Document Imaging was the more commonly used term in the early days of document scanning and OCR and refers to any system used to replicate documents used in business. It evolved from the microfilm days where it was referred to as Document Image Management.

The process of digitizing paper documents using high speed scanners and OCR indexing software.

Reduce Click Charges for Data Capture

If you operate a high-volume scanning department or service bureau, chances are you use software like Kofax to scan and index documents for your clients. If you do then you are well aware of the high cost of click charges and the inevitable mad rushes to purchase additional clicks at the end of a peak volume month.

There are some scanning jobs that need the multi-user batching and indexing features of these systems, but many do not. SimpleIndex® can help you save big on click charges by supplementing your primary scanning infrastructure, letting you perform smaller, less complex jobs in a separate workflow.

Many data capture and forms processing applications charge for every page you process, even if all the data being read is only on the first page. Starting SimpleIndex 9, you can automatically send a copy of the first page from each exported file to a separate folder for data processing, helping you avoid unnecessary processing time and license costs.

Jobs like these can be easily processed with SimpleIndex:

  • Simple scan-to-file with no indexing
  • All indexing is done via bar codes or database lookup
  • No custom export or API integration is required

The following scenarios usually require a more robust solution:

  • Multi-user workflows
  • Complex data extraction and forms processing
  • Direct application integration with APIs

Basically, SimpleIndex is great for 1-2 user workflows where a single user performs the whole scanning and indexing process, or where one person scans and another indexes on a separate workstation. When more than 2 users are required to keep up with indexing volume then it makes more sense to use a system designed for multiple users.

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Instant Integration With Any Application

SimpleIndex® provides a great alternative to “reinventing the wheel” using a document imaging SDK to implement scanning in your custom application. SimpleIndex uses a command line interface to enable developers to execute customized scanning workflows from another application. This lets you take advantage of SimpleIndex‘s TWAIN/ISIS scanning, zone OCR, barcode recognition and database export features without having to re-code them all yourself.

Whether you are an IT consultant creating an application for internal company use or a software developer looking to add scanning features to your application, SimpleIndex provides the easiest solution available.

To use SimpleIndex as a scanning front-end for your application, simply:

  • Create a SimpleIndex job file configured to scan, index and save files the way you want
  • (Optional) configure the database export to create/update document records in your DB
  • Use a “Shell” command to execute the job file from your program

When you execute the job file from your program, SimpleIndex will scan, read barcodes, OCR zones, etc. and organize the documents into the folders and filenames your program requires. The database export can be configured to add or update records in your database with information captured from the documents as well as the image file path or binary data. Index values can be passed from your program to SimpleIndex via the command line. The whole process can be configured to run minimized so the user never even sees the SimpleIndex screen.

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Zone OCR and Dynamic OCR

Many document scanning solutions use Zone OCR to obtain index data from the page.

SimpleIndex improves upon this time-tested but ultimately limited model with its Dynamic OCR feature.

Let’s look at the difference between the two methods:

Zone OCR

Zone OCR is used to read document indexes or tags from text on the page. It is a great way to automate the data entry associated with scanning documents.

However, there are several limitations to zone OCR that must be overcome:

  • Index information must be in the exact same place on every page
  • Documents shift and skew during scanning, causing the zones to not line up
  • If surrounding lines or text on the document are too close, they can encroach on the zone

Dynamic OCR

SimpleIndex overcomes these limitations by using Dynamic OCR technology to locate the desired text even when it moves around on the page. Our simplified version of Dynamic OCR works great for many types of documents at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.

  • Index information can appear anywhere on any page
  • Unwanted characters are automatically ignored
  • Find unique patterns of letters and numbers using Template Matching
    (Social Security #, Date, etc.)
  • Use Dictionary Matching to find a value from a list of possible values
    (Vendor Name, Document Type, etc.)

Download document scanning and OCR software.

Dynamic OCR Examples

In the video we see how SimpleIndex approaches a typical Zone OCR example. With SimpleIndex you can use large zones that give a wide margin for error. Template and Dictionary matching are then used to extract the 7-digit Account Number, 6-digit Order Number and Company Name. SimpleIndex discards the surrounding text and keeps the correct value.

Another common example is finding a unique identifier, for example a social security number, that could appear anywhere on the page. Simply enter the template ###-##-#### and SimpleIndex will search the full OCR text until it finds a match. Since only one social security number is likely to appear on the page, a match on this pattern is almost certainly the required value.

With dictionary matching, you can give SimpleIndex a list of possible values and it will automatically search the zone or page for each possible value until it finds a match.

Many dynamic forms processing applications can be implemented using these simple algorithms. This makes SimpleIndex far more versatile than other zone OCR solutions that require the index value to be in the exact same location on every page. Yet SimpleIndex costs only a fraction of the price!

SimpleIndex‘s dynamic forms processing can greatly speed up data entry by eliminating a good percentage of indexing work. For many this can put the labor cost of scanning within their reach.

MS Office Document OCR Text Parsing Video

Dynamic OCR can also be applied to MS Office and PDF files, creating a fully automated process for intelligently indexing and reorganizing electronic documents.

Amazon AWS Textract Cloud OCR Batch Processing

Amazon AWS Textract Cloud OCR

With Textract you can capture data from almost any type of form, including handwritten ones! Textract identifies labeled text anywhere on the document and returns the label text along with the corresponding value. Map the labels to index fields in SimpleIndex and you are ready to capture that data no matter where it appears on the page.

Textract uses machine learning with a huge model based on the billions of pages processed using Textract to provide the most accurate OCR and form field extraction solution available.

By default, Textract is only available as an API and requires custom coding to integrate it into your document workflows. SimpleIndex turns it into a fully-featured document batch document and data processing app that is ready to use out-of-the-box.

Since there are no templates to configure or train, setup can be done in hours instead of days or weeks months required by other enterprise data capture solutions.

Pay-as-you-go pricing makes SimpleIndex with Textract the most affordable way to batch process forms for projects with less than 50,000 pages per year to process, especially if you need to read handwriting or have forms with many layout variations.

Wiki: How to configure AWS Textract OCR in SimpleIndex

Support for Regular Expressions

Use Regular Expressions to extract index data from OCR text, PDF and Office documents.

SimpleIndex OCR has a simple built-in template format, as well as support for Regular Expressions. Regular Expressions (RegEx for short) let you define complex search patterns to extract matching values from the text.  This greatly enhances the functionality of the dynamic OCR in SimpleIndex, making it capable of finding variable-length fields with no distinct pattern.

Regular Expressions are a commonly used in text parsing applications. The Perl programming language makes extensive use of RegEx, as do UNIX utilities like “grep”. Many programmers and IT personnel are already familiar with RegEx and can create complex expressions without specific training.

Click here for a reference guide to Regular Expressions

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New OCR Features in Version 10

SimpleIndex 10 includes major upgrades to the OCR and Bar Code engines 

  • Amazon Textract Cloud OCR option added, with settings for Text, Forms and Invoice & Receipt extraction.
  • FineReader Engine has been upgraded to version 11. Offers improved accuracy and speed when processing large documents.
  • Full-page OCR to Word (docx), Rich Text (rtf), Open Office (odt), Excel (xlsx), PowerPoint (pptx), ePub Zip (epub), FictionBook (fb2), HTML (htm), XML (xml), Alto XML (alto.xml).
  • MRC Compression for PDF files (Mixed Raster Content).
  • OCR language pack includes all available Tesseract languages including Hindi, Tamil, Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Hebrew and many more.

How to Configure SimpleIndex OCR

Our Wiki help has extensive information on how to configure OCR for various document and data capture scenarios.

Watch this Simple Software University training video to see how to configure and run an OCR job with SimpleIndex.

Download document scanning and OCR software.

 

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What is Document Imaging?

Document Imaging was the more commonly used term in the early days of document scanning and OCR and refers to any system used to replicate documents used in business. It evolved from the microfilm days where it was referred to as Document Image Management.

Document Imaging allows for the scanning of paper documents, as well as the processing of files saved electronically. These files are then named and saved for later searching.

Other document imaging terms include automatic imaging software, best digital imaging software, best imaging software, desktop imaging software, digital document imaging, digital imaging software, document imaging download, document imaging PDF, document imaging processing, document imaging products, document imaging software, document imaging solution, document imaging solutions, document imaging systems, document imaging technologies, document imaging technology, document imaging tools, image to database, imaging resource, imaging scanning software, imaging software companies, imaging software download, imaging software for windows, imaging solution, scanner imaging software, scanning and imaging, scanning imaging, and software for imaging.

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Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract “50” from the value “124450”

To do this example, create a barcode field (Field 1 for example) and a 2nd field with type “Fixed”. In the template for the 2nd field, enter %FIELD1[5,2]% to get “50” from “124450”.

%FIELD1% would get the entire value for Field #1, the barcode field. By adding the [5,2] you tell SimpleIndex to start at the 5th character (5) and take 2 characters from the value (50).

Find out more about barcode scanning on our Barcode Scanning Guide and read up on Optical Character Recognition on the SimpleOCR scanning solutions guide.

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Ensures All Required Documents are Scanned

Some applications have a set of standard documents that are required to be present in each batch. SimpleIndex has the ability to specify a list of required values for a field then audit each batch at the end to ensure all are present. Any missing pages may be scanned and indexed automatically from this screen as well. This feature may also be configured to allow exceptions and log a valid justification for the absent document.

This feature makes SimpleIndex the perfect front desk scanning application For example, a health care chain may have a list of documents they must collect from each patient in order to bill the insurance company With SimpleIndex they can image these documents at the front desk, and audit the batch automatically to ensure all the required pages are there.

Doing this not only eliminates the need for a dedicated, central scanning department to image these files, it also greatly decreases the error rate and improves collections turnaround for our example company.

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The All-In-One Scanning & Sorting Tool

SimpleIndex® has the ability to perform a wide variety of scanning and document organization tasks quickly and easily.

This makes it a must-have tool for IT departments and consultants who often need to:

The missing piece of the IT document management puzzle

With a cost and setup time that is negligible compared to other enterprise capture platforms, SimpleIndex makes sense even when your company already has one. For example:

The wide variety of scanning and indexing tasks you can do with SimpleIndex make it an incredibly useful tool to have in your arsenal.

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Remote Document Capture

SimpleIndex is designed around the idea that it is more efficient to have a scanner in every office, making imaging a part of the daily routine instead of a new company division.

SimpleIndex makes this possible by greatly reducing the cost and complexity of the capture interface and providing unique features that make it easy to implement throughout an organization. Distributed scanning is also made possible by the latest advances in fast, inexpensive desktop scanners.

By moving to distributed scanning, a company with many locations earn huge ROI on shipping costs alone – not to mention the many dedicated employees necessary in a centralized scanning operation. Even with all these savings, turnaround is still greatly improved.

SimpleIndex brings imaging into a whole new era by making it possible for small companies to afford just one and for large companies to afford one in every office.

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Streamlined Interface

Maximum Data, Minimum Clicks

As with any repetitive task, a few seconds saved scanning and filing a single document quickly adds up to dozens or hundreds of hours over the course of a long project or daily routine. The most import part of planning your document capture project is to find the most efficient way to file them correctly. Creating an efficient workflow will save you countless hours of labor over the life of your project.

SimpleIndex is faster and easier because it is designed to perform all of the steps necessary to scan or import documents, process, verify and export them in one continuous workflow rather than requiring the user to click extra buttons each time to initiate the next step. When taken to the extreme, SimpleIndex is capable of performing all of these tasks automatically with just a single mouse click.

SimpleIndex does this by saving all of the settings for a document capture workflow to a file that can be opened just like an Office document. This file is configured by the administrator so the user doesn’t have to see any of the technical details. Very rarely does the operator need to be able to change, for instance, the export file format and file naming scheme. So why do some applications show you a complicated export settings screen every time you try to save a batch? It is this attention to detail that allows SimpleIndex to process the same batch 35-75% faster than its competitors.

SimpleIndex also has the ability to pre-set index values and run jobs using the Command Line Interface. More on this design feature can be found on our Getting Started page.

Index Automation Features

The two main methods for automating indexing are Barcode Recognition and Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

Barcode recognition is faster and more accurate, but your documents must contain a barcode on the document or a cover page for this to work.

OCR is able to read printed data directly from the page, which means most documents can be processed as-is. However it is not 100% accurate and usually requires some human review. Handwriting can be recognized as well, using the Cloud OCR option.

If your index data already exists in another database, SimpleIndex has features that can make use of this data to automate processing. The Index Autofill feature matches data read from barcodes or OCR to data in your database, verifying the correct value is read and populating additional search fields automatically.

Paper and Electronic Documents

Traditional document capture is focused on digitizing paper documents with a document scanner. However, more and more documents are living their best lives as native PDF and Word files, never once having to enter our physical realm.

SimpleIndex is designed to handle both scanned physical documents and electronic files in their native format seamlessly. The OCR function will use existing text from any PDF file or Office document when it is available, or automatically OCR scanned images when it isn’t.

Use the built-in SimpleView viewer to view most common file types, or use the PDF editor and word processor of your choice to provide full editing capabilities embedded right within the SimpleIndex application.

It can also simultaneously scan and import documents from a hotfolder into a single batch. So if, for example, you receive both paper and email invoices, you can process your day’s work all at once with just one click!

Using Pre-Indexed Batches

The Pre-Index Batch feature of SimpleIndex is what enables 1-click scanning and indexing, as well as command line and unattended processing.

Pre-indexing lets you set fixed values for index fields and apply them to a whole batch. These can be combined with automatic values from barcode recognition, OCR and Autofill to create fully automated batch processes that can be launched from your custom application, a desktop shortcut, scheduled server task or even linked to the scan button on your scanner.

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Compare Leading Solutions

The best way to see how the SimpleIndex processing workflow compares to other leading desktop scanning solutions is to see the same process performed side-by-side in each program. Below are videos we recorded of the same batch of documents being scanned and indexed in Kofax Express™, Kodak Capture Pro™, PaperVision™ Capture Express and Office Gemini DiamondVision™. In each one we configured the software to perform the same tasks:

  • Scan a batch of 10 pages
  • Capture a 7-digit account number using Zone OCR
  • Correct any fields that fail to recognize
  • Use a database lookup to populate additional index fields
  • Export the batch to PDF files

Using our standard benchmark batch* we recorded the following processing times:

  • SimpleIndex: 0:45
  • Kodak Capture Pro: 1:50
  • Kofax Express: 2:20
  • PaperVision Capture Desktop: 3:00
  • DiamondVision: 3:20

As you will see in the videos below, SimpleIndex provides the most efficient scanning and indexing workflow of any major document capture application.

SimpleIndex™

Kodak Capture Pro™

Kofax Express™

PaperVision™ Capture Desktop

Note: This video depicts PaperVision Capture Desktop, a now discontinued software that has since been replaced by the similarly functioning updated version of PaperFlow.

Office Gemini DiamondVision™

Testing Methods

The benchmark times were recorded using all available software shortcuts, and by performing data entry and user interactions as fast as possible. The same scanner and computer hardware was used for each test. Much care was taken to ensure that each application yielded the most accurate OCR results possible given the sample documents.

Unfortunately none our competitors could accurately capture the account number on all 10 pages. The extra time to correct these errors accounts for 15-30% of the difference in processing times. The difference in accuracy is due in large part to SimpleIndex‘s pattern matching OCR feature, which the other programs lack.

Keep in mind these videos were recording using the latest version available at the time this test was taken. Results may vary with with later versions.

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Searching and Viewing Documents

If you have not yet decided on a plan for how to organize your electronic documents for later retrieval, you should take some time to consider the possible options.

Search and Retrieval with Document ManagementThere are several ways to search and view documents processed with SimpleIndex®

  • Use SimpleSearch to use keyword searches to find and view indexed documents
  • Use SimpleView to browse folders, search files, view, edit and annotate scanned documents without a database
  • Use a Document Management System for integrated searching, viewing, workflow, security, compliance auditing and other records management functions
  • Use Cloud Storage platforms like Google Drive, Box and OneDrive
  • Use SharePoint to share documents online with custom metadata, create custom document workflows and employ records management standards
  • Link files to a custom application using the Command Line Interface or RPA bot
  • Integrate with your Database to associate documents with records via link or binary field
  • Work with our Professional Services Team or an Authorized Dealer to create a customized solution or direct integration with virtually any application

Choosing a Document Management Solution

Given the variety of free or very low cost file storage solutions available, why would you invest thousands of dollars in a document management system?

  • When high security or access tracking logs are required
  • Compliance with regulations like HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, FINRA, FOIA, SEC, etc.
  • There are document-based workflows that can benefit from automation
  • Users need to view files without installing software licenses (like DWG, VSD or  PSD)

If you already have a database or business app that you use to search for records, and that application has the ability to store or link external documents to those records, this is usually the best choice.

If your business application doesn’t have document management capabilities, there are integrations that can overlay a button or hotkey that lets users open associated files from any screen.

If your business has many different types of documents spread across multiple departments that use different applications, and they sometimes need to be able to access each others’ documents, then a central repository is the better solution.

Cloud Storage platforms like Google Drive, Box and OneDrive provide low-cost, secure online storage that makes it very easy to share documents worldwide on any device. However they don’t have the ability to do field-level indexing to allow for more granular searches, lack the compliance tracking features of a more robust DMS, and don’t have integrated viewers that can display some of the less common file formats without having the application installed.

Find Out More

Read more about Affordable Document Management solutions with SimpleIndex.

Check out our How to Scan Documents for a detailed guide to creating scanning and retrieval systems.

Download SimpleIndex Now

Our Professional Services department can help you with every step of our project, and often have you up and running in just a couple of hours.

Please Contact Us to schedule a demo or ask us any questions you have!

 

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