During these unusual times and as your company thrives, it is going to need an effective document management system. Moreover, it’s often more practical—and cheaper in the long run—to find a reliable way to have paperless processes, which means establishing a facilitated internal document sharing system and a way to speed up external transactions. This is where document capture can help. Regardless of the size of your organization, it can manage all papers in various formats and store it in a more secure, convenient, and versatile way.

Understanding document capturing
Document capture involves scanning, indexing and uploading of physical paper documents or digital documents into an electronic repository. Uploaded documents have relevant data, which can be detected by the intuitive document capture software to make them suitable for easy retrieval and usage. The document capturing software is an essential aspect of a document management solution as it enables the conversion of both paper and digital documents (CAD, JPG, TIFF, PDF, and other formats) to make them consistently readable, possible to edit, and easy to search. It will also enhance collaboration and efficiency as well as compliance and security.

By not capturing the essential data with capture software, retrieval of the documents will be difficult and oftentimes cause lost documents.

Different document capturing methods
It depends on how complex the document capture software is, but document capturing is generally classified into two types, which are basic and advanced.

Basic document capture scans and saves documents into a shared network or computer, but the documents are unsearchable and unprotected against unauthorized access or accidental deletion. Advanced document capture is necessary if you want a more reliable and secure system that provides an accurate way to extract and classify information based on the content. Moreover, it provides various options, flexibility and easier way to capture documents as it usually involves specialized document capture technology that can automate the process.

Technologies involved
There are certain technologies that can be applied to automate document capture:

ICR (intelligent character recognition) – Recognizes handwritten text, making it relevant for companies where handwritten forms are the norm.

OCR (optical character recognition) – Machine text is read to be converted into readable and editable text for a computer program.

OMR (optical mark recognition) – Captures group, model, or simple checkmarks, which people use to give responses in examinations, surveys, elections, and other applications.

Free-form extraction – A technology that extracts data from forms (i.e. surveys, applications, invoices, etc.) and avoids manual retouching. Scanned images are transformed into PDFs, which can be edited.

OBR (optical barcode recognition) – Barcodes are recognized and added to documents. This technology also enables automated indexing and naming and organizing files according to the barcode information.

How it’s done
Document capturing typically involves certain steps that high-end document capture software solutions also follow:

1. Importing – The document is imported into the software, including emails.
2. Processing – The software converts the text into a readable format. The image is edited and adjusted to improve quality.
3. Validation – The captured document is analyzed against pre-configured tolerance levels. If a document does not meet those conditions, the software automatically delivers it for manual correction and verification.
4. Classification – The document capture software reads the document to automatically sort it according to its type. Advanced systems have machine learning algorithms to accurately and effectively classify documents.
5. Indexing – The documents will be available for retrieval and search.
6. Extraction – The identification of metadata in documents, so it is easier to find them through fuzzy logic and database lookups.
7. Delivery – The documents are stored in a repository and can become part of automated workflows.
We have a document capture solution for you

Tronitech CAPTURE is an enterprise distributed and fully functional document capture software designed and built for the internet. It’s a thin client that provides all the essential production capture features, which were previously available only inexpensive, traditional, and hard-to-deploy ‘thick’ systems.

With Tronitech, you get an easy-to-use, reliable, and powerful capture software that can scan virtually any number of documents from a variety of sources. It comes with features like automated document cleanup, bar code recognition, hand, and printed character recognition, and much more. Contact us to schedule a demo, so you can see how it works.