Mobile data capture saves users time and allows reliable processing
Goal
FBC wants to replace outdated hardware scanners with modern smartphones so that field staff can quickly and conveniently send customers’ tax-relevant documents to headquarters.
Challenge
To ensure smooth processing by the backend OCR program, high-quality scans of the documents are mandatory. A suitable SDK must therefore have functions that ensure easy generation of flawless scans.
Solution
The Scanbot SDK, with its cutting-edge Document Scanner SDK, provides all the functionality needed for high-quality scanning results and smooth back-end processing with Optical Character Recognition.
Key Results
Short time-to-value
Easy integration
Centralized workflow
FBC’s goal – replacing outdated hardware used by field agents
FBC is Canada’s farm & small business tax specialist who provides accounting services from Ontario to British Columbia. The company’s mission is to assist business owners and farmers through the complex tax return system by shaping a comfortable and pleasant process. Their agents are experts in this field and know exactly how to calculate the necessary deductions to decrease their clients’ tax payments. This has earned them the long-lasting trust from many business owners and ranchers in the area. Their service offering includes Tax Planning & Preparation, Audit Representation, Bookkeeping & Payroll, Financial & Estate Planning, and Farm Risk Management.
To provide this extensive assistance, FBC has over 150 field agents driving around Canada’s vast rural areas, visiting customers, and collecting all necessary information regarding their tax while providing detailed advice. Before implementing the Scanbot SDK, field agents had to scan documents using hardware-scanners and laptops they brought along on every visit. This outdated process has been replaced by Scanbot’s advanced Document Scanner SDK, integrated into FBC’s internal mobile app and a customer app.
“We learn the details of your business first-hand and make sure you benefit from every potential tax savings opportunity available to you.”
The Scanbot Scanner SDK offers various features such as automatic detection, rotation, and cropping, user guidance, and quality-enhancing filters, which guarantee flawless results for the backend OCR processing. Field agents can now create scans effortlessly while maintaining the highest privacy standards through on-device intelligence. They now collect over 350,000 documents every year with the Scanbot SDK solution.
Continuous updates
Frequent updates are crucial to guarantee the best scanning results. Thus, Scanbot provides its customers with new releases continuously, such as Low Light filters for optimized OCR detection. The flawless scanning results enable a smooth operation in the back-end and build the foundation for a time-efficient work process.
Scanbot aims to improve the SDKs functionalities continually and provide our customers with frequent updates for all development platforms. FBC is optimistic that Scanbot’s recent updates for Xamarin.Forms, such as the blur estimator, will further improve their experience.
A field agent’s workflow before and after using the Scanbot Document Scanner
Optical Character Recognition requires accurate scanning results, and thus a high-quality scanning tool is vital for this process.
The process before the Scanbot SDK
The field agent travels to their client and has to bring a printer and/or hardware scanner and a laptop to digitize the documents needed for the tax return. Transporting and setting up a hardware scanner and a computer requires lots of time and effort, impeding the staffs’ daily workflow massively.
After discussing the tax return in detail, the agent needs to collect between 30 and 100 different documents, depending on the case. An appointment like this can take up to 3 hours.
All the collected documents, such as expenses, charitable donations, checks, and receipts, need to be digitized using the hardware scanner, to be then transferred to the headquarters.
The agent must forward the scanned documents to the backend, where the server-based OCR processing takes place.
The process with the Scanbot SDK
When visiting their clients, the field agents solely need a smartphone with FBC’s internal application installed. Thus, no hardware needs to be set up when arriving at a client’s house.
A detailed discussion of the tax return is followed by collecting all relevant information that has to be digitized.
The field agent now just needs to open the app with the integrated Scanner SDK. User guidance and perspective correction lead to a flawless result. Scanning around 30 documents does now take less than 5 minutes.
Afterward, an image-enhancing filter is applied to the scanning results directly on the device.
Now, the agent can easily transfer the collected documents to the headquarters as JPG or PDF files via FBC’s mobile app.
Due to the high-quality results, the back-end OCR can be run smoothly.
It is evident that a portable scanning solution with high-quality scanning features was an essential addition to the field agents’ document transmission workflows. As Scanbot is dedicated to optimizing work processes dealing with physical paperwork, they could offer the perfect solution for FBC’s use case.
As the Document Scanner works offline, it never communicates with Scanbot SDK servers or other third party software. This is why it offers the highest possible privacy for these sensitive documents FBC deals with daily.
By creating an internal app with digital document submission via a Scanner SDK, FBC’s field agents can access all client information such as previous conversations, related documents, and contact information with one tool and within seconds. The Scanbot Document Scanner provides the link between the physical data and the collection of information accessible through the mobile app.
FBC’s B2C App includes the same functionality, allowing customers to log in and scan the documents themselves before sending them off to their agents.
By implementing the Scanbot Scanner SDK, FBC was able to:
Smoothly add scanning features to their mobile applications within a few business days.
Save a tremendous amount of development time.
Increase convenience and efficiency in their workflow.
Offer their clients a solution that allows them to submit their documents on their own.
Scanbot SDK’s mission and vision
Our initial goal for the Scanbot SDK was for it to read any text-based information via mobile devices – today, this has become a reality. The easy-to-integrate software creates virtually endless possibilities to streamline and facilitate processes for companies, employees, and customers alike, whether in document management, onboarding, sales, or HR.
We now build computer vision algorithms and machine learning models that understand all kinds of different document types. Our efforts open up even more possibilities for automated workflows that connect and process data in real time.
At the same time, we want to protect users’ personal data, which is why we opted for on-device intelligence. Scan results are encrypted before transmission to keep them safe from any outside attacks. To guarantee maximum privacy, no data is ever sent to Scanbot’s or any other server.
