Does This Sound Like You? We Implemented OCR for our AP Invoices and Then... This Happened!!!

Ahhhhhhhhh... OCR or i-OCR!!! The Magic Bullet!!! The Savior to our Data Entry Challenges!!! The Magic Wand to Make All Our Data Entry Problems Go Away!!! 

Or so we thought!!!

OCR or i-OCR (Intelligent Optical Character Recognition) the be all, end-all for accounts payable invoice processing, scanning, data capture and workflow automation. While i-OCR has does have it's benefits ,amy companies are realizing the frustrations that come along with this magical technology.

MISREADS!!! FALSE POSITIVES!!! INACCURATE OCR'D DATA!!!

So you sat through OCR software vendor demonstrations, the software vendor showed you how their OCR software will magically read, interpret, OCR and extract all of the invoice data without any intervention. They probably told you that the OCR software gets S-M-A-R-T-E-R as it sees more and more of the vendors invoices. 

You know the old saying, "If something seems too good to be true, it probably is".

Let's fast forward to today. You now realize the OCR software sales guy left out a few small but IMPORTANT details. 

1. The OCR software was supposed be easy to implement, right? WRONG!!! The implementation took much, much longer than anyone ever thought and was a tremendous strain on your IT department's time and resources.

2. The OCR software wasn't supposed to use templates for each vendor's invoice, yet during setup the AP department had to provide sample invoices from every single vendor. Hmmm???

3. The OCR software uses the "traffic light" system or Red, Yellow and Green. I'm so confused by all the "traffic light" color codes!!! The color is Green yet the data is wrong and why are so many fields in Yellow? 

4. The OCR software was supposed to capture and extract the invoice data accurately, yet the OCR software seems to get things wrong (when it thinks it's right), all the time. A B is really an 8, or an 8 is really a B, and that S is really a 5 or that 5 is really an S.  

Let's look back at why you implemented the OCR process for your AP invoices in the first place. You wanted to:

• ...eliminate manual data entry.
• ...improve data accuracy
• ...reduce AP processing costs

So let's look at the final step in the OCR process, "Validation of Extracted Data". You've prepared you're paper AP invoices for scanning, you've imported your emailed invoices, imported electronic invoices and now it's time to run that magical process called "OCR". The process begins the "OCR" wheel is spinning and the magic begins!!! Ahhhhhh....

and then, red light, yellow, light green light go! 

The S's are 5's, the 8's are B's, the vendor name is wrong, PO numbers don't match, quantities are in yellow, invoice batches are stopped, some invoices flow through but they're wrong too!! Now someone on your AP staff has got to go through invoice-by-invoice, line-by-line, field-by-field and manually correct all of the misreads, all the reds, all of the yellows, all of the false positives! 

But the OCR is supposed to work like magic! Why are we so behind in processing invoices? Where did our ROI go?

This story is re-told over and over again by so many companies that fell in love with the allure of OCR, with the magic is was supposed to bring. But, the results are dismal. 

Vision360 Enterprise's unique approach to OCR / i-OCR data capture eliminates the high-cost, frustrations and ROI lost through poor OCR results. AP invoices are captured, data extracted and the extracted data is validated without anyone on your AP staff lifting a finger or entering a single keystroke. 

Contact us to learn more about how our data capture process can eliminate your current data capture/data entry burden and seamlessly fit into your existing AP process, workflow automation or ERP financial system. By phone 603-437-1400 or by email: contact us for help