It is 2021 and yet, there are plenty of businesses and organisations who have their documents created and stored physically, some of them even handwritten. This data can be of utmost importance to the organisation; however, it is being underutilised since the data is not present in the digital format.
Data that is unorganised and remains unstructured, cannot be easily searched for and discovered as well. This makes storing physical documents a cumbersome and ineffective process. Thanks to innovative technologies and the growth of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, unstructured data can be easily extracted without much hassle with solutions like Amazon Textract.
Be it a Bank that has stored tons of physical papers or an E-commerce that generates tens and thousands of receipts for every transaction on a daily basis, businesses of all shapes and sizes can take advantage of Amazon Textract and store their physical documents in a much more efficient and structured manner.
Amazon Textract can also help to organise data that is handwritten as well. The Artificial Intelligence technology of Amazon Textract is such that it can help match the notes written on paper with the digital alphabets and characters and therefore, create a digital copy of such documents as well.
Future forecasts also predict that businesses will go paperless and a huge amount of reduction in paperwork will be witnessed in the coming few years. Research suggests that by 2025, the paper end-use output market will decrease to 0.4% from the current 3.9%. This makes it even more important for businesses and institutions to adopt paperless technology to stand out from the rest in their industry.
Let’s take a deeper look at what exactly Amazon Textract is and how it will help your business function smoothly on an everyday basis.
Table of Contents
Understanding Amazon Textract
Amazon Textract uses Machine Learning technology to extract data from various kinds of documents such as printed text on PDFs or handwritten notes and organises the extracted data. Amazon Textract goes beyond the ordinary Optical Character Recognition (OCR) as it can extract data from tables, forms, images and so on that may appear in a different format.
Also Read: OCR & Intelligent Data Processing
For example, A business called ABC Ltd. will print billing information and data on the top-right side of the invoice whereas another organisation called XYZ LLC will print all this info on the top-left side. Thanks to Amazon Textract, data from both the invoices will be accurately extracted and will be filled in the respective fields. This is not achievable with a simple OCR technology as it can extract data only for specific formats and templates.This is possible in KlearStack’s solution as well.
In most cases, a human resource is required to extract the data manually and they have to fill it in excel sheets or any other similar document. This is not only a time-consuming method but also, it may also lead to human errors while entering the data. With Amazon Textract, plenty of time can be saved on data extraction and it can guarantee you accuracy at the same time.Similar can be achieved through KlearStack’s deep learning technology.
So far we have understood the basics of Amazon Textract and its capabilities. Now let’s understand how it actually extracts data accurately and stores it.
Source: AWS
Step 1: Scan the Document
The first step is to scan the document from which the data has to be extracted. Below is the list of some types of documents, but not limited to, from which data can be extracted:
- Regular Invoices / Bills
- Financial Documents
- Medical Documents
- Handwritten Documents
- Payslips or Employee Documents
Make sure the paper is put in place properly before scanning the document. Amazon Textract may fail to recognize some part of the document if it is left out of the scanning area.
Step 2: Reading the Data
After the document is appropriately placed for scanning, Amazon Textract starts a virtual scan of the document. The tool basically reads the data. This helps to extract and map the data at the later stages. This process is almost instantaneous and happens quite quickly, with respect to the size of the document.
Step 3: Identifying Key Information
Once a thorough scan is done of the document, Amazon Textract automatically identifies key and vital information that has to be extracted and stored. Since it is based on a deep-learning technology, the identification of the information is very accurate.
Step 4: Matching & Data Integration
Using the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, the data is then extracted and stored. JSON is a standard file and data exchange format that helps the human-readable text to be stored on web servers. Since Amazon Textract is a product of Amazon Web Services (AWS), data can be integrated with other AWS products such as Amazon Comprehend, Amazon DynamoDB and so on.
Final Takeaway
Amazon Textract helps businesses to be more efficient as it helps to manage the data without any hassle or errors. But Klearstack’s solutions are much more efficient than Amazon Textract. While Textract stores data on the cloud directly, KlearStack provides an option to extract data in excel and therefore, provides flexibility to upload the data wherever you would like to or keep it in an excel file.
We have provided a detailed outlook on how exactly Amazon Textract works. KlearStack believes in openness and fair presence of competition and therefore we would like you to check out KlearStack’s solution before you make a conclusion about the purchase of the product.
If your business is interested in automating internal processes, KlearStack is here providing state-of-the-art solutions with 100% dedicated support. Feel free to contact our experts and learn more about how we can make your day-to-day business activities faster and more error-free. Click here to send an inquiry or schedule a call with us.
