Competency
Infrastructure
BPO
PDF
OCR / ICR
Tagged Text
Portable Document Format
The Portable Document Format (PDF) was created and is supported by Adobe. Document conversion to this format can be somewhat of an art form. Here is a list of tasks from a recent job that involved converting magazines to the PDF format:
  • Prepare the magazine for scanning. This includes organizing, removing staples, and unbinding.
  • Scanning the magazine. This includes configuring the scanner for proper color conversion, laying each page by hand to ensure prefect alignment and flatness, choosing the proper image format (resolution, color, gray, b/w, text or no text).
  • Capturing the images. This is specific PDF terminology which means to OCR the text and to identify the areas that are graphic images.
  • Cleanup of selected text and graphics. This involves identifying the areas that should not be OCR'ed and cleaning up picture selection.
  • Correction of suspects. This includes looking at all OCR suspects, spelling errors, and unknown fonts.
  • Search for typical OCR errors. This includes looking for things like a dash that should really be an en or em, the letters @, 0, 1, ', and ".
  • Proofreading. This includes reading the material in context, final cleanup, and formatting.
  • Final processing. This includes exporting to the PDF format, distilling the PDF to final image resolutions, trimming margins, and creating bookmarks.
» Cost

The cost of PDF conversion varies. Each job is unique:
  • Receiving - pickup, tracking, bundle, storage.
  • Scanning - black and white or color, sheets, books, or magazines.
  • Capture - OCR, typewritten, clean copy, faxed, nonstandard fonts.
  • Correction - magazine, book, manual, easy, moderate, hard, tables, scientific, double spaced.
  • Accuracy - hidden text, correction of suspects, proofreading.
  • Rework - poor originals, missing pages, typos.
  • Finalizing - distill, convert, export, bookmark, index, keywords, filename.
  • Delivery - CD-ROM, shipping.


Some of the factors that are making outsourcing popular are:
  • Factor Cost Advantage
  • Superior Competency
  • Utilization Improvement
  • Economy of Scale 
  • Business Risk Mitigation 
  • Rapid access to high quality
  • numerous and readily-available IT professionals 
  • Wide range of technology skills available
  • Stringent quality control 
  • Shorter project delivery times 
  • Using the time difference to your favour, especially where the offshore company provides support or maintenance