In the course of our lives we fill out hundreds of forms - application forms, questionnaires, insurance claims, etc. At the same time computers have become indispensable for collecting and managing information, making the task of extracting data from printed documents even more pressing.

Forms processing is a process whereby information entered into data fields is converted into electronic form:

• entered data are “captured” form their respective fields
• forms themselves are digitized and saved as images.

In most cases forms processing is considered complete when the data from all the forms have been captured, verified and saved into a database. There are only two approaches to data collection from paper forms: to involve many people in manual data keying in, or to start using automatic form input system.

Manual data entry is boring and troublesome. It implies many problems such as delays in data capture, great amount of operator's misprints, high labor costs, equipment spendings, rent-charge, etc. All these costs are avoidable with the help of a data capture solution such as ABBYY FormReader .

This is how ABBYY FormReader works :

• A batch of completed forms is scanned using a high-speed scanner (usually scanners that scan at least 10 pages per minute are used);
• Most of the data are recognized automatically;
• A few characters about which the program is uncertain are passed on to a human operator;
• Verified data are saved into a database.

ABBYY FormReader interprets machine-print ( OCR ), isolated handprint ( ICR ), including alpha and numeric, mark sense ( OMR ) and barcodes from paper forms gathered from a scanner or a fax machine.

ABBYY FormReader interprets data from paper forms many times faster and immensely more accurately than any professional operator, enabling you to collect data in efficient and secure way. It is noteworthy that the entire process requires only one human operator since all of the stages, except verification, are fully automated.

Neither manual sorting nor checking for missing pages is required, since FormReader can identify forms and select the matching template. With ABBYY FormReader 6.5 Desktop Edition , one operator will be able to process from 1,000 to 3,000 forms per day depending on the complexity of their layout. With a flexible architecture that utilizes multiple workstations to streamline processing, ABBYY FormReader Enterprise Edition can process from 10,000 forms a day and can be easily expanded as a company's processing needs increase.

Finally the extracted data looks exactly like the data you get from your current manual system. But you get it faster, and the captured content is more accurate and reliably correct that is undoubtedly critical for your business. The department involved in data input is now well controlled, perfectly compact, and scalable to be able to process any bulk of forms. 

If you are interested in more detailed information about Forms Processing please find it in ABBYY White Papers:

" Automated Forms Processing "
" About ABBYY FlexiCapture Technology "