When using Anoto based digital pen & paper systems, one of the greatest benefits is the ability to output data from the handwritten form into a back-end system (ERP, patient records database, accounting package or just about any form of database).
Quite often even before I have done a demo to a potential client, the question comes up – “How do we make sure that the data going from the technician in the field into my XYZ software is going to be correct?”
That is a very good and very valid question. An electrician filling in a form at a clients site might easily write in the wrong job number, wrong client, date, billable time or materials. If that were to push straight to the accounting system for example, you would have all sorts of problems to contend with. Conversely, there might simply be an incorrectly interpreted word or number sequence from the handwriting recognition.
Photo courtesy of Anoto
Everyone is familiar with the concept of GIGO – Garbage in Garbage out, so we need to make sure that there is an opportunity to correct the forms before it gets sent to the final destination. That is why we have the Form Editor.
The form editor is our web based viewer and form correcting portal that displays the form with all the hand writing of the person who completes it. It also displays the data being pulled off from the hand writing recognition (HWR).
If you take a look at the image below, you will see that this is a screen capture of part of a service report. In the form editor you will normally see the entire form.You can see that the printed part of the form is there with the hand writing of the person who completed it, giving the appearance of seeing the original paper form itself. Then there is the orange text. This orange text is the output of the hand writing recognition. We have the orange text positioned over the field where the handwriting is positioned so it is easy to associate the data to the correct field. Doing this makes it very easy to quickly skim through the form and see if everything is correct. If something is wrong, either filled in incorrectly or the HWR misread the text, then it is simply a matter of clicking into the box with the orange text and editing it. Once any necessary changes are made, simply click `update’ and the data is saved as it appears in orange and then is ready to be exported to your back-end system.
The big benefit of having digital pen based forms is that you aren’t waiting for them to be physically returned to the office before they can be processed, and in turn the admin staff aren’t require to do a full data entry job from scratch – they simply visually verify and correct the data before it is loaded to the back-end.
That’s the simplicity of a simPRO Real Time Form solution.
Tags: anoto, digital pen & paper
Looks good – the digital notes can also be transferred straight on the computer, right ?