Get in touch if you have forms, order slips, reports, contracts, application forms, reply cards (campaigns) or similar that you want to convert quickly into a database.
We use either fixed-form data capture technology (the same as used for surveys) or flexible data-capture technology when interpreting forms, as the latter does not require the registration marks normally used with fixed-form technology, e.g. surveys.
Interpreting forms with flexible data-capture technology
Interpretation with flexible data-capture technology works quite differently from the interpretation of fixed forms, with reference marks and fields in fixed positions. Instead of interpreting fixed positions, it relies on using OCR to locate predefined anchor words, such as "Contract", "contract no.", "Order no.", "Order slip:", "Report no.:" or similar, and then setting conditions for finding a suitable character string near the anchor, or at least in relation to it. You set conditions for what the sought character string should look like, such as the number of characters, which characters are permitted, and so on. See below the anchor word "REPORT" in blue and the captured report number in green.
The same type of contract often looks identical, but it only takes one of the contracts being a photocopy, or printed on a different printer, for it to no longer match a fixed-form template, where the demands for millimetre precision are high. A good example of when this is bound to happen is if you post a PDF containing, for instance, an application form for a new share issue that is then downloaded by various people and subsequently printed on different printers. In that case, the flexible data-capture technology for semi-structured forms is preferable instead.