Numerous service apps and mobile applications for digital document management are already providing scan tools to digitize paper documents efficiently and swiftly. Now it’s time to go one step further since data needs to be extracted, analyzed, and managed. This is where data extraction comes into play, which specifically filters out data from complex documents and makes it available for further processing. This eliminates the need to manually enter information from documents, such as passports or medical certificates, as this task is performed automatically.
What is data extraction?
Software for text recognition (OCR) is now an essential component in every automated workflow, as it enables the fully automated processing of scanned text documents. The problem here is that it works with all data in the document, including filler words, payment information, or explanatory texts. Data extraction describes analyzing unstructured or poorly structured documents and extracting only relevant information based on machine learning. This is mostly important for documents that contain individual formats such as tables or redundant data such as invoice numbers, dates, or totals. Data extraction collects the required information in such documents smoothly and efficiently and adds them to your system, where further processing can be performed immediately.
Which documents can be captured by data extraction?
Data extraction is, therefore, a valuable, intelligent feature for digital document management. But a more interesting question is: “How can your company benefit from data extraction?”. In the paragraphs below, we have collected some interesting examples of document capture use cases for you:
- Customer Identification – Data extraction enables the MRZ Scanner to extract information in identification documents by analyzing the MRZ number included in passports and ID cards. All core information is then immediately displayed on the end user’s device and forwarded to the back-end. There is no need to extract any personal data from a regular scan manually.
- Healthcare – Scanbot’s EHIC Card Scanner and Medical Document Scanner can be used in different healthcare sectors. Those modules can extract information in European health cards or medical certificates, such as the German AU. This speeds up data processing in your company and helps you create efficient workflows, as data from complex documents no longer needs to be processed manually.
- Invoices/receipts/other forms/serial numbers, etc. With the Scanbot Data Scanner, you can extract any single-line information without scanning the whole document. This allows you to decide which information is needed for a specific purpose flexibly. The data is immediately ready for further processing and also no longer needs to be processed manually.
Which data can be extracted?
Our tool for data extraction is highly flexible. We can extract the following data, among others:
- MRZ numbers – Found on identity cards and passports from more than 150 countries. First and last name, ID card number, issuing country, nationality, date of birth, gender, validity period, and check digits can be captured.
- EHIC cards – First and last name, date of birth, identification number, insurer and insurer number, card number, and validity period can be extracted from all European health cards. This is particularly helpful and time-saving when verifying the insurance client in the mobile service app.
- Single-line data – Single-line data of all kinds can be recorded in a targeted manner. If a user wants to scan the amount and the IBAN of an invoice, this data can be captured and processed separately from the other included information within a few seconds.
5 major advantages of data extraction
We’ve collected the most striking benefits for you:
- Cost reduction: Considerable amounts of time can be saved by eliminating manual entries and corrections. Besides, the integration of scanning tools reduces the costs for any postal dispatch of documents, while smartphones are significantly less expensive to maintain and purchase than regular hardware scanners.
- Speed: Data extraction accelerates your workflow significantly.
- Convenience: Your employees do not have to filter data from photographs or scans of low quality but can work immediately with the automatically collected data.
- Customer Satisfaction: Simplified digital services and fast processing of requests are essential for today’s customers. Since most customers have modern smartphones, this solution can easily be made available to every user.
- Versatility: The data scanner can be used to cover and automate a wide range of use cases.
By making use of data extraction, or SDK can extract information contained in ID documents of more than 150 countries by analyzing the machine-readable zone (MRZ) included in passports and ID cards. Furthermore, it can be used to process data contained in receipts or bank transfer forms
Privacy standards
Since the scanned documents are processed and stored exclusively on the user’s device, our SDK solution is compliant with data processing standards such as GDPR / DSGVO.
Would you like to integrate a secure data extraction solution into your mobile app? Don’t hesitate to contact us. Let’s talk.
