Which Data Capture solution is best suited to your requirements?

Data capture offers many solutions, benefits, features andchoices if you are looking to implement such a process for electronically archiving documents such as surveys, questionnaires and application forms.

Straight forward Data Capture

The basic, first level idea of data capture is to capture text on the page purposely to have text searchable documents so that any document scanned will have the feature to be able to locate any specific words or serial numbers.

An ideal type of archive for this would be data capture for purchase invoices. This will ensure all addresses, company names, invoice numbers and items can be found by typing the keyword into a search engine. The text searchable feature is also ideal for such documents as:

• Correspondence
• Reports
• Maintenance records
• Purchase orders
• Proof of delivery receipts

Forms Capture

This method of data capture is more specific in the way that it will recognise ticks, crosses and certain boxes filled out on forms such as:

• Surveys
• Application forms
• Questionnaires
• Multiple choice questions
• Feedback forms

The idea behind forms capture is to recognise every detail filled in by the recipient. This is a popular method to record feedback from customers who have completed surveys and questionnaires. By having forms capture available the ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) system feeds the data through so you can instantly start tracking results once the forms are processed without the headache of long, manual data entry. This is ideal for compiling reports and directly feeding data from application forms or enrolment forms straight into the system.

Handwritten text recognition

In some cases it could be that you will need to scan documents that have been, or include handwritten text. In this case there is a special form of data capture known as OMR (Optical Markup Recognition). This form data recognition can become a little less accurate as hand writing can come in all forms but if it is clearly written our data entry staff will verify all scanned data before proceeding. This is useful for these documents:

• Letters
• Application forms
• Holiday forms
• Written reports

Data capture and forms capture really can fit into any element of an organisations successful practice, many companies are already benefiting from having their information immediately available without having to spend the time entering it manually, this saves on time and costs in the long term future as well as presently.