What are ICR Services, Their Benefits, and How Does It Work?

The goal of acquiring more with less is usually discussed among company boards and management teams. Companies continuously seek ways to improve cost savings and efficiency through process simplification or workflow automation. One solution that contributes to these goals is Intelligent Character Recognition. By helping employees in expediting execution, working smarter, and enhancing productivity, ICR enables companies to achieve their goals. 

The importance of such technologies shouldn’t be underestimated. For example, a report in 2018 by Goldman Sachs stated that companies spend $2.7 Trillion on conventional, paper-based payment processing that significantly burdens money and time. That’s why ICR technology is used to fetch text from scanned or images documents like invoices or receipts, operating in the same manner as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). 

What are the benefits of incorporating this advanced technology into the organization? How does it differ from conventional OCR and ICR?

What is Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)? 

To clarify this point of view, ICR services are a technology crucially designed for fetching handwritten text from image files or documents and transforming them into a format that machines can quickly ready. While ICR is a variant of OCR, it concentrates on handwritten text rather than computerized or printed characters. 

This discrepancy is crucial as ICR uses AI algorithms and Machine Learning to identify and investigate different fonts and styles of handwriting, making it an advanced OCR version. One remarkable advantage of ICR is its capability to improve learning as it encounters new handwriting patterns constantly. This learning procedure improves the data extraction accuracy over time. 

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Given the similarities between OCR and ICR, it is ordinary for these terms to be utilized interchangeably. The following section will highlight the difference between the two technologies to help in better understanding their distinctions. 

Difference Between ICR and Conventional OCR 

ICR technology and OCR have similarities, but when comparing ICR to conventional, template-based OCR, there are immense differences between the two technologies. Let’s deeply understand them two: 

ICR Technology 

• Doesn’t require templates
• Recognizes handwritten characters
• It is trained and flexible to recognize multiple formats
• It can comprehend information and details
• Updates its learning process every time new data is entered and applied

OCR Technology 

• It is Template-Based
• Only recognizes Characters in printed documents 
• Doesn’t use AI and machine learning to extract data
• It can comprehend information
• Uses a specific format for data entry and doesn’t have learning abilities

In a nutshell, ICR scanning makes it possible to transform handwritten text into data that is simple to understand by a machine, change and search for. Unlike conventional OCR, ICR uses ML and AI to understand details and fetch information within the documents, making it easy to incorporate into different business workflows. 

ICR scanning is a remarkable addition to the data-capturing procedure if a company wants to deal with many handwritten documents that consist of structured and unstructured information. Explore the next section if anyone wants to learn how it functions. 

How Does ICR Algorithms Work? 

ICR works like OCR technology in identifying characters. The main difference is that ICR can easily recognize handwritten characters, which conventional OCR can’t. To gain a deeper understanding of how ICR addresses these concerns, let’s delve into the following steps involved in the ICR process:

1. Image Pre-Processing
2. Segmentation
3. Recognition
4. Post-Processing of the Outcome

ICR Technology Benefits

Any company that regularly manages a wide range of letters, forms, and papers, including those in the legal, financial, or healthcare sectors, can benefit from ICR. These benefits include:

1. Reduced Data Entry Mistakes

When businesses handle large volumes of data, it is not uncommon to encounter an error rate of up to 4%. An ICR service, with the help of ML and AI, helps eradicate these errors immensely. 

2. Lower Operational Costs 

As mentioned earlier, traditional document processing methods can be expensive. However, companies can reduce these costs by up to 90% by employing the ICR algorithm.

3. Scalability 

The ICR services are flexible, enabling them to analyze different document types or process huge quantities. 

4. Shorter Processing Time

Conventional data fetching and verification take minutes for each document, while ICR can save 70% of the time. 

Moreover, the ICR algorithm is used by different industries because it is a cheap and fast solution to process vast amounts of documents.

Key Takeaways 

ICR is a remarkable technology for companies striving to achieve more with less. By improving productivity, efficiency, and cost savings, ICR services help organizations streamline procedures and automate workflows. The influence of such technologies is evident, evaluating the substantial amount of time and money spent on manual, paper-based payment processing. 

Overall, ICR technology provides an efficient and cost-effective solution for processing vast document amounts in different industries. Its ability to convert handwritten text into machine-readable data and machine-learning skills make it an essential tool for integrating into diverse business workflows.