Modern OCR solutions are becoming increasingly relevant and popular. Consequently, the estimated annual growth rate of this market is correspondingly high. Specifically, approximately 10% per year. The question now arises as to why this industry is estimated to be experiencing such growth. The answer is simple: is solving a significant problem.
Manual data entry is largely replaced by powerful software. As good as modern OCR software is, however, it can be subject to errors too. This can have various reasons such as poor scan quality, difficult to recognize handwriting or algorithms that are not yet sufficiently well trained. As a result, errors still have to be identified and corrected manually. However, since customers usually want to get rid of exactly these necessary steps completely, this is suboptimal.
Parashift breaks new ground here, unlike classic OCR software providers. Because we also handle the complete post-processing of header and line item data. And because of dedicated structures, processes and comprehensive volumes, we can do this at a very affordable price.
So Parashift also returns fully validated position data. In this article, I will explain exactly what the advantages are.
Elimination of manual work
As already mentioned, probably the most obvious advantage of fully validated position data is the elimination of manual work. For your accounting staff, for example, this is a much welcomed change, since the tedious typing of invoices and the like is not really fun and at the same time there is little time left for other important tasks they are supposed to take care of. Meaning, you’re also solving a stress factor this way.
If you are concerned that your employees will be afraid of this automation because they might lose their jobs, in our experience at least, this is only partially the case. Initially, this may well be a triggered emotion of one or the other person. But after the implementation, this fear is quickly gone, as employees realize which advantages have been gained and the amount of work there is that is still to do. Oftentimes, contrary to potential initial expectations, employees are therefore positively surprised and happy about the decision to implement OCR. In an earlier article I took up the topic specifically for the context of OCR application in accounting. In other words, if you want to learn more about this specifically, it’s best to read on here.
The advantages for you as an employer, besides having more motivated employees, are relatively diverse. Perhaps the biggest advantage is the significant cost savings that can be achieved by eliminating manual work. Other advantages are the reduction in the error-proneness of manual work, gained capacity of your employees which can be used instead for more value-adding activities in the internal or external customer context, or the created basis for more comprehensive and robust process automation. More about the latter in the next sections.
Automated order and invoice reconciliation
A supplier invoice can arrive together with the product or at some point later later on. However, once it arrives, it must be carefully matched to the original order. This is the only way to ensure that you’re billed only what was actually delivered.
Before the so-called order or invoice reconciliation can be carried out, the orders and invoices must be entered into the accounting software. This is where the OCR solution comes into play, which takes over the manual data entry for you.
Once the data has been processed by Parashift and transmitted to your system, you can carry out an automatic reconciliation based on it by applying business rules. Without any manual work. To do so, you receive all the relevant data such as supplier and recipient addresses, reference and order numbers (also at item level for bulk bills), delivery date, any dimensions of line item data, net, tax and gross amounts for all relevant tax rates and payment details. In total there are over 60 fields.
Increase in shadow processing
I strongly assume that you are well acquainted with the term shadow processing. For those of you for whom it is new, here is a brief explanation. Shadow processing, in our context here, is the term for a fully automated processing of invoices from the receipt of the invoice to the payment of the invoice including the entries in your accounting software. The data on the invoices is automatically extracted, checked, validated and approved according to various criteria, so that payment can be triggered in the background and finally the necessary general ledger entries are made automatically based on posting suggestions. The goal is therefore to automate this process as comprehensively as possible and to ensure that it is carried out reliably without any human interaction. With a high rate of shadow processing, companies benefit from significant efficiency increases and cost reductions.
If you would like to experience the benefits of fully validated position data, reduce costs and error-proneness and let your employees do more meaningful work instead, then register for a 14-day free trial account via the banner below and see for yourself the effectiveness of a modern extraction solution that will help you achieve greater operational excellence.
