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Accurance-AABP, a Leading BPO Company, Stays Ahead of The Curve with ABBYY FlexiCapture
“The major things that influenced us to make use of ABBYY solutions in our project are its capabilities to capture data found in varying layout of the form and, at the same time, its amazing accuracy in locating and capturing the said data.”
John Fitch, CEO, Founder
Summary
The project is capturing of data from complex and sophisticated medical claim forms (HCFA). The form has 272 data fields, all of which contain important information which can't be left out. ABBYY FormReader 6.5 Enterprise Edition and FlexiCapture technology help AABP achieve an optimal time of 30 seconds per claim for verification. With this technology, data from all 272 fields is accurately captured and verified.
AABP – keeping up with growing needs over time
ABBYY’s data capture solution was introduced to AABP several years ago when ABBYY Forms Enterprise 1.2 version was on the scene. At that time, the advantages of substituting manual key-in labor by machine-run optical character recognition were a hot topic to discuss and hard to believe. Thanks to its CEO's foresight, AABP chose the direction towards automation of data capture process which brought them numerous advantage points over other BPOs specializing in data entry.
As the business was evolving, the requirements were changing too. ABBYY, being a leader and innovator in data capture technologies, offered the new data capture solution to the market: FormReader 6.5 Enterprise Edition with incorporated FlexiCapture technology. It came out to be a “right-on” match for the growing needs and expectations of AABP.
ABBYY FormReader with FlexiCapture technology has been the cornerstone solution for many BPO agencies. FormReader 6.5 Enterprise Edition is a complete solution for automated data capture. It is the most optimal, for it provides an entire set of required tools and ensures smooth integration with customer's workflow and other software. It supports fixed and flexible templates, multipage documents, full-page recognition and more.
FlexiCapture technology and 272 data fields made easy
The flexible template for HCFA form was created in FlexiCapture, and it ideally suits for subsequent data capture and processing in FormReader. At first glance, HCFA health insurance claim form (see the inset picture) looks just like any typical form with fixed layout. The difference lies in the technology used to process it. A life cycle of this form includes several steps: printing out the blank form, printing data onto the form (filling the form), and subsequent scanning of the filled form, while each of these steps often occur in separate locations, under different conditions, using different hardware, and different hardware settings. All of the above, plus the human factor can really change the look of the scanned form with garbling, skewness, etc. Hence, such form images no longer fall under the “fixed layout” category, because they don't match if stacked one on top of the other. As a result, the standard “fixed template” approach to processing these forms is simply ineffective, as it relies heavily on verification and correction operators.
To solve the problem with mismatched forms described above, ABBYY FlexiCapture technology comes to the rescue. This breakthrough technology features a “pre-recognition” process, which enables accurate location of all 272 data fields with the help of a flexible template – a guiding description for the program to distinctly identify each and every field of that form. As a result, the need for human verifiers and correctors is minimized, yet the recognition quality nears 100%.
There are 2 form types processed by AABP using FlexiCapture: HCFA forms of ‘old’ design and HCFA forms of ‘new’ design which were scanned either in black-and-white mode or with red color drop-out option (see the inset pictures).
“Not only are all the hardware, human, other important parts of the life cycle variable, in addition to the black-and-white versus color drop-out. But also the HCFA forms are either 'old' or 'new' and they come to us intermixed, and the ABBYY solution has to recognize on the fly,” commented John Fitch, “To us, it is very important that ABBYY FlexiCapture is recognizing actually 2 different forms, and 2 different colors, in addition to all the other variables, and outputting a standard, based on accurate recognition and reading of all these.”
As it was mentioned previously, a form has 272 fields, all of which need to be processed. Because the FormReader suite is a complete solution, equipped with unique algorithms, the entire cycle per form is done in just over a minute (1.25 minutes), and by the time the data is ready to be exported, it is 100% accurate.
The resources and the workflow
AABP has one data server and a total of 17 stations dedicated to FormReader. One station is assigned to each one of the following: administration, registration/scanning, recognition, verification, correction, export and monitoring; two stations are set up for recognition, and ten stations are used for verification. As for the human resources, there are 3 verifiers, 2 operators for proofing, 1 operator who merges a final output, and 1 administrator.
Checking and sorting of images are the first steps. This is where the operators segregate poor quality images and those that do not qualify to run in FormReader from the qualified ones. Poor quality and non-qualifying images pass through to the manual data entry operators.
The qualifying images are loaded to FormReader and go through registration, recognition, verification and correction processes. After correction, output from FormReader is extracted at the export station. The next step is proofing of the output which is done according to AABP proprietary algorithms. Aside from having ABBYY solutions on this project, AABP integrated other software for data validation and final checking of output file specifications based on client requirements. Merging of output batches is the last step in the processing cycle.
What the customer says
This is what Manny S. Miranda, Project Manager, had to say about the first impressions of using FormReader with FlexiCapture technology: “At first, it was actually a little unexpected to see such high speed and yet top accuracy in processing sophisticated and complicated forms like HCFA.”Now, having been using FormReader in their day-to-day operations, the feedback is as positive as ever: “Thanks to ABBYY, we are able to submit projects to our customer on time and with a high quality.”
About Accurance-AABP
Accurance-Asia-Americas Business Process, Inc. (Accurance-AABP), is a Manila-based BPO handling health insurance and medical claims forms for US-based client companies. AccuranceSM ("Ak ur ance") provides the strategies, expertise and services to convert raw data into a significant source of increased revenues and lowered costs. For more information please visit http://www.accurance.com/