|
I have worked in data capture most of my working life. Handprint ICR success factors: Forms designs and printed for ICR; business case if 75% ICR accuracy at field level for 25% effort and 50% faster results; form fillers asked to write neatly in boxes (and most do), enough volume to offset extra costs of design/print/form definition/ICR s/w/doc prep/scanning; effective manual correction function (for correction, joined up writing and ICR queries); plenty of data validation opportunities (check digits, balances, table look-ups, logic). Also may be better to use more tick boxes rather than handprint response areas, even if uses more pages. Failure factors: too low volumes, solution oversold as >90% handprint accuracy, extra print costs exceed costs/time benefits, business case cannot compete with offshore key from image bureaus, not prepared to design and print ICR friendly forms, clumsy manual correction functions, too few form fillers write neatly in boxes (or don't use uppercase). Fewer than a thousand of forms a week is unlikely to be worth cost savings, unless turnaround time is the critical benefit and if you were going to scan anyway. Lower case and cursive ICR handprint recognition gives poorer accuracy results (more choices between lower case L, one (1), stroke (/) and same for other similar characters). |
