Often, universities, educational institutions, and giant examination bodies tend to outsource tasks associated with OMR sheet reading and merit-list generation, to various IT service providers. It is a requisite for these service providers to be able to scan and evaluate enormous piles of OMR sheets within relatively short time periods. Advanced OMR for such professionals is readily available internationally, with additional features and customizations to facilitate better calibration and faster processing of huge amounts of data.
The Design Module in the advanced version is smartly customized to facilitate
Manual repositioning and placement of OMR blocks, by specification of coordinates
Creation of multipage questionnaires by serially merging two or more OMR sheet designs
Quick and easy designing of OMR sheet layouts using the default templates available in the standard version of the software.
Advanced OMR versions for professionals come with the following additional features in the reading module, to facilitate quick processing of bulk data:
Manual edits can be done to reposition improperly scanned blocks, thus avoiding another round of scan.
Tiled scans and images that are skewed to a reasonable extent are automatically rectified for ease of validation.
User alerts for reporting errors in reading, such as double marks, excessively skewed images etc, help minimize rejection of improperly scanned images.
Data is processed at the back-end in SQL, which allows for open reporting and also helps boost performance while processing bulk data.
Multi-threading or multiple instance reading capability facilitates the processing of over 10000 sheets (in multiple folders) per hour.
Besides the features mentioned above, the advanced OMR version comes with add-on features that detects candidate photographs, all formats of barcodes, and handwritten addresses, in order to ensure accuracy and to rule out typing errors while generating admit cards. Other essential features include OCR scanner for reading printed digits and ICR reading capability for detection of handwritten digits.
Upgrades in the server version improves data reading and processing, facilitates quicker result generation. Following are some of the features of the server version
Open license allows for usage of any number of terminals, and users don’t need to pay the license fee on the basis of each terminal you use for sheet reading. There is a fixed license fee.
The raw data is then uploaded them onto a central server location, where it is processed and evaluated, and the statistical reports are generated.
To allow for smooth data transfer and quicker online processing, only the analytical data is transferred, not the sheets themselves.
Photographs, handwritten images, and signatures can also be uploaded with ease. Sheets may also be uploaded if needed, but it may trigger disconnections.
Results are generated at the server location, which are then uploaded back onto the user terminal for download and sharing.
Additional features that come with the advanced OMR version do not affect the accuracy of the results. The defect detection mechanism that comes as part of the standard OMR software is very efficient and guarantees 100% accuracy. And as mentioned earlier, improved auto-correction and validation minimizes rejection to almost zero.