Let’s understand the term digitization first! Digitization means the creation of a digital representation of physical objects or attributes. For example, we scan a paper document and save it as a digital document (PDF).
In other terms, digitization turns something non-digital into a digital representation or artefact. Computerized systems can use for various use cases. For example, In manufacturing, a manual or mechanical measurement is converted to an electronic one.
Digitization is key to success. It builds the connection between the physical world and the software. It is a potential enabler for any process that adds value to the businesses as per the need for user data.
What is Zoning?
Zoning: is specially designed to turn unstructured data/information stored in documents into a smaller, easily accessible piece of data that can be used, specifically in machine learning environments, to drive and achieve clever business outcomes.
Using the information stored in PDF files and making it accessible to machine learning systems is a challenging task. Zoning is the first step toward the PDF conversion process. They are designed in such a way as to automate the process of recognizing and classifying sequences and blocks of information, followed by assigning them to predefined “zoning” categories. It not only helps in identifying the content in the PDF but categorizes it into different content types. (E.g., Journals category: Title, Abstract, Authors, Image, References, etc.).
Once categorization is done. These content blocks are then further nurtured by Machine Learning models to perform sequence tagging. This process exclusively provides the ability to perform complex tasks such as extracting text from an image.
How is information digitized?
The digitization of information typically involves the following processes:
- Capturing an image using a scanner, which can be either a form of text or an image doc, and convert it to an image file, e.g., a text file or a bitmap file.
- Optical character recognition (OCR): An OCR program analyzes a text image for light and dark areas to identify each letter or digit and converts all characters into an ASCII code.
- Sampling is a process of measuring the amplitude or intensity of the signal, from an analogue waveform to evenly spaced time markers, and representing the samples as numeric values to input data digitally.
- Recording: Capturing a sound or image on a recording medium such as magnetic tape or vinyl records and converting it using an analogue-to-digital converter.
The advantages of digitization.
Digitization has many advantages. Digital information can be easily stored, accessed, and shared and has become the most vital aspect in today’s world of businesses, where employees, customers, and partners need to access information quickly and efficiently.
Another benefit is that digital information is often easier to manipulate than analogue information. A company can now work more efficiently by analyzing and using data to make better decisions.
Ultimately, digitization can help businesses save effort and money by reducing the need for paper documents and other analogue materials.
Examples
Below are some common Digitization Examples of information that can be Zoned and digitized:
- Text: Books, Articles, and Contracts
- Images: Photographs, Artwork, and Medical Images
- Audio: Music, Speech, and Interviews,
- Videos: Movies, TV shows, and Webcam recordings.
- Data: Numerical data from sensors, Financial Data, and Weather forecast data.
We at Apex provide an extensive extraction and structuring engine to fulfil the need for classifying and extracting complex documents. The platform rigorously extracts information from the doc, performs transformations, and generates annotated/tagged XML as output with top-notch quality.
