Why is OCR Essential in RPA for Your Business?

What Is OCR And RPA? 

Optical character recognition is a technology that is used for converting a picture to text with just a single click. It has completely eliminated the need for manual data extraction as the technology can do it quickly and accurately. The extracted data can then be stored digitally or edited as one wants, leading to a more reliable data handling process.

On the other hand, Robotic process automation refers to using virtual or AI bots to automate tasks that are repetitive and boring for humans. These bots can be integrated into a company’s software or applications and can be accessed anytime anywhere. You can learn more about this by giving this blog post by Voodoo a read.

Both these technologies are different in their nature. But by combining them, businesses automate repetitive data entry and processing tasks that include reading and analyzing textual stuff. It can invoice, fill forms, draft receipts, and even manage documents. In simple words, OCR will extract textual data from a source and RPA will analyze and store it without the need for human intervention. 

This can give businesses several benefits and we’re going to discuss them now, since we’ve gotten you familiar with what these technologies are and what their combination can do. 

Benefits Of Combining OCR And RPA In A Business

Following are some of the benefits that combining both these technologies can offer your business. Knowing them will help you determine why OCR and RPA are essential for your company.

1. Better Accuracy

The OCR technology can read and extract textual information with extreme accuracy from documents, invoices, and forms, among other things. Similarly, RPA can handle it better as compared to humans. 

When employees do these things, there are always chances of human error. With such technologies, everything like this is eliminated. This also means that there won’t be any need for reworking or revising the data as the technologies will have already extracted and handled it with extreme accuracy. 

2. Enhanced Speed

Manually extracting and handling textual data from physical media can take the employees some time. They might even take weeks depending on the amount of documents or any other form of physical media at hand. 

Combining and integrating both these technologies can massively decrease the time taken to extract, analyze, and store textual data. They can do it much quicker as compared to humans. Besides that, RPA bots can work for days without needing to stop, meaning that they can handle as many of these tasks as the business throws at them. With employees, you have to consider that you don’t overwork them. 

3. Increased Productivity Of The Employees

Since OCR and RPA will significantly reduce the amount of paperwork that each employee has to extract text from, analyze, and store, it’ll enable them to do other tasks with their time.

This will, in turn, increase their productivity and also the profitability of your business in the long run. Besides this, handling paperwork in general can be a pretty boring task for your employees, and by combining OCR and RPA, you can let them have a sigh of relief. 

4. Improved Accessibility

The textual data that is extracted from physical media by OCR and handled by RPA is usually stored in a digital form. This digital media can then be shared with anyone as needed and can be accessed by any employee at any given time from anywhere in the world. This can ease collaboration and can lead to a better, simpler work environment for everyone.

Besides this though, OCR can transform text into speech. Doing so can help visually impaired or disabled employees access the data. This can also help normal employees consume the information as sometimes, hearing something is more effective than reading it.

5. Greater Data Searchability And Index Ability

With OCR and RPA, businesses can store all the textual data in a digital form in one place. This data can then be searched through easily when needed. Employees don’t have to go through multiple pages of documents to find something when the need arises. 

6. Saves Resources And Cost

Manual data extraction, analysis, and storage are most of the time quite expensive. Not to mention, the huge amount of physical space that a business might need to store physical media. 

By choosing to combine OCR and RPA, all these things can be saved. You won’t have to employ staff to extract or handle any kind of data and all of it can be stored digitally or on the cloud. 

These are some of the benefits that you can receive by combining both these technologies and integrating them into your business. We hope that these benefits are enough to make you see just how and why is OCR essential in RPA for your business. 

Conclusion

OCR and RPA are two of the technologies that can prove to be great for a business. Combining them and then integrating them into your business software or programs can help with many things, especially with text extraction, analysis, and storage. With their assistance in these things, there are other benefits that your business can receive as well, making OCR essential in RPA for your business.

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