Readiris Corporate 12 in Software

Developers of OCR software such as Readiris Corporate 12 maintain there's still a tangible business benefit to be had from converting your paper to digital format. And while we admit it would be nice to be able to live in a paper-free world, the practical reality is somewhat different.

The trouble with OCR applications we've reviewed in the past is that, once corrections have been applied and processed, output settings tweaked and fiddled with, you might as well as have filed your pages for the amount of time you saved.

Readiris 12 attempts to make the process simpler. There's a straightforward wizard mode that takes you through things step-by-step, and its main screen presents a series of shortcut links, allowing you to quickly scan and OCR pages directly to a number of common destinations.

These include not only to Word, but also scan documents straight to email, tables directly to Excel, and recognise and export business cards directly to your Outlook contacts database - a fantastic tool for that works really well.

There are also tools to scan to XPS and, more importantly, readable PDF. The latter brings the prospect of being able to archive a large amount of printed material quickly, adding searchability while retaining its original formatting.

Plus, there's the option to archive to PDF-A, essential for any organisation looking to digitally archive legally sensitive material, and a batch mode for volume processing of documents.

But there are problems. The main issue is with the OCR of complex pages, which we found to be hit and miss. Present Readiris 12 with a sheet of plain text and it's accurate enough, but more complicated layouts can confuse it.

On one test - a relatively straightforward specifications sheet - the software failed to identify several small blocks of text situated next to graphics, and was completely stymied by reversed text and text against coloured backgrounds.

It recognises these blocks of text if you highlight them by hand, and pretty accurately too, but here you hit against Readiris 12's second major problem - ease of use. It's a pain to use, plain and simple.

There's no way of conveniently zooming in and out of documents quickly (you have to use a dropdown menu option), and changing identified areas from graphics to text when it gets things wrong is slow and painful too.

It promises much, but ultimately, fails to deliver on the promise of a simple, quick OCR tool for all. Ease of use isn't a strength and neither is OCR accuracy.

If you need to archive a lot of plain-text documents and don't mind a little work along the way, it's fine, but for quick and accurate document recognition with minimal external input, look elsewhere.

Author: Jonathan Bray