PayStream today released the 2013 Data Capture for Accounts Payable: Transforming Documents into Business Ready Data report. Survey results reveal that front-end imaging and data capture continue to increase as more companies strive to reduce invoice errors, reduce costs, increase invoice processing cycles, visibility, workflow and improve compliance and reporting.
The concept of data capture with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has been around for quite some time, OCR is the technology that allows software to interpret machine printed text on scanned images. The idea of utilizing Accounts Payable (AP) Data Capture OCR technology is to reduce the amount of time AP employees spend processing invoices. With an automated OCR system, as much as 75 percent of the time spent using conventional methods of AP processing are saved, resulting in fewer errors, reduced costs, quicker invoice processing cycles, visibility, workflow, improved compliance and reporting.
While paper invoices continue to decline, 52 percent of business-to-business (B2B) invoices are still traded on paper. Paper invoices require manual data entry or hand-keying into an accounting system. Invoice data capture software scans the invoices and scanned invoices are recognized with OCR. Relevant data is located, errors are corrected and data is exported directly to an organization’s accounting software database.
Advances in OCR technology has created intelligent, more accurate and highly scalable data capture and document processing software that automatically transforms documents into business-ready data; thus increasing efficiency by automating paper-based business processes. To reap the benefits of OCR technology, more organizations, particularly those with high volumes of invoices, have started scanning paper invoices upon receipt. Scanning invoices at the front-end or upon arrival permits invoices to be entered into an electronic workflow system for faster and more accurate processing. Scanning invoices at the front-end is also a gateway for end-to-end invoice processing – that will allow companies to simply open the mail and process stacks of paper invoices straight-through, without any special document preparation or manual corrections.
The report examines current demand for OCR/Data Capture solutions and should serve as a guide for AP decision-makers currently considering a data capture solution. It also includes an overview of OCR/Data Capture solutions that are available on the market today. Download it for free HERE.
