How Does OCR Help With Managed Print Services?

Introduction

Despite the fact that it seems like everybody has a printer in their office nowadays, printing is still a significant issue for a lot of companies. Because it’s seen as something straightforward and easy to manage (after all, who doesn’t know how to use a printer?), more often than not businesses don’t afford the area due consideration and time, which can lead to significant downsides when it’s time to tally up which processes are performing well in their operations and which aren’t.

Managed print services in Canada work in close collaboration with businesses of all types to ensure that printing is handled as efficiently and as cost-effectively as possible. By providing a useful compromise between standard retail printing options and commercial printing companies, a managed print service can promise a good return on investment while at the same time freeing up your IT department to work on more company-specific issues.

If you’re like 90% of the businesses in operation today, you probably don’t track printing costs. It’s an easy thing to overlook, but it’s important not to miss it, since the various costs associated with business-grade printing are significant, and it’s not always obvious how to optimize your processes further.

Fortunately, there’s a new technology on the block that stands ready to help you out with your managed print service needs in Canada. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is just the latest in a slew of technological advances that have been made in the industry. In today’s article, we’ll be discussing what exactly OCR is, and how it can help you out with it comes to managed print services in Canada.

What is OCR, Anyway?

At the most basic level, OCR is a means of electronically scanning printed documents and converting them into electronic files, which are then much easier to sort, record, and track in a digital database. This technology — which seemed at one stage to be a long way off — has arrived hot on the heels of other breakthroughs like wireless connectivity and super high-resolution image reproduction, and promises to make life that much less stressful for anybody who is sick to death of drowning in paper.

No matter how large the volume of printed matter is, OCR will be able to rapidly parse through the document and write the relevant information to a digital file in a matter of seconds. Not only are the printed words converted into bits and bytes, however; every file created by OCR is fully searchable, meaning record-keeping is easier than ever. If one of your employees has been tasked with organizing all of your company’s printed documents, you might want to consider investing in a managed print service that uses OCR as part of their process, because you’ll be freeing up that employee to handle more specific tasks. Moreover, you’ll be saving yourself money in the long run — not only by wasting less capital on unnecessary expenses but also by keeping everything tidy and safeguarding yourself against potential hiccups further down the line.

How Does OCR Help With Managed Print Services in Canada?

Managed print services that incorporate OCR offer a number of advantages over traditional printing processes. For one thing, most OCR implementations can recognize dozens upon dozens of different languages right off the bat, which could nip any linguistic issues in the bud before they ever get a chance to snarl up your day-to-day operations. Sorting by language is a feature that many OCR-capable managed print services in Canada provide, so if your company does any kind of international (or just multilingual) business, you might want to consider taking the plunge.

Another huge benefit of OCR is that it can convert everything into documents that are formatted in the standard Microsoft Office forms. This applies to the written word (indeed, most OCR tasks are performed on word documents to begin with), but can also b of benefit when it comes to images. By intelligently scanning images of various resolutions, managed print services that utilize OCR can accurately convert paper into an electronic file, saving you still more time and money when it comes to the amount of paper you’ll need to purchase for each business cycle without compromising on either the quality or reliability of the records you need to keep track of.

Automated Document Streamlining

Automated document workflows are an important aspect of any managed print service in Canada. While it can seem like a somewhat intimidating name for a process, the basic idea is simple enough. Automated document workflow is just a procedure that is put in place by a given managed print service in order to take the guesswork out of handling various document needs. For example, regularly-repeated documents (like memos, agendas, or schedules) can be automated to a degree because they essentially do the same thing every time.

OCR is a lifesaver when it comes to making automated document workflows more efficient. Because an OCR-capable managed print service in Canada will be able to completely and accurately transcribe any written matter into an electronic document, this can be built straight into the workflow from the top-down, effectively guaranteeing that only the bare minimum of time and capital will be expended on the entire process. When it comes to repeatable tasks that occur on a day-in, day-out basis, every second you can save per individual action will be multiplied tens of thousands of times annually, making the benefits OCR offers managed print services in Canada hugely significant.

Conclusion

OCR is probably one of the single most important technological advances that have been made in printing in the last few years. More than any other aspect of the printing improvements we’ve seen recently, OCR makes keeping records of everything so easy that you’ll wonder why on earth you waited so long to come on board with a managed print service in Canada.

If you’ve got more questions about how exactly OCR can help managed print services, why not get in touch with our friendly, knowledgeable team here at integr8mps.ca? We’d love to talk you through any aspect that remains elusive.