Simplify Text Extraction Tasks With Microsoft OCR for Kofax Platforms

Every business needs a way to work efficiently with documents and the data they contain. There’s just one problem: that data is trapped in many of those document formats and not easy to grab and use. Manual processes, such as re-typing information, slowly copying data, or moving it all by hand, aren’t well-suited to the realities of the modern workplace. That’s where powerful new tools such as Kofax Transformation, a document intelligence platform, become most important.

Transformation offers a pathway to streamlining a company’s most tedious and error-prone document processes. Combining machine learning and artificial intelligence can dramatically improve document classification processes. What about advanced extraction capabilities? You may need to do more than simply recognize particular data types or extract purely English text.

You can use Transformation to leverage world-class optical character recognition (OCR) technology with connectors and other solutions on the Kofax Marketplace, a home for professionally developed resources supporting automation projects. Chief among these options is Azure AI Document Intelligence from Microsoft. OCR from this solution is exceedingly robust and reliable, with extensive capabilities that could offer an excellent ROI for your business.

What Makes Microsoft OCR So Powerful?

Powered partly by AI powered by the Azure cloud, Microsoft OCR leverages some of the most powerful deep learning capabilities to understand and interpret virtually any written data presented on a page. Many OCR solutions can reliably identify English text and numbers but struggle in other areas and with more complex language presentations. Microsoft OCR doesn’t. Instead, you can enjoy high confidence in the extracted text.

What else sets this solution apart so much that you should consider integrating it into Kofax Transformation? Key advantages include the ability to:

• Extract data from tables without disrupting organization or order.
• Extract key-value pairs from databases while maintaining coherence.
• Use zone recognition for targeted OCR when you only want to extract data from specific document segments.
• Enjoy OCR support for recognizing more than 122 different languages.
• OCR entire pages to extract all the data.
• Recognize and run OCR even on handwritten text.

Microsoft offers a “free” tier for this service—so you can explore, experiment, and test your use cases with little risk. The first 5,000 API calls you make monthly to the Azure Document Intelligence tool are free, giving you plenty of opportunities to enjoy a cost-effective solution baked into your automation.

Choose On-Premises or Cloud-Based Solutions

Depending on your organizational requirements, you may prefer directly controlling the hardware that provides your business access to this advanced OCR technology. Good news: you can easily add the OCR engine to your own on-premise solution as needed. However, the cloud is still an option for those who want to maintain the flexibility and versatility of third-party managed solutions. Choose the best approach for your business and enjoy an uncomplicated process.

Integration is quick and straightforward, too. Microsoft OCR integrates directly into Kofax Transformation, providing a seamless approach to a fundamentally important process. There’s no need to worry about downloading additional assets or tedious fiddling with DLL files or plugin configurations—just add the script and get ready to go, including with connections to the TotalAgility Cloud.

Use Cases for Integrating Microsoft OCR Into Kofax Transformation

It would be a challenge to count the number of ways you can use OCR and automation to streamline business processes. If you can think of a process that requires pulling data off the page and routing it through the business, it’s likely to benefit here. Some of those cases include:

• Parsing data during the discovery phase of a lawsuit. Law firms can benefit from making a huge corpus of data full-text searchable using Transformation and OCR from Kofax and Microsoft, respectively.
• Automating elements of the insurance claims process, such as extracting claim data and transferring it into claims management systems.
• Archiving documents that you may need to search or use later.
• Classify diverse documents and route them to the correct destination for additional work in real estate, healthcare, and government sectors.

Explore What You Can Do With More Purpose-Built Solutions

There’s no risk when you explore Microsoft OCR as a part of Kofax Transformation for free. That means there’s no reason to skip the chance to investigate adapting it for your business.

Whether you need support for advanced tabular data extraction or a multilingual OCR solution, connecting Transformation to Azure AI Document Intelligence offers many exciting opportunities for value. Remember, installation is quick and easy, with no need for plugin configuration or DLL placement—just set up and go. Discover what this solution for Kofax Transformation could do for you today.