RPA is equipped with OCR to expand the scope of automation applications
In the intelligent automated process business of most organizations, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is currently one of the most used artificial intelligence technologies. The combination of OCR and RPA can automate more than 70% of the paperless business in the organization, and its efficiency will be more than 5 times that of manual labor.
OCR operating principle
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is a process in which characters written/printed on paper physically are checked or read by electronic devices by determining their shapes and patterns. The electronic devices detect the patterns and translate the shapes into virtual data.
OCR is a technology that converts text in a physical paper/document into a black and white dot matrix image file. It recognizes text patterns from images and converts them into text format that can be further edited by a word processing software. OCR performance is measured on : rejection rate, false recognition rate, recognition speed and product stability, ease of use etc.
OCR is good at processing unstructured data. The data which do not have any predefined model or data structure. Irregular, incomplete data represented by two dimensional logical tables of the database. Including documents such as text, pictures, HTML, XML, audio/video etc.
Cooperation between RPA and OCR
In financial companies where RPA is more active, as well as the fiscal and taxation departments of many companies, a large amount of unstructured and non-digital data and information (such as paper vouchers, invoices, account books, contract information, etc.) need to be processed. RPA is only good at identifying and processing a large amount of structured and digitized data and information, which provides an opportunity for the collaboration of RPA and OCR technology.
In the case of RPA only, employees are required to manually enter the information of paper files into electronic documents such as Excel and Word in advance, and then run the RPA robot to read the information in the electronic documents to realize the automatic processing of the business.
In the case of RPA+OCR, OCR can scan paper vouchers, invoices, account books, and contract information into the computer, and identify them as electronic logic information, and then hand it over to the RPA robot to keep accounts and issue reports. The entire process completely replaces manual input, which greatly saves labor costs. The of the example of rpa in healthcare industry using OCR is invoice processing. RPA+OCR have reduced time consumption by three times for invoice processing. View various rpa healthcare use cases.
The working principle of RPA with OCR
1. The user receives an email with a picture.
2. RPA automatically reads emails.
3. Categorize the pictures and select a template.
4. Data recognition and extraction of classified pictures through OCR.
5. RPA receives the structured data after OCR conversion.
6. Perform data verification and confirmation.
7. Automatically place or input structured data to the specified location.
8. Store all structured data and send a notification email to the user to confirm that all work is completed.
At present, RPA manufacturers around the world are combining with different artificial intelligence technologies to enhance their competitiveness and win the market. OCR is ahead of other technologies in terms of frequency, business scope, and business impact. Through OCR to deal with those unstructured businesses, the scope of automation of RPA can be extended to more fields.
RPA with OCR is mainly used to simplify paper business and convert it into digital business, such as: PDF, scanned documents, paper invoices, faxes and handwritten documents. Its applicable industries include: financial industry (employee onboarding, customer account opening, loan application, data review, etc.), manufacturing industry (order processing, remittance, warehouse inventory, etc.), human resources (employee onboarding, screening of resumes, human resource record processing Etc.), supply chain management (order and freight tracking, bill of lading, goods order, etc.).
By NuAIg ai consulting services and rpa consulting services
