OCR Technology: An Old Tool is New Again

When it comes to solid technologies that have been in use for many years, Optical Character Recognition has been around for nearly a century. Believe it or not, the first examples of OCR were in development in 1914. Of course use of OCR to translate information on paper documents into digital information that can be used in modern office automation did not enjoy significant adoption until the late 1970s. Ray Kurzweil, the famous American inventor and futurist, invented the omni-font OCR in 1974.  Since 1974, OCR has evolved into mainstream usage and domain specific usage by many firms.

Without OCR, moving into the digital realm is all but impossible, especially for heavily regulated industries that still use paper-based processes. In order to process large batches or paper-based work, the data must first be digitized using high speed OCR software.  Within the Mortgage industry, there are several instances where originators or loan servicers must process loans in bulk.

This article is extracted from Visionet Whitepaper: Using Mobile As A Competitive Advantage. You can download the whitepaper.