Recognising Application Forms at BauBG

Original situation	Besides other incoming mail, the Building Trade Association of Bavaria and Saxony (BauBG) receives reports on all construction projects within its operational area in its capacity as compulsory insurer. These construction reports are made on various forms designed by the BauBG, several  hundreds of which arrive at the BauBG every day. Each form contains up to several dozen fields which are (usually) filled out by hand. The data used to be manually indexed within the framework of an existing document management system. This system was to be replaced by automatic data indexing.
Requirements	Incoming forms were to be scanned early (i.e. before manual processing) and selected automatically wherever possible - whereby forms which could not be automatically read were to be processed using manual indexing. At the same time, comprehensive validation routines to check consistency and completeness were to be carried out. Subsequently, the resulting index data was to be made available along with the images on the host system, where further paper-free processing could be carried out. Following an invitation for tenders, IBM Deutschland was given the assignment of implementing a comprehensive scanning and indexing solution as a precursor to processing and visual archiving.
Project description	The solution provided by IBM Deutschland uses PROSAR for its block capital and hand written text recognition sectors, and uses PROKEY for manual indexing. Both products are integrated into the InputAccel capturing system. Comprehensive validation routines were developed for PROKEY, taking underlying professional  as well as purely formal perspectives into account. Furthermore, to facilitate data entry, example tables which automatically complete manually entered data (e.g. city or street names) were also installed to greatly accelerate data entry. The system has been in daily productional operation since 1997 and has been expanded through further project stages, whilst also being adapted to meet the client's changing requirements.
Contact	at IBM: Ronald Fritz, Tel. +49-(0)30-3115-1641 at Paradatec: Bernt v. Nottbeck, Tel. +49-(0)531-23815-0