as allowing a computer to accomplish tasks that traditionally took human intervention and/or action to complete.The rapid adoption of automation via software is driven by several basic technical factors, including high-powered, affordable CPUs (more cycles and lines of code executed per second), drastic increases in memory capacity in conjunction with reduced prices, as well as the ever-evolving intelligence within software packages. The computing resources behind all of the advancements are helping to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and assist with compliance and regulation.
Software automation is becoming more pervasive among ECM (enterprise content management) and document scanning solutions. The virtue of implementing ECM solutions has historically been cost reduction, which could have meant decreased headcount or reallocating employee resources to other business units. It may even have been tangible costs such as reducing mailing and shipping charges, eliminating expensive fax transmissions, or increasing physical storage space too, by removing cabinets and file drawers.
Because of computing advancements, businesses and organizations are no longer asking the questions of whether ECM systems are truly viable. Instead, they are asking more pointed questions about how much the return on investment is and how quickly they will realize the ROI. In fact, according to Gartner, Inc. the worldwide ECM software market is expected to grow more than 12% per year through 2010, from $2.6 billion in 2006 to more than $4.2 billion in 2010. These days, it’s more about which hardware, software, and services best fit the needs rather than whether or not to put a solution in place.
With most of the pain points of the DIP (document image processing), DIM (document image management), and/or ECM solutions behind us, we now have an opportunity to do more remarkable automation tasks with software. But the success or failure of the entire system is closely tied to the ‘on-ramp’ of electronic document automation and your document scanner, in particular. In the next few paragraphs, I’ll examine several important software automation solutions from some of the premier forms processing and capture software companies in the industry.
High Resolution Maximizes Recognition Results (Contributed by ABBYY)
When scanning for OCR (optical character recognition) or data capture, start with an excellent quality original. This may be the single most important consideration to achieve optimal results for recognition and capture, as well as for the purposes of long-term preservation. In fact, using a high-quality image takes on increasing importance as more users depend on electronic documents to take the place of paper-based originals because of the searchability and cost savings. On the downside, once scanned, the paper document is often no longer available — so it is important to retain maximum quality from the outset.
Today, 300 dpi (dots per inch) color remains the gold standard for scanning. However, high-quality grayscale is an option when color is not achievable (since color scanning often results in 32-bit files). Whenever possible, maintain color images. Color provides additional depth, which enhances the ability of recognition software to gather additional information about the scanned document in order to maximize accuracy. In short, consider quality first when scanning for recognition and archiving.
Classification Of Forms (Contributed by ReadSoft)
Organizations are turning to one portal for all incoming documents — no matter if they arrive on paper or in electronic form. Technology is available to automatically sort incoming documents and classify them according to case. This enables the simple inputting of all incoming mail into a scanner (without any separator sheets) and lets the computer sort the documents. If documents arrive in electronic form, they are also easily incorporated into the flow. By digitizing paper documents through high resolution scanning, users can easily search and retrieve all incoming mail. What will this do for an organization? Efficiency increases when each and every document is distributed correctly. Fast access to status reports and audit trails gives users better control over information flow. In addition, a smooth integration with back end systems such as customer management applications, databases, and archives boosts the performance of IT systems. The overall result of high resolution scanning is automated classification and sorting — less need for document preparation, one portal for all incoming documents, (paper and electronic), electronic distribution to authorized staff, and control of information flows.
300 dpi — Friend Not Foe For Automated Document And Data Capture (contributed by AnyDoc Software, Inc.)
The idea that scanning documents at 300 dpi will create backlogs and bottlenecks within automated document and data capture solutions is an outdated myth. In fact, within many solutions, product settings default to 300 dpi to maximize character recognition with little or no adverse impact on processing or transmission speed or storage capabilities — and with a great positive impact on recognition accuracy. And, when processing healthcare forms such as explanation of benefits (EOB), Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) and Uniform Bill (UB04s) — known for their notoriously small font and extremely high character density per page, proper resolution is critical. At a 300 dpi setting, recognition engines are optimized and file size is still very manageable. Because the average size of a 300 dpi 8.5” x 11” bi-tonal TIFF image is 40 KB, it means approximately 3,000,000 document images can be stored on a standard 120 GB hard drive.
In decades past, files competed for space that was limited and expensive, but no more. Now, a 40 KB file travels on today’s fast networks at what can be conversationally considered to be the speed of light. A lower scanning resolution can negatively impact data recognition, which is not offset by the saving of space — no longer the limited commodity it once was.
And, some of the better document processing packages will process at 300 dpi, but output at a lesser (i.e. 200) dpi, giving you the best of both worlds. Scanning at a higher resolution can dramatically improve data recognition, decrease the need for human intervention, and increase the efficiency of all downstream applications without negatively impacting electronic transmission or storage space.
More dots per inch (dot) for increased automation
So, maybe now you’re thinking — “Of course I want everything automated and I’ll scan everything at 300 dots per inch and/or color, or both.” Well, not so fast. First, we must consider the risks versus the rewards for this type of a decision as we addressed in an upcoming article entitled “Trends Towards Higher Resolution Scanning.”
To quote Gartner, “The quality, performance, and ease of use of software products will improve.” This will help drive adoption; however, an inefficient document capture solution, due to settling for anything but the most software automation, should be unacceptable these days considering the pros and cons of higher resolution scanning.
In a day and age where no two ECM solutions are built alike, and organizations have choices for software automation components, it’s important to implement the best-of-breed solutions that garner optimal automation results. Whether it is OCR, ICR (), forms processing, separation, classification, unstructured forms, bar code recognition, etc., each step in the automation process and the rest of the automation workflow is directly related to a prior event, and it all starts with document scanning. As more desktop scanners are deployed throughout organizations, there is certain to be an ever increasing demand for ease-of-use and automation. Give your ECM solution the best chance for automation success and don’t underestimate the trends towards higher resolution scanning.
For more information on topics covered in this article or more information in general please visit:
Fujitsu – http://us.fujitsu.com/fcpa
ABBYY – www.abbyyusa.com
AnyDoc Software – www.anydocsoftware.com
ReadSoft – www.readsoft.com
Kevin Neal, product manager – production scanners, with Fujitsu Computer Products of America has been involved in the document scanning/enterprise content management industry for over 18 years. He has held various customer service, sales and management positions for many hardware and software products during his career. In addition, he has years of experience installing, configuring, and troubleshooting networking components as a consultant and network administrator. Currently he handles product management responsibilities for Fujitsu’s complete line of production scanners.
– See more at: http://www.bsminfo.com/doc/Increase-ECM-Automation-Processes-With-Higher-0001#sthash.tUUIEbV9.dpuf
The Importance Of Accuracy In Medical Forms Processing
This is a presentation about some of the important decisions and concepts to consider when implementing a document capture solution for Medical Forms Processing. Topics include form design best practices, new form types used for Medical Forms Processing and getting the most out of your document scanner generic levitra 20mg.
Economies of scale: Cloud processing
Economies of scale: Cloud processing
Document Capture technology has been available for many years and is a proven method to decrease operational costs and improve business efficiency. However, this technology has traditionally been expensive to purchase, implement and deploy.
In organizations, small or large, Information Technology systems are comprised of similar components: Hardware, software and services. The emergence of Cloud Computing offers a new method to provide workers with technology such as Advanced Data Capture that was traditionally only available to Enterprise organizations due to high cost and technical complexity. Now organizations of all sizes, in many different industries can benefit with the Economies of Scale with Cloud Processing as a service.
Businesses purchase computer hardware as a resource for workers to get their jobs accomplished. As it relates to data capture from paper documents specifically, more than ever these businesses can benefit from advances in technology. For example, most smart phones today are equipped with cameras that are capable as acting as a portable image acquisition device. Or, to capture higher volumes of documents a business might choose to purchase dedicated scanners or use the office copy machine’s scanning functionality. The point-is that there is still a certain amount of equipment that a business needs to function.
The fast-growing popularity of Cloud-based storage also makes Advanced Data Capture as a cloud service extremely logically and quite complimentary. There are billions of users currently using some form of cloud storage whether it be business users of applications such as Salesforce.com, or social networks such as Facebook or hybrid applications such as LinkedIn. Additionally, and especially with the undeniable trend of using mobile devices for business data consumption, it only makes perfect sense to allow these devices to also contribute information easily via advanced data capture. Consuming information on mobile devices is easy but to add a business contact, for example, is difficult and frustrating with small display sizes and awkward virtual software-only keyboards.
One of the most logical services to utilize Cloud Computing is Data Capture. Why? Data Capture is a service and with cloud computing an organization can ‘rent’ this service as a shared resource. Since data capture doesn’t store images or information, then it’s ideal for sharing this resource and, therefore lowering the cost to use this service.
Cloud Capture is appealing for many reasons.
First, it allows small and medium sized businesses the opportunity to finally realize the benefits of Advanced Data Capture by sharing resources. This reduces total ownership costs to the organization because these companies ‘rent’ this data capture service. Secondly, it allows the organizations to quickly start utilizing this technology because they do not have to install, configure or maintain these services. This is all taken care of by the hosting company which allows organizations to focus on their core business instead of being burdened by supporting technology.
Additionally, a Cloud Capture platform is also appealing to Enterprise customers. Why? Within any large organization the business typically has many different departments such as Administrative, Marketing, Sales, Purchasing, Accounting and others. Also, the Information Technology (IT) department typically uses many software applications and services to support the business units. With the emergence of Cloud Computing and with more and more corporations moving applications to ‘the cloud’, one service that makes the most sense is Data Capture. Since Data Capture truly is ‘a service’ and does not store data permanently then capture technology infrastructure is ideal for Cloud Computing. Scalability to add additional capacity or seamlessly incorporate new services are added benefits.