Departmental Form Processing Comes of Age
What started many years ago as highly esoteric technological experiments with a few, specialized applications (German Post investigating the possibility of automating mail sorting; reading machines for the blind, etc.), has evolved into an industry. Optical character recognition (OCR) used to be known by few, applied by even fewer and considered a “niche” application by the experts. It was new, did not work consistently—or very well—and was not understood.
Many years of development, which improved its performance and expanded applicability, coupled with increased appetite by users, transformed OCR into a widely used technology across the board, especially in desktop and fax text conversion. One of the leading applications of OCR is automated data capture from forms, aka Form Processing. The goal is to scan forms at one end of the system, and obtain a stream of the data residing in them at the other, while reducing—or eliminating—the roomful of data entry stations that in high volume is required for manual entry. Other benefits of such automation include: high data accuracy, reduction or elimination of repetitive work, and even reduction in occurrence of fatigue and other undesirable side effects such as Carpal Tunnel that may affect staffs.
After nearly three decades of advancing technology and improved products, many thousands of systems are installed in different environments (higher levels of government, mission-critical data entry in medical, insurance, financial and transportation, etc.), but not millions. Today’s form processing systems are highly sophisticated, rich in technology and features and perform many tasks. Two things, however, they are not: easy to use and affordable by everyone. It is uncommon to see form-processing applications running at small departments, where they are applied to lower volume of forms: hundreds (not millions or hundreds of thousands) of forms per day or week.
We will not see proliferation of form processing across small enterprises, and/or departments in a large one, until the following take hold:
- Cost: Today’s typical systems cost tens, even hundreds, of thousand of dollars. Departments cannot justify, let alone approve, such budgets. The street price of any departmental system should be under the “magic numbers” for managerial approval, allowing autonomous purchasing and quick decision-making. Total cost of ownership should also fall in line: implementation, training (initial and on-going), support and annual maintenance;
- IT concerns: Corporate IT may have “issues” with the procurement and operation of systems they may not have a direct role in. To help alleviate such concerns, systems must be safe and compliant with industry standards;
- Simplicity of use: Departmental users cannot afford to take the time from their “day jobs” to dedicate full-, or even part-time to long implementations of new systems. Any form processing system aspiring for departmental use should not be more complex to implement than a typical office suite; and
- COTS: Form processing products must become mainstream in several respects. They should be accessible and easy to acquire, intuitive to follow (integrated GUI) and well supported (“plain English” documentation, context sensitive, or on-line help), and should not require users to become “techies.”
The FormStorm Story
There are early signs of true “departmental form processing” as products depart from the complexity and high prices we see today.
FormStorm™ Enterprise with SemiForm™ is available for evaluation and testing from the CharacTell Web site. FormStorm supports standard and semi-structured forms such as invoices, sales orders, etc. It is possible to set up a complete application and fully test it without contacting the vendor, reducing costs and making the acquisition process faster, easier and practical. (One customer—Luc Vaessen—wrote: “I have tried FormStorm and would like the complete version. Is it possible to pay with American Express?”
There are many such examples of users downloading FormStorm, setting up their applications on their own in less than a day, and making a purchase decision without asking for a demo or support.
Dr. Paz Kahana is president and CEO of CharacTell Ltd., a software company that was founded in 1998 by Mr. Ofer Comay and Dr. Eliyahu Comay. CharacTell develops advanced character recognition technologies, and provides products for ICR and OCR-based data capture, form processing, and input into document management systems. CharacTell Ltd. Dr. Kahana can be reached by phone at 617-965-1014, or by e-mail at pkahana@charactell.com