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Re: FAX-to-Order Software?
Jim,
I'd be very interested in learning about any software you might find that
can do this. The challenge I see in doing this is that if each customer
has their own system, the orders received via fax will have variations in
the text used to specify a purchase order number, date, and other data.
Not all fields will be positioned and/or named the same on incoming
orders. Without using some form of AI algorithm to process these and
train the system on the format of commonly used purchase order formats,
and without using some kind of pre-defined format (such as required by the
Ironside software from what I can tell), I would think that any kind of
text-recognition software would have a tough time processing orders.
If you are able to find something though, I'd love to hear about it. If
you can by chance find software to recognize purchase order text on
scanned image file formats (TIFF, PDF, GIF, JPEG), I can help you to find
a solution for automated fax -> image conversion -- that's easy enough.
Come to think of it, if you can get ahold of a package that can translate
via OCR text in an image to ASCII text in an automated fashion (via UNIX
shell script or Windows scheduler), you might be able to use clever
regular expressions to do this, although I do forsee much involved work.
On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 wrote:
> William, The client already has sophisticated online catalog ordering
> capabilities. Some customers want to enter the order in their system,
> print it, and fax it in. It would be nice if all purchasing systems
> could output a purchase order in a tagged data format. Even an email
> attachment could be translated easily if the PO had some intelligible
> format.
> > Jim, have you considered using a web-based interface, instead? It
> > seems to me as though a fax-to-order solution would cater to those who
> > aren't EDI capable; however, almost all companies do have an Internet
> > connection and would be able to submit orders via the web. Are there
> > requirements that a web interface won't satisfy, or is it indeed a
> > viable solution?
> > > Is anyone aware of any commercial fax-to-order solutions? What I'm
> > > referring to is the conversion of faxed orders into mapped data that
> > > can be loaded into an order entry system with little or no user
> > > intervention. An example of a full-blown commercial solution can be
> > > seen at [...] {http://myturl.com/0006a}
> > > I'm also considering OCR software that might provide a portion of a
> > > solution that can be integrated into an existing automated order
> > > entry solution. The OCR software would have to allow for the
> > > creation of sender-specific maps to convert selected fields in the
> > > faxed document into a defined data format such as XML, ANSI X12,
> > > CSV, etc.
-- _
__ __ ___ _| | William R. Lorenz <
\ V V / '_| | EC/EDI, Inc. <http://www.ecediinc.com/>
\./\./|_| |_| EDI Outsourcing; VAN Services; B2B E-Commerce
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