Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) has a vast panorama of use. It is not restricted to only to standardized testing as well as course enrollment and attendance in education. Its domain lies in HR Departments, Healthcare Industry, Hospitality Industry and many more uses like time and attendance, labor tracking, inventory management, voting applications, exit surveys, polling, and all manner of questionnaires and evaluation studies.
The HR industry worldwide depends on OMR Technology for Employee Testing, Job Satisfaction surveys, benefits enrollment, change of employee status, payroll deductions, and user training.
Healthcare providers use the technology for registration and surveys, and medical labs for patient evaluations and tracking supply orders and lab services.
OMR technology is user friendly and is easy to use and cost effective for opinion tracking, the technology has become a tool for on-location and direct-mail marketing.
Key Attributes and Limitations
· Mark/no mark optical-read, read-only technology
· Relatively low cost scanning equipment
· Application-specific forms required, low cost in bulk
· Accuracy determined by the effectiveness of detecting marks and accommodating the variability in marks.
Generations of students subjected to standardized testing are all too familiar with optical mark recognition, though few are likely to recognize it by name. One of the earliest types of automated data entry, also referred to as mark sense, OMR processes marked data by detecting and measuring reflected light flooding the form. When a mark has been made within a constrained area (with a #2 pencil or more recently, a felt-tipped pen), it absorbs light. Subsequently, electronic circuitry recognizes the mark as valid and sends a digital signal to the computer. The form data, represented by mark positions, are translated to ASCII text records for use in a variety of applications.
Another huge application is in lotteries, where participants can quickly and easily mark their selection of numbers on a machine-readable ticket.
Although less sophisticated than other optical data collection technologies, OMR can serve certain high-volume data collection applications very cost-effectively because of labor and cost efficiencies. It has a lock on the educational market and is growing steadily in commercial and government applications.
OMR in hospitality industry
The key to anyone in hospitality industry lies in keeping the Customers happy. Hospitality industry depends on a lot on the performance of the tour operator or the services offered by the hotel to the customer. It helps in increasing their business as "word of mouth" publicity plays a very important role in their business
Let's consider Tour Operator who specializes in Cruise and adventure tours packages to its clients. They place the highest priority on keeping its customers happy. To know about the complaints, suggestions, and expectations of the customers is a very important task. OMR here plays a very vital role in this survey. Customer survey forms can be designed in such a way so that they extract the maximum information from them. Customers simply have to mark the circles for their responses.
If the tour operator has to process approx 5000 responses per week, they would have to employ about 20-25 part time data entry operators who would again process those 5000 forms in 3-4 days making it difficult to manage the responses and provide a quick response for it is already delayed by 3-4 days.
If OMR Technology is used for the above purpose, the customers simply fill in a circle next to their chosen response. The company in turn also saves time and money as the manpower cost is down to only 2 operators who scan and process the survey in 1 day only. The company now has substantially more information with far fewer people, and the flexibility of the system allows for quick and cost-effective revisions of the cards. Cards can be processed and reports sent to the cruise manager or the tour manager in the same day, consequently addressing immediately any problem.
** This was a post on my Google Group by Mr Amit Sharma***
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