Embracing Document Digitization – Importance And Best Softwares

With the rise of the digital economy and progressive technology, document digitization is becoming the most frequently used methodology for making individuals' and organizations' workflow and processes smoother.

This blog will talk about document digitization, its importance, and how you can digitize documents with ease using software such as UPDF. Let’s learn more about it.

Part 1. What Is Document Digitization?

Firstly, let’s define what document digitization exactly means.

It is the process of converting your paper documents into digital ones and its ultimate goal is to automate your information flow and work process.

Document digitization is the evolution of adapting to the booming digital world.

Part 2. Why Is Document Digitization Important?

Document digitization is important in the current world scenario because it offers numerous benefits that ease our life and smoothen the flow of information. The major benefits include:

• Increased searchability and accessibility: Finding relevant digital files and content is much easier as it is sorted by defined folders and filters, and it can be accessed with ease at any time and instantly.
• Improved data security: digitizing documents ensure that important won’t be lost and it is stored safely in a storage system.
• Enhanced integration and collaboration: Digitizing documents helps data to be classified and integrated with other systems. In this way, it helps for improved sharing and collaboration.
• Saves space and costs: Digitizing documents helps to save physical space and in addition, saves operational costs with the digital storage space and accurate tracking and reporting capabilities.

Part 3. The 3-Step Document Digitization Process

Now, let’s go through 3 steps that you need to know when it comes to digitizing documents. These steps are as follows:

Step 1 - Scanning paper documents

The first step is to convert paper documents into digital. And the way it is done is by scanning documents.

This is where OCR or Optical Character Recognition comes into play in identifying characters and able to transmit them into digital information.

Having document management systems with strong OCR capabilities is essential. UPDF's OCR tool helps in making your scanned PDF searchable and editable. Check Part 4 for more detailed steps using UPDF.

Step 2 - Capturing the data

The next step in the process is capturing the information that was scanned. This is for validating data and making it easy to classify and access in and out of databases.

Step 3 - Storing in secure file storage

The third step is to store these digitized files in a secure storage space. Nowadays, this storage space we mostly use comes in the form of Cloud storage that provides large storage space and good data backup abilities.

Part 4. [BONUS] Use OCR Built-In PDF Software for Document Digitization

For digitizing your important documents with ease, software with built-in OCR is crucial. And since most of these essential documents are stored as PDFs, this is where UPDF can come into great use.

UPDF is an effective PDF editing and management software, where you can fulfill your PDF-related needs—including storing digitized documents securely.

One of the essential benefits of using UPDF is the ability to edit scanned documents with UPDF's built-in OCR feature.

The Windows, macOS, and iOS version supports digitizing documents and making scanned PDFs editable and searchable using OCR.

You can learn how to do it by first downloading UPDF for free, and the steps are as follows:

• Launch UPDF and open the PDF document that you scanned on the app.
• Once you open the PDF on UPDF, head over to the right-hand side panel and click Recognize Text Using OCR.
• UPDF will ask you to download the plugin if you haven't done before.
• Select the option Searchable PDF under the Document Type section.
• Besides it, under Layout, you can select any of the three layout options given from the drop-down list.

• You can click on the settings symbol beside the drop-down list for more advanced layout options.
• Next up, you can select the Document Language from any of the language options available from the drop-down list.
• For the Image Resolution, you can select the value from the drop-down list that seems appropriate. You can also click Detect Optimal Resolution to auto-detecting the scanned PDF's resolution.
• Next, you can determine the Page Range for applying OCR on the PDF document by filtering through the drop-down list.
• Finally, click Perform OCR and this will automatically save an editable PDF document wherever you want on your computer.

UPDF can be an integral part of your digitizing document journey. Besides its OCR feature, it also offers benefits such as:

• View and read PDF in an organized way for a seamless reading experience.
• Insert new pages, delete pages, and rearrange existing pages in PDFs for any purpose.
• Annotate documents with simple highlighting and marking tools so you can mark and take note of important data.
• Edit existing text in PDFs, add new text, delete text, or add watermarks to optimize your document.
• Convert PDF into different file formats such as .docx,.pptx, .xlsx, .csv, .txt, .png, and much more.
• Encrypt and share confidential documents by sending links to Emails and setting password protection and other permissions.
• Combine many PDFs into a single PDF for various purposes.
• Store PDFs securely in UPDF Cloud and access them instantly anytime and from any device (Simply download the UPDF app on those devices).

Use UPDF as Part of Your Document Digitization Process…

In real life, individuals' and organizations' operational workflow runs smoother when there is safety for their most important information. This usually comes in the form of documents and that's where document digitization is crucial.

It makes it easier to manage important documents, store them securely, and access them anytime without hassle compared to managing physical documents in a physical storage space.

Don't rush on the document digitization process because it should be considered a marathon and use OCR-built tools such as UPDF to efficiently scan, edit, and store documents in a secure storage space.