How does OCR/ICR compare to an Electronic Forms Solution such as eForm-Connect?  Dictionary.com defines Optical Character Recognition (OCR) as “The process or technology of reading data in printed form by a device (optical character reader) that scans and identifies characters.”  Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) has all of the features of OCR, but is more advanced as it recognizes both printed form as well as hand writing.

Although OCR/ICR can be very useful in recognizing data from completed paper forms, electronic forms are more cost efficient and increase the speed of the workflow process much more than OCR/ICR capabilities.  OCR/ICR still need users to either manually fill out a form by hand or print the completed typed form and then be scanned for character recognition.  This process does not eliminate the massive amounts of paper  and although OCR/ICR may reduce time spent manually transferring the data into a database, one would still need to manually process the forms into the character recognition engine.

Electronic forms would eliminate both of these issues.  An electronic forms software offering such as eform-Connect allows users to simply go online, complete the form(s) including an electronic signature(s), submit the form(s) and the data is automatically stored in the database.  Electronic forms have additional features such as integration abilities with other databases, email and print capabilities, run reports on the data, and much more.

OCR/ICR software is less expensive than most electronic forms packages, but the return on investment is exceptionally higher with electronic forms.  Electronic forms can save an organization huge costs from the excessive amount of paper previously used as well as the administrative costs to employ staff to manage the forms processing.

How could you implement electronic forms in your organization?