Ways OCR Enhances Digital Identity
OCR is Optical Character Recognition, as it harnesses hardware like an optical scanner and software like Artificial Intelligence (AI) that converts images to texts using Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR).
Over the years, there has been a paradigm shift from processing printed documents to adopting advanced technology by OCR. This can now recognise written and printed texts in several languages.
It could also be recalled that OCR was available in a cloud computing environment in the early 2000s, but when writing this article, you can use OCR with smartphone cameras.
Broadly, OCR is mainly used for data entry – which borders on printing data records like passport documents, bank statements, invoices, receipts, etc.
This is because storing digitized texts is more effective and efficient than manual compilation. Therefore, digitised texts enable the productivity of all operations.
According to market analysis, the OCR market is predicted to reach $27 million by 2030, with a CAGR expected to be 10.3% between 2022 and 2030. In this line, the combination of AI and machine learning (ML) would enable this industry to have have an outlook in many industries.
How OCR Works
OCR is employed to extract data from an image document, with the process varying with the OCR software developer. But the rule of thumb in this regard is with the following steps:
- Step 1: Scanning
The document is scanned with a physical scanner. You can find scanners on smartphones, and must align the document well for proper capturing.
- Step 2: Preprocessing
This is a stage that entails the cleaning up of text elements of the document using the software. This is to remove any error in the document while leaving the plain text. You must identity the characters of the text, which you can achieve by isolating each character. Every character can be broken into elements of curves and corners.
- Step 3: Recognition
The OCR software can now recognize every isolated character after identifying the characters. This step requires sophisticated OCR software as some compare the pixels of isolated characters to the existing ones in the database – which is to identify the closest match easily.
However, it is noteworthy that advanced OCR technologies identify every character from their respective patterns, while some adopt contextual clues to recognize individual characters.
Some OCR software uses in-built dictionaries to verify and reduce errors, which is after the recognition of the characters. A digitized text is created and can be used for various purposes.
How OCR Enhances Digital Identity
Automated Workflow
It is a major requirement for the digital identity industry to verify documents. This is centred on their mode of operation. Therefore, users can use OCR to scan documents and request verification. This is to reduce human interference as automation makes the whole process lightning fast.
Data Accessibility
OCR makes searching for particular data easy for banks and other industries. Having digitized data enables people to access and refer to stored data of many years, which is often stored in the computer.
For instance, any institution can use OCR to search and access a spate of data of individuals or companies with few clicks. This is better than searching through a company’s storage room, which can be tiresome. Therefore, digitized data are stored safely and accessed easily.
Greater Accuracy
A high level of accuracy is what underscores the digitization of data entry. In other words, the hallmark of digital data is its greater accuracy. This contrasts with the manual form, susceptible to errors and discrepancies.
With OCR, human errors are reduced to the barest minimum, enabling fast and effective processing of every information.
Cost Reduction
It can be monotonous to manually input data in a digital format, which requires much manpower. This can also have a propensity for errors.
However, OCR technology mitigates this demand for individuals to digitize data, including printing and storing documents. It also reduces the cost of extracting data multiple times because the optical recognition system portends fewer errors.
Data Security
Data security is an important concept for every business using customer data. Therefore, it is a best practice to digitize data protected by passwords and other security structures than the traditional storage of data in a book, which can be easily accessed.
That is why you will see institutions like banks and other financial financial establishments adopting OCR to scan documents to enhance sophisticated data security.
How Peppa Is Promoting Identity Verification
Peppa helps digital identity by eliminating manual data entry to make digital verification effective and efficient. We provide an OCR feature to complete document verification in seconds, a perk of digital data entry on the manual type.
Conclusion
Digital identity has become a new norm in our society because of its ever-increasing range of benefits. From accessibility to data security and reduced cost, data has become simplified to collect, store, access, and analyze. This can only be achieved by going digital rather than being manual.
However, it is important for every business to know the industry standard of identity verification to know the best OCR software that would be applied.
