In the late 1920s, before World War 1, Israeli-born physicist Emanuel Goldberg, who called himself "a chemist by learning, a physicist by calling, and a mechanic by birth," made significant theoretical and practical advances in light and media technology. He was also the founder of the renowned German photographic company Zeiss Ikon.
At the height of his career, Goldberg pioneered the first electronic document retrieval system, inventing what we know today as optical character recognition (OCR)—an advanced method for extracting words and sentences from images. This innovation laid the groundwork for automating record-keeping, using a ‘Statistical Machine’ that IBM later acquired the U.S. patent for. Fast forward over 100 years, and OCR has been universally adopted by companies and industries worldwide, replacing manual document processing and enhancing efficiencies through significantly more effective data extraction from physical documents.
Today, OCR service providers offer technology that can recognise most characters and fonts with a high degree of accuracy, often through easily integrated APIs. OCR allows us to convert images of scanned papers, PDFs, or photos of documents into editable and searchable text. It has been essential for digitising paper documents, automating data records, and finding specific keywords in scanned files or images.
However, OCR has its limitations. Despite ongoing improvements, it can still make errors, requiring human oversight to ensure accuracy. The need for human intervention can be costly, labor-intensive, and slow.
In the promotions category, OCR enables brands and promoters to extract basic text from receipts but it often struggles with poor or distorted imagery, leading to data errors and the need for manual input. With a validation success rate of 80-90%, standalone OCR is effective, but it can still be hit and miss. This is where AI-Powered data transformation makes a timely entrance.
With Roilti AI, OCR data extraction has advanced significantly. Our AI algorithms use machine learning to continually improve reads, increasing OCR accuracy to around 95% or higher. This means fewer errors and much less reliance on slow and costly manual intervention.
Roilti AI accurately extracts text from images and fills gaps where traditional OCR can fail, making the data transformation process faster and much more precise. It seamlessly corrects formatting errors, contextually updates missing characters or spelling mistakes, identifies and categorises retailers, and even recognises brands and SKU variants, for deeper reporting insights. The list of enhancements is extensive.
Not only does Roilti AI extract critical information accurately, but it also detects fraud, analyses purchasing patterns, and provides valuable insights with minimal manual effort. This makes modern promotional validation much more reliable and efficient compared to traditional OCR methods.