Dealing with messy data

Intelligent automation makes big promises and paints an exciting picture of the future, but it depends heavily on having access to quality data as input.

Let’s talk about the options you have to leverage these technologies if your data isn’t already perfectly organized.

 

What if your data is all over the place in different formats?

You might have some data in electronic format, a big box of receipts and a stack of paper documents all of which have relevant information that you need to process.  You need a way to organize this data as an appropriate input to properly leverage automation technologies.

 

How exactly does intelligent automation solve this problem?

With something called Optical Character Recognition or OCR.  OCR is technology that enables you to convert something as static as a picture of a receipt or handwritten notes into machine-encoded text which means we can index it and search it just like any other electronic data.

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OK, but how do all these different sources get scanned into this format?

With different forms of OCR scanners.  Today, we even have mobile scanners that work like a pen allowing you to scan in only the information you need then the technology does the rest.

Once scanned, you’ll have everything you need and will be done with the paperwork.  Cool, right?

 

PS. Read more about Optical Character Recognition and watch a portable scanner in action.

Talk soon,
Sean

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