OCR SCANNING

[Former Member]

Hi,

I want to know more about OCR Scanning Process if anyone has done the detailed study or implementation then please guide me how to go about this process.

Thank you

Regards,

Seema Pilankar

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

You need a 3rd party product with OCR capability. The products commonly used would be Kofax Ascent Capture, OpenText and Readsoft. These are normally used for AP solutions.

What are you trying to achieve with OCR?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you Athol !

I know we require third party software etc., but not in detail.

My concern is know more about process and overview of Optical character Recognition(OCS) with related to SAP. So if you have more information please reply me.

Thank you

Regards,

Seema Pilankar

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Its not possible to give a generic overview of how OCR is applicable to SAP. There are too many areas. I.e. AP, HR, Forms Processing. It depends on what you are trying to achieve with the software.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

i need ur help regarding my query?

There should be a scanning tool to directly scan documents into the repositories with option of capturing meta data. is is possible ???/ if yes then how????

Thanks

Amit

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

There are many tools for scanning directly into SAP. IXOS/OpenText, Readsoft, Kofax etc.

It all depends on what you want to do.

[Luminita · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I saw the conversation, here ref. OCR.

I need urgent support for preparing the answers for a public tender until the end of this week

The Capture sw should :

-        OCR + indexing

-        Image processing

-        Notifications on page

-        Control quality and image

-        Fields, letter and figures correction

-        To manage lots of documents

-        To manage metadata.

The number of users is 1100.

We need also, a price quotation for this capture software.

My colleague, Bogdan Rusu i(bogdan.rusu@sap.com) is in charge with technical part of this RFP.

Me and Bogdan are waitting for your support!

Kind Regards,

Luminita

[MangeshP]

Hi Friends

We also had requirements from one of our clients for such kind of solutions.

There are various kinds of solutions available from various companys like Readsoft. Laserfische , Omniflow etc.

One example is for Accounts Payable Process.In any company there are many Invoices and material received at various locations of company.The GR is done at this locations and as per the law these Original Hard copies are to be kept at these location for around ten years so that whenever an Ap audit is done they should be tracked. Also the actual Payement for these invoices is done at one centralized location of company which manages all finance process such as AR, AP, Cash Bank etc....

So these scanning solution provides solution in Following Manner.

1. When an invoice is received at particular location this invoice is scanned.So all the data from Physical Hard copy of invoice is scanned such as Invoice no , PO no, Vendor no, with Physical Image of Invoice and this data is stored in Scanning Solution Server.This data can be validated with the SAP ERP Server.So these scanning solution provides Realtime data validation and posting and creation of Invoice in SAP ERP.

2. Once the data or record is created workflow can be triggered to the AP division in Centralized division for Checking the Invoice scanned with all the data that is available side by side.So checking and approval of these data can be done in these solutions. These scanning solutions also provide the workflows and UI for these Process.

So in Nutshell these scanning solutions provided scanning of Any document ,Retreving data from this documents , Storing of Images of these document , Providing customer based User Interface for veiwing these data, Validation of captured data with data of SAP ERP, Transfering of data from Scanning solutions to any ERP appllication such as FI, DMS, SD.. etc. To validate these data workflow facility is also provided by these scanning solution( multilevel approval scenario ) .

These solution provide good functionality interms of capturing data from documents, multilevel approval workflows, Integration with with different mail Clients such as MS Outlook, IBM lotus notes etc., and reporting when the document was scanned till when the record was closed.KRA and SLA can also be tracked to ensure the effiecieny of employees working in these business process.

As far as SAP is concerned we can used standard functionality of Attaching the scanned AP invoice to the Invoivce created in SAP by archive link functionality and build workflow around this Invoice for multilevel approval.So everytime the scanned Invoive is available for vewing while checking and approval of Invoice created in System.

I have information of one scanning solutions called Omniflow and seen it also but not in detail.This solution serves all your pupose perfectly and even readsoft also.

My advice would be get in touch with all these Scanning solutions Companys and ask for Demo and your querries. This will speed up your solutioning very fast and accurate.

With regards

Mangesh Pande

[Former Member]

Thanks for the elaborate reply Mangesh.

One follow up question though -

A thirty part OCR scanning solution is a must to have even if we decide to build a workflow using the SAP Archivelink functionality right ?

[Former Member]

OCR is not a must but then you would need to process data off the invoices manually which could be an issue for high volumes. I would recommend OCR if you are doing more than 10000 invoices a month.

[MangeshP]

Dear Amol

The OCR Scanning Functionality is used in the Scenarios where the Volumes of invoices coming and getting registered in ERP System is very large and the actual payment are happening at differnt place.

Example.

Suppose a Company ABC is a multilocation Company and they have centralized Finance department to do all AP and AR transactions.So for such types of scenarios a scanning solutions is must as the volumes of Invoices are more than 1000 / month.

Anather thing is that people generally receiving Invoices may some times create invoice in system wrongly so scanning helps to reduce errors and Multilevel apporoval workflow helps to eliminate the errors.

So in a third party solution is must for such scenarios.I hope I have cleared your doubt.

Regards

Mangesh Pande

[Former Member]

This message was moderated.

[Former Member]

Hi,

I am also working on the same initiative. Perhaps you might want to check on this ReadSoft link:

http://www.readsoft.com/products/invoices_sap.htm

I have also downloaded some materials from ReadSoft. How do i post them here?

Thanks!

[Former Member]

There used to be an option to attach files, I'm not sure where its gone.

Readsoft is a great Accounts Payable solution.

What I was trying to get out of the people asking questions here is exactly what they intend doing with OCR. There are 100's of potential solutions for OCR and Scanning in SAP. Asking for more information on that is like asking someone for more information on SAP. If they are specific with their questions they can get answers which makes sense, if they are not, they are like to get answers which are not specific to their application.

[Former Member]

We are looking at thirty party solutions for A/P invoice OCR scanning and workflow. I know there are 100s in the market - readsoft, ixos, filenet etc.

Can any body share their experience or knowledge about pros and cons of each of the solutions they have come across ?

Mainly questions like, what solutions offer multilevel approval scenario for workflow, limitaions etc ?

Also, what is available from the SAP standard ? Is there anything at all that can be leveraged from the standard ?

Thanks in advance