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SWING S.r.l. Deploys Local Tax Form Solution Based on ABBYY FlexiCapture Technology

September 07, 2004
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City tax authorities in Italy deploy automated tax form processing solution.

 

ABBYY Europe, a member of ABBYY Group, today announces about changing the ways in which Italian governments process tax forms - city by city. The Milan-based integration company Swing S.r.l., a certified ABBYY technology partner, has developed a tax form processing solution based on ABBYY FlexiCapture™ Studio and ABBYY FormReader. The solution, announced for broad availability today, was developed in cooperation with ABBYY and promises to change the ways in which local governments process tax forms.

Solving a Problem: City Tax Forms of Variable Formats

Swing, a company with many years of experience developing form processing and document management solutions for a variety of Italian companies, has found that despite recent technological advances, many local Italian governments (known as PAL - Pubblica Amministrazione Locale or local public administration) are still burdened with long processes for inputting and processing tax forms. The many tax forms submitted by the local citizens are still in many cases being input into the computer manually, page by page, by hired data entry clerks. This is a large task for small governments that sometimes have limited staff and resources.

 

A solution more flexible than a standard form processing solution is required to meet this need. In certain cases, city offices are working with more than 20 different kinds of form layouts, all of which needed to be processed at the same time. Over time, the local governments have accumulated many printouts by working with different printing bureaus. Budget and time constraints make it impossible to change all forms to match one layout format. With limited IT resources, small-to mid-sized cities need a new, fast, efficient solution that can be set up and ready to go quickly. Large scale systems that require many months or a large staff for implementation are not truly beneficial.

The Solution and Product

Swing has developed a tax form processing solution to answer this need. RiconoscICI, loosely translated as "recognize ICI" ("riconoscere" - Italian for "recognize" - plus ICI, the local tax for all Italian home owners), offers fast implementation at a low cost and addresses the need to process multiple form layouts at the same time. As standard form processing solutions work by creating a standard form layout or template and training the recognition system to find data according to the layout guidelines, standard form processing is not suitable for the city governments. Creating a form template and training the system for every type of document would take too long and cost the city too much money and manpower. Swing, who had already been working with ABBYY FormReader, devised a new solution that leverages the power of ABBYY's new FlexiCapture Studio. As a result RiconoscICI can now specifically process semi-structured documents (documents with varying formats but similar information).

 

Swing's RiconoscICI incorporates ABBYY FormReader with ABBYY FlexiCapture Studio. ABBYY FormReader is a powerful, yet easy to deploy system for capturing data from forms for input into databases and other information management systems. FormReader can process forms with varying layouts through added support for ABBYY FlexiCapture technology FlexiCapture is intelligent technology that can locate key data on a document, even if the information field's location and format varies from document to document. This is achieved by using ABBYY FlexiCapture Studio to create "FlexiLayouts," intelligent form templates that direct the system to find key fields wherever they are located on the page. So if a field such as "total annual income" appears in different places on different forms, the FlexiLayout™ will direct the system to find the "total annual income" even if it is in the upper right hand corner, middle of the page, etc.

 

"We have worked with a variety of form processing solutions, and this integration of ABBYY technology offered the best combination for this market," explained Bruno Conte, CEO of Swing Srl. "ABBYY FlexiCapture proved intelligent enough to overcome the problems associated with multiple types of forms, and the implementation is fast and easy." In competing for government contracts, Swing's solution is evaluated against other technologies and has been chosen after thorough testing.

 

As many city governments have limited staff and resources, the Swing solution is ideal. Most cities that need to process large amounts of forms (multiple pages times the city population) do not have the large IT departments that the national government has. Swing's solution helps eliminate the huge preparation work usually involved before scanning document. Implementation time for a system currently averages about two weeks before a city is "up and running."

In Use In Towns Across Italy Today

The SWING solution for local tax form processing based on ABBYY FormReader with FlexiCapture, is already deployed in a variety of towns across northern Italy.

About SWING S.r.l.

SWING S.r.l. is a provider of leading solutions for document and knowledge management based near Milan, Italy and is an ABBYY certified reseller. Established in 1998, SWING personnel offer many years of experience developing, customizing and integrating document information technologies specifically designed to match the individual needs of customers. The company is a certified technology partner for such leading technology companies as Verity Inc., Oce Document Technologies GmbH, Windream GmbH, Adobe Corp., and has provided integrated solutions for a variety of companies in several sectors as finance, insurance, service bureau, health and government. SWING's products customers include: FIAT Group, ISTAT (National Institute of Statistics), ISS (National Institute of Health), Michelin, Abbey National Bank, Generali Insurance, The City of Milan, and many Hospitals and Universities.

 

For additional information on SWING, please visit the Web site at http://www.swingdit.it/ and http://www.formprocessing.it/, for more information on the Swing application please visit the Web site http://www.riconoscici.it/ or contact SWING by phone at +39-02-97487090, or by email at info@swingdit.it.

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