Gravic has been marketing Remark Office OMR since 1991. The Remark Office OMR software helps people collect data from “fill in the bubble” forms using an innovative software approach.
If you are familiar with OMR (optical mark recognition) technology or have previously used or seen such a system, you will probably be asking one or more of the questions below. We hear these questions every day; hopefully some of the answers will help you decide if this technology is right for you.
- How is Gravic’s solution different from the traditional OMR reading systems?
- If traditional OMR readers are hardware solutions, what is Remark Office OMR?
- Remark Office OMR works with image scanners. Aren’t image scanners really slow? Do I have to feed one page at a time?
- How much do you charge for printing our forms?
- If I am not buying forms, how are forms designed?
- How can the Remark Office OMR software be accurate without having timing marks on my forms?
- What is the percentage of accuracy? How does it compare with the accuracy percentage published by other companies?
- What kind of support fees are associated with this purchase?
- Who is Gravic? Who uses Remark Office OMR and how do they like it?
1. How is Gravic’s solution different from the traditional OMR reading systems?
For years people have been purchasing dedicated OMR readers and specially printed forms for collecting data from surveys and tests. There are some applications, particularly when using large volumes of forms repeatedly, where these systems are appropriate. However, if you want to modify your forms or be able to quickly create and print your own new forms, you will pay in both money and time.
Traditional OMR readers provide a hardware-based solution for this task. With these readers, you have a series of light sensors (usually 48 across) that shine on the paper looking for areas that do not reflect the light back. The non-reflecting areas are where pencil marks occur on the form. These readers are effective when the forms are printed to the exacting specifications required. The downside of this technique is that you must follow very stringent form design and printing rules. Users without very high-end printers are often forced to purchase these forms at a substantial cost from the OMR manufacturer.
2. If traditional OMR readers are hardware solutions, what is Remark Office OMR?
Software. For the past 20-30 years, many tasks that were once performed in hardware have been solved more efficiently in software. This is just another one of those tasks.
In 1991, Gravic released the first version of the Remark Office OMR software package. Remark Office OMR works with an image scanner, the same type of scanner you can use for scanning pictures or pages from books. Specialized, dedicated equipment is not necessary. Since the software has some intelligence, it does not require forms to fit stringent specifications. It allows users unprecedented flexibility in creating and printing forms. Forms can be created with any word processor, desktop publishing program, or survey design package. Forms can be printed on a laser printer and duplicated with a photocopier. It is much more flexible and economical than a traditional hardware based approach.
3. Remark Office OMR works with image scanners. Aren’t image scanners really slow? Do I have to feed one page at a time?
Some image scanners are very slow and some require you to feed one page at a time. We do not recommend that you use one of these models. There are many very fast image scanners with document feeders available on the market today. Companies such as Fujitsu, Canon, Ricoh, Panasonic and Bell & Howell have been selling high volume scanners for years now. These machines are manufactured by the same people who manufacture copy machines, fax machines, printers, and other computer equipment.
More good news, the prices of these machines have steadily declined while the performance has increased. Now, you get the same speeds and pay equal or lower prices for image scanners when compared with traditional OMR readers. Plus, you will be investing in a piece of equipment that can be used for other graphics applications such as OCR, document management, picture scanning and more.
4. How much do you charge for printing our forms?
Unlike most OMR manufacturers, Gravic is not a printing company. We are software developers. We do not print or sell you forms. You have the option to print your own forms, bring them to a copy center or have them professionally printed. It’s up to you.
5. If I am not buying forms, how are forms designed?
We mentioned above that scanning technology has really improved over the years. Another area that has really improved over the years is software. Word processors such as Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect have become extremely powerful and are capable of being used to design forms. Packages such as Adobe PageMaker and Corel Draw are also commonly available tools that can be used to design complicated forms. There are other packages on the market that are made specifically for designing forms. Packages such as Survey Pro, The Survey System, Raosoft Survey, and PinPoint are capable of helping you design professional quality forms.
Remark Office OMR utilizes forms without special timing marks, colors and papers. Forms can be designed to look the way you want them to look and can encompass multiple pages and be printed simplex (single side) or duplex (double sided).
6. How can the Remark Office OMR software be accurate without having timing marks on my forms?
Rather than forcing you to print a bunch of ugly lines down the side of your pages to tell the software where to look for marks, Remark Office OMR reads your form based upon what you tell it to read. You essentially teach Remark Office OMR to read your form. This probably sounds scary and hard but it is not. Simply scan in a copy of the form, the software puts a picture of that form on the screen, and then you point out to the software what areas of the page are to be recognized. At the same time you specify the field names, answer choices, output types and other properties of these fields. The process takes a few minutes and is done only once per new form. This training approach affords great flexibility in form design as the software adapts to your form rather than you adapting to very strict conventions imposed by traditional OMR solutions.
7. What is the percentage of accuracy? How does it compare with the accuracy percentage published by other companies?
Our software is as accurate, or in many real world applications, more accurate than traditional OMR readers. However, we do not claim any specific accuracy percentage like the 99.99% accuracy number that others publish. This is not a real number. It is derived from scanning a set of perfectly filled in forms. In reality, you will never be processing a set of perfectly filled in forms!
Most of our customers are processing surveys with Remark Office OMR. On surveys, you typically cannot force people to fill in every bubble perfectly. Yet, on these forms, Remark Office OMR is extremely accurate. Forms completed with checks, X marks, dashes, and other real-world styles will recognize with a high level of accuracy. These forms can be filled with pen or pencil. Of course, if respondents filled in every bubble with a high degree of accuracy, everyone would be happy… but this does not happen. Remark Office OMR handles most cases where the responses are not perfect… without forcing someone to look at every form and refill the ones that are not carefully completed.
8. What kind of support fees are associated with this purchase?
Gravic makes technical support available for a reasonable price to registered users. The details of our support policy can be found here. You may call, fax or email our support staff between 9AM and 6PM EST/EDT, Monday through Friday. Gravic support professionals consistently get glowing reviews from customers and prospects. We believe that we have the best support staff in the industry and work to exceed your expectations in service.
In addition to high quality technical support, Gravic provides a free form review service to customers or potential customers. At any time, you can fax or email your forms to our support department. They will review them, and in a matter of minutes will be able to give you pointers on how to optimize your form for scanning.
9. Who is Gravic? Who uses Remark Office OMR and how do they like it?
Gravic's Remark Product Line was founded in 1991, the same year we launched Remark Office OMR. Click here for more information on our company and our core values. Since our first, slightly-ahead-of-its time version in 1991, we have over 40,000 users of Remark Office OMR worldwide to some of the biggest (and some of the smallest) companies, educational institutions, government agencies, and healthcare providers. Click here to see a sampling of some of our customers.
Can we do what we say we can do? We have a lot of customers that say yes! Click here for some customer quotes.
We hope that you will give Remark Office OMR a try. Please feel free to call or contact us with any questions or concerns. Want to try out the software? Click here to download the free working demo version.
