User Guide

Production capture has its own specifics. Largescale projects
require dedicated software and hardware, special training for the
personnel and careful organization.
Forms processing software
Experience shows that processing more than 3,000 forms per day
by more than three operators requires a distributed software solu
tion. Each operator will be able to concentrate on their specific
task and deliver the best quality. ABBYY FormReader Enterprise
Edition is a distributed data capture solution that can process
practically unlimited numbers of forms. Additionally, the program
can assemble multipage documents and validate data using
sophisticated rules.
Production scanners
Highspeed production scanners are essential in largescale proj
ects. In theory, an alternative solution might be to distribute scan
ning between a large number of cheap lowend scanners. In
practice this approach never works, as ordinary scanners tend to
break down, which entails additional costs.
Hardware
 Almost any PC will do as a Scanning Station, the only
critical requirement being sufficient harddisk space.
 Recognition Stations must be more powerful than Scanning
Stations  powerful processors and large RAM are essential.
Multiprocessor servers are often used. Many data capture pro
grams, ABBYY FormReader included, support multiprocessor
systems.
 Verification Stations must be equipped with goodquality com
puter screens to reduce the operators' eyestrain.
 The Export Station must have enough RAM, so that data may be
exported in background mode.
 The local area network must have a high throughput since
internal traffic can be fairly high  one batch can be dozens of
megabytes in size.
 A powerful PC is required for the database server, as
FormReader stores all settings and entered data in an internal
database.
Export of data
Unlike desktop systems, large enterprise systems usually do not
save data to files. Very often a special export module is created
which exports data into an external data storage or management
system. An alternative method of exporting data is to save them
into an XML file which can then be processed by a specially cre
ated XML analyser. All ABBYY FormReader products support sav
ing in XML.
Personnel training
The staff who will run and administer the system have to be spe
cially trained. Even though ABBYY FormReader's interface is fairly
straightforward, some preliminary instructions are necessary.
ABBYY specialists will always provide expert advice and training
for operators when implementing largescale projects. Handson
training is particularly effective and allows operators to start pro
cessing forms within a very short time.
Production capture
Automated Forms Processing