Other document scanning applications in this price range use Zone OCR to obtain index data from the page.

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

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

Dynamic OCR and AI Assisted OCR

AI assisted OCR is the popular solution to the problem of unstructured and semi-structured documents. But there are many scenarios where simple Template and Dictionary matching provide much better results. And all of these solutions are much more expensive than SimpleIndex!

Often there are only a few key values that need to be extracted, and a wide variety of possible layouts. AI-based document training requires manual processing of several samples of each possible format before it learns how to read them reliably, where a Template could read them all with a single setting. Dictionary matching can perform advanced classification without analyzing thousands of samples.

When data extraction requires natural language processing, field label extraction, handwriting, AI document analysis, or other advanced features, SimpleIndex offers Cloud OCR and ChatGPT integrations.

Dynamic OCR Examples

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.

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

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 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.

Got a preference for ABBYY Cloud OCR, Microsoft Azure AI Vision, or Google Cloud Vision OCR? These can be quickly added for a small customization fee. Contact Us for a quote!

Wiki: How to configure AWS Textract OCR in SimpleIndex

Handprint and Handwriting Recognition

SimpleIndex 11 adds handprint recognition capabilities to the FineReader OCR engine to allow recognition of simple form fields and printed text. It works best with constrained form fields, with letter boxes for each character like you see on tax forms and credit applications. And no additional licensing or per-page costs are required!

For unconstrained handprint and cursive handwriting, use the Cloud OCR option to achieve the best recognition accuracy available. This option requires additional AWS processing fees for each page.

Support for Regular Expressions

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

How to Configure SimpleIndex OCR

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

• Zone OCR read data in a specific location
• Template matching to match unique patterns
• Dictionary matching to match a list of possible values
• OCR Options OCR job settings that apply to all fields
• File Formats that can be output by OCR
• Languages supported by OCR
• FineReader versus Tesseract OCR engines
• Searchable PDF with MRC compression
• OCR to Field for point and click OCR during verification
• Cloud OCR using Textract

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

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