The transportation and logistics industries are the cogs of the world’s economy and without them, almost everything else would grind to a halt. The organization of these industries is, therefore, extremely complex, involving international laws, regulatory hurdles, sub-contractors, massive numbers of employees, and much more. And with this enormous complexity, huge quantities of paperwork are inevitably generated on a daily basis.
While the industries have both taken significant strides toward digitization of data in recent years, physical documents such as contracts, invoices, and many other types of paperwork, are still commonly used by individual businesses. These documents generally need to be stored digitally, and this causes enormous challenges for many companies.
Traditionally, digitization of data involved employees trawling through documents and manually copying the data into computers. This method is slow, laborious, and expensive. It also has a near-unavoidable high error rate. Alternatively, some businesses use basic optical character recognition (OCR) software to automate the digitization process. However, many examples of this software are also plagued by high error rates, among other issues.
Modern OCR software, enhanced by AI, is now capable of overcoming these issues, giving transportation and logistics organizations an effective way to automate their document digitization.
What is OCR for transportation and logistics?
OCR for logistics and transportation is largely the same as any other type of OCR software. The main difference is that it is specifically applied to paperwork used by the transportation and logistics industries, such as invoices, contracts, and regulatory documents.
Unfortunately, early and basic forms of OCR are limited in their usefulness by the fact they can only recognize a relatively narrow range of simple document types. With complex or abnormal documents, the software is often incapable of recognizing the information properly.
AI-powered OCR software, however, is able to recognize a greater variety of document formats, meaning even complex documents can be digitized accurately. This makes it far more useful in practice for the transportation and logistics industries.
How can OCR benefit the transportation and logistics industries?
More accurate digitization
A huge benefit of using AI-based OCR to capture your data from physical documents is its high level of accuracy. Transportation and logistics often involve complex, expensive, multi-stakeholder projects where accuracy is paramount, so it is important to be able to rely on digitized data.
Traditional methods of digitization are prone to high error rates. For example, when manually transferring information, humans can consistently be expected to make multiple errors. Similarly, basic OCR software can have low accuracy rates – often even lower than manual transfer.
Advanced AI-powered OCR, however, can be significantly more accurate, helping users to trust the integrity of their digital data and eliminate other less effective methods of digitization.
Streamlined storage and sharing of data
Paper documents are cumbersome and difficult to manage for a number of reasons. For example, they require a lot of physical storage space, they are expensive to print, and to be shared they must be manually copied or scanned into a computer or even mailed. Storage of digitized documents, however, is extremely straightforward and simple to organize. Additionally, they can be copied and shared almost instantaneously.
AI-powered OCR software can make the digitization of documents more accessible to any company, helping to simplify information storage and access. It can also ensure that documents can be shared across geographic locations and between teams far more easily – something that can streamline the way logistics and transport companies handle their data.
Faster data transfer
Possibly the biggest benefit of AI-based OCR for many transportation and logistics companies is the speed at which it can digitize documents. A huge drawback of manual data transfer is the time it takes, and basic OCR technology can also be slowed down by the lack of compatibility with many complex document types. AI-based OCR helps companies to more rapidly transfer their data to digital form, saving them time that can be spent elsewhere.
Cost-effective digitization
When compared with manual data transfer or outdated OCR software, AI-powered OCR can offer a cost-effective method of digitization. Manually transferring data takes a lot of time and effort from employees, using up valuable resources unnecessarily. Likewise, basic OCR software can be highly inefficient and require a large amount of human intervention to work optimally, which also eats into budgets. Alternatively, AI-based OCR can help businesses to bypass these inefficient methods, offering a cost-effective digitization solution.
Automatically process almost any document
As we’ve previously covered, digitization of abnormal and complex documents can be very difficult for businesses using traditional methods. For example, employees manually transferring information will take longer to work with complex and unfamiliar document formats, and primitive OCR software is often unable to recognize anything but the most simple documents.
AI-powered OCR technology, on the other hand, is capable of effectively recognizing and accurately digitizing information from a huge range of document types. Additionally, there should be no drop in performance, and companies can still enjoy a high level of accuracy. Beyond this, some software can be pre-trained to recognize specific document formats, further ensuring compatibility.
Why choose Digitise.AI?
Digitise.AI’s powerful digitization platform uses advanced AI to accurately, automatically, and rapidly digitize the data from physical documents, including almost any type of paperwork used by the transportation and logistics industries.
We can pre-train the advanced algorithms that power the Digitise.AI platform to recognize any specific document type, so your business can rely on exceptional accuracy for all of your document digitization.
Speak to our team today to see Digitise.AI in action and find out more about how it could help you automate the digitization process and eliminate paperwork from your operations.
See Digitise.AI ocr for transport and logistics at work.