Sebastian McNamee, Business Development Manager for Workspace at Canon South Africa.
Businesses across South Africa and Africa are moving to Canon’s Readiris PDF Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software as a simple, cost-effective PDF management solution for digitising documents, editing PDFs and improving productivity.
Sebastian McNamee, Business Development Manager for Workspace at Canon South Africa, says Readiris PDF is developed by IRIS, a Canon company. It is a complete PDF and OCR software solution designed to transform paper documents, scanned files and PDFs into editable, searchable digital files.
McNamee says ReadIris’s advanced OCR intelligence allows users to annotate and comment on PDF documents, compress and optimise PDF files, at a fraction of the cost of most other solutions.
Readiris PDF automatically recognises text and preserves layouts from images, PDFs and scanned documents. It converts files into editable Word, Excel, PDF, Image, HTML and ePub formats, reducing manual data entry and improving productivity.
The multilingual software supports up to 138 OCR languages, including Afrikaans, isiXhosa, Sotho and isiZulu.
McNamee says: “ReadIris PDF was released in 2021; the latest version available is the Readiris PDF 27. Among the most popular features are the ability to create and edit PDF forms and redact sensitive information. Users can manage document access, apply password protection and secure documents before sharing them in cloud storage and collaboration platforms.”
The solution is suited for virtually anyone, he says. “There's not one company out there that doesn't use PDF software or PDFs. The top use cases are likely in education, healthcare, government, legal and professional services, banking and finance,” he says.
Readiris is compatible with Microsoft Windows 10 and 11 and Mac OS version 11 or later.
“We are seeing solid growth globally and in the African market because of its ease of use and affordability,” McNamee says. “It’s a very simple tool to use, so once we demo it, organisations see the value.”
He notes: “Readiris costs much less than many other mainstream options. It’s sold under an affordable perpetual licensing model, not a subscription model, so you purchase a licence once off, and that licence belongs to you for life.”