Friday 12 July 2013

Data Entry Or OCR - A Tough Information Concern

Optical character recognition or OCR has gained fame in the digital world as you can scan and view anything electronically or do the reverse action of having a document in digital format be converted to hard copies. Data entry, on the other hand, is another popular trend in the age of information but the process does not make a greater impact to other people as this is not new to the world computers. The question about which one is greater or highly functional or more reliable lies on how we handle information.

OCR can be used in many digital formats and file conversions. Data entry can be used in many ways and there are special circumstances wherein data operation can only solve a particular problem. So what are the pros and cons of using OCR in information management?

OCR is best used for file conversions of digital formats to readable and printable hard copies. The process involves scanning of different documents and you can choose which format should you convert your final output. Excel, Rich Text Formats, MS Word, Text, PDF and HTML are the most common formats that OCR software converts through a scanner. These converted documents are easily manageable, editable and affordable as compared to data entry.

However, there are some functions in document processing systems that OCR cannot deal with and sometimes its counterpart can do is just much more effective and faster to execute. At a glance OCR may seem to be a lot cheaper than data entry but if you will have to estimate a bulk OCR project cost in contrast to massive data entry project budget will all error corrections, you may realize that OCR system would cost you more.

Error correction process is definitely more accessible, affordable and convenient. Audio files and hard copy documents can be done easily by data encoders. There are some cases wherein data entry becomes the only solution to certain information problems. Medical transcriptions, for instance, cannot executed by any OCR and scanning work. Audio files need medical transcriptionists to manually encode data from audio file to text or hard copy. Data entry also proves its higher capability and reliability in cases such as data extractions and conversions of mailing list. There are several levels of data manipulation service that needs OCR intervention at the start but a higher percentage of data entry functions are needed in order to finish the data input process.

So if you are asking which one is of greater importance which one is of greater importance between OCR and data entry, the honest answer is that both of them are of equal significance. Functionalities and utility choices vary from each type of information you need to obtain for a more productive management or information for better results.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry-Or-OCR---A-Tough-Information-Concern&id=4194463

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