Devices such as canners, and copiers are not capable of extracting single characters from documents. This advanced process enables employees to cap characters and convert the output into digitally stored text. The starting point of OCR usually begins when the document is being scanned by a device, or photographed.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a proven data capture technology used among many traditional scanning/printing companies. OCR can help extract data in searching, organizing, and editing. The technology of OCR provides real-time processing during the capture stage of data, keeping databases consistently updated.