OCR, AI & Other Technologies for Your Customs Processes - But How? (IDP Blog Series Part 1)

OCR Recognition: What is it?

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is a solution for automatically extracting printed or written text from a scanned document, PDF- or Image file and then converting the text into a machine-readable form that can be used for further data processing such as searching or generating new data by additional systems/applications. This means that the technology only recognizes the text from the document but does not process it further.

In which Customs Processes Can This Help?

OCR technology, in combination with artificial neural networks and intelligent data processing, is the basis for the digitalization of customs clearance. As standalone solutions, these technologies cannot optimize customs processes. Besides, many pre- and post-processing approaches are necessary, as well as an enormous amount of back-end engineering, additional artificial intelligence systems and a completely rethought data governance system to optimize customs clearance.

All these different systems and technologies therefore form an innovative, virtual IT-ecosystem, which makes it possible to create a cycle of structured and qualitative data and to optimize the following customs processes:

• Document control and request
• Risk analysis and assessment
• Classification of goods in the customs tariff
• Completion of a customs declaration including customs coding (achieved by machine verification of existing data)
• Delivery of customs-relevant information on a specificissue.

Digicust Supports Your Company

When applying OCR technology, artificial intelligence (AI), master data and various data science approaches, a lot more needs to be considered. However, since this would go beyond the scope of one blog, several blogs will be shared weekly instead. This way, it is possible to gather new knowledge about document processing in customs clearance each week and you do not get bored by too long texts.

Other than this, we at Digicust have been aware of the OCR and unstructured data problem in customs clearance for a long time and have made it our mission to support everybody who does customs with these topics. With our product Dexter IDP - automated fill-out of customs declarations by applying an end-to-end intelligent document processing system and Dexter's machine customs know-how, we can support companies with exactly this problem. All kinds of invoices and other document types can be automatically processed and digitalized with 98+ percent accuracy. Once processed, Dexter forwards the customs declaration directly via interface to the applied customs software.

In AEB, Dakosy, dbh, LDV or whatever customs software you use. It is your choice. We connect Dexter and the finished customs declaration is only a click away. According to our customer's feedback, between 3 to 90 minutes time savings per customs declaration can be achieved , depending on the number of documents included in the customs case. This is due to avoiding customs code classification, printing and scanning documents, writing information on paper and due to avoiding manual data entry. If you prefer a free trial version of our Dexter end-to-end solution and want to experience full automation in filling out customs declarations, do not hesitate to contact us. ‍ We hope you enjoyed the reading. Next week we will continue with this Blog series. Stay tuned!