ERPs as business management software
SaaS is a word that nowadays is getting a lot of attention, as well as the word IaaS or PaaS. They refer to different services provided by third parties, Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service, respectively. These are solutions that are very convenient for companies because they will save time, effort and money in the development of these systems.
Nowadays these solutions are very flexible and tailored to the needs of the company. ERP is an example of Software as a Service. These software consist of different modules that manage each of the different areas of the business: sales, purchases, inventory, finance, human resources, projects, etc. All departments that a company integrates can be included in the ERP for optimal business management. This is a great advantage, as all departments are connected in the system and internal communication is much more efficient.
ERPs have been around for quite long already. Since computers have existed, IT has tried to develop management systems that could increase business efficiency. Technology is progressing rapidly, especially over the last decades, and building tools to further improve these systems has been the focus of software developers. OCR (Optical Character recognition) technology has been around for a while as well, although it is now when it is getting more attention. What is OCR and why do we refer to it when talking about ERP? In this blog, we explain why your ERP should integrate OCR.
How OCR increases the efficiency of your ERP
Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a technology that can automatically read and extract text from any type of document. It is closely related to ERPs because companies manage their business documents inside ERPs. Therefore, if we integrate OCR into an ERP, we get an intelligent system capable of automatically extracting the relevant data from the documents that will be processed inside the ERP. Let’s explain this further.
Most companies do not have OCR technology yet. This means that their ERP digitizes most of the processes, documents are recorded into the system and this speeds up the activity of the company, yet data entry is still manual. In other words, accountants receive invoices and insert them into the ERP, but they must type the data one by one for it to be recorded. An invoice does not take a lot of time but imagine you have to do it for hundreds of invoices that you receive per month. Besides that, imagine that you have to do the same for the business expenses. This becomes a long and slow process.
Now, if you add an OCR engine to your ERP, you will have the same ERP to manage all these invoices and receipts, but with the advantage that the data entry will no longer be manual. That is right, data entry is automatic (automatization thanks to OCR). The accountant simply has to introduce the document in the system and all the data is recognized by the OCR engine in a matter of seconds. There is still some skepticism about this technology, but why being skeptical about it when you can simply benefit from it?
There are successful cases showing that OCR is a time-saving and reliable technology. Manual data entry should be replaced by automatic data entry. Your employees should invest their time in relevant tasks that give value to the company rather than wasting time in processing documents one by one. It is for this reason that technology has arrived to make companies more efficient. Besides that, OCR is a machine learning based on rules that keeps improving, for which high accuracy in the recognition of relevant data is now a reality.
Klippa OCR easily integrated into your ERP
More and more companies are moving towards digital transformation. They choose for efficient technologies to add value to their systems. At Klippa we have been internally developing an OCR engine that can be easily integrated into any ERP. Klippa allows software companies to offer a more complete service, where the processes can be fully automated. Processing invoices and business expenses should no longer be a tedious task. Nor should it be a time-consuming task for employees; rather they should invest time in making the business grow.
Integrating our OCR is very simple thanks to our structured API documentation. We know that indeed it is something that adds value to your ERP, but we also understand that you may have more specific questions or want to see how it works. You can schedule a demo with one of our experts and they will explain everything you need to know. You can also contact us through our email [email protected] or by calling at +31 50 2111631.