Back in 2019, market experts predicted that by 2025, 50% of business-to-business invoices would be processed without manual intervention, and by 2030 digital transmission will take over 80% of invoices. Intelligent document processing as a software solution was already on the market, and enterprise document transition was underway. However, the pandemic proved to be a major catalyst, accelerating the change in a bigger way. Despite initial challenges faced by many organizations, document processing with digital solutions proved to be a game-changer for many.
What is Intelligent Document Processing?
Document processing platforms help convert unstructured documents into digital formats, extract data, and transform them into machine-consumable insights to support end-to-end business process automation in document-centric organizations.
Usually, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t apply to every enterprise document problem, but a purpose-built intelligent document processing solution can address document-centric challenges for enterprises. The advanced in-built AI and ML capabilities ensembled with deep learning techniques provide flexible data management pipelines and unlock the latent business value. Further, these intelligent platforms can scale up millions of documents for processing and evaluation. It allows easy data extraction for informed decision-making and observes compliance regulations strictly.
Addressing Traditional Document Problems with IDP
Document-heavy industries like the banking and financial sector were early adopters of intelligent software solutions like IDP. However, even other sectors struggling with document-related heavy workflows stand to benefit from intelligent document processing tools.
Document-centric workflows are primarily expected in the human resource, procurement, and logistics departments.
Traditionally, manual processing of heavy volumes of enterprise documents was time and labor-intensive, cost-inefficient, and error-prone. In addition, a manual approach can easily cause excessive employee burnout, impacting efficiency and productivity. However, with the advent of AI and automation technologies, enterprises realized that eliminating manual efforts in document-specific processes would eventually drive business growth, reduce costs, and help achieve unrealized productivity gains.
Intelligent document processing is critical in scaling an enterprise’s digital transformation journey. Following an increasing migration of work modules to remote and hybrid, IDP tools enabled enterprises to transfer their operations per the new normal needs seamlessly. And this transition addressed many traditional document-centric challenges.
For instance, taking the example of the accounts payable department, the critical challenges related to enterprise documents would be:
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Long process cycle times
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Reduced productivity
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Poor employee morale
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Higher chances of data theft
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Poor visibility of operations
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Excessive delay in deliverables
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Poor internal and external communication
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Poor customer/client service
Adding to the above-mentioned challenges are the domain complexities of documents and incomprehensible datasets, locking extensive business opportunities.
Intelligent document processing powered by AI and its extended capabilities was able to remediate these issues by auto-classifying documents into defined categories, extracting complex and precise data from various document types, and supporting the cognitive search for keyword-based queries. As a result, it provided immediate value while building its technology stack and skills for scaling the platform’s capabilities further for more quality insights.
IDP platforms could reduce cycle times and easily recognize multipage or single-page documents based on their type, extracting and validating data faster than humans and automatically processing data based on business rules for in-depth insights. IDP also improved data accessibility by connecting all processes on a unified platform, enabling faster and more informed decision-making.
Benefits and Use Cases of Intelligent Document Processing
Intelligent document processing can be used in businesses for multiple reasons. The following is a list of key benefits to consider, namely:
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Boosting efficiency and effectiveness of essential business functions
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Reducing processing time to eliminate human dependency and manual workflows
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Saving time and unnecessary efforts of human resources
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Accelerating business processes and in-house operations
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Reducing the risk and cost of human error
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Ensuring data security and compliance needs
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Facilitating easy scalability of automated tools
As stated, document-heavy industries have numerous use cases for intelligent document processing. A few examples would be:
Banking and Insurance
From credit card applications to performing KYC on new customers, banking, and insurance is dominated by documents. Hence, the chances of delay, error, and data loss are always high. To avert similar issues, intelligent document processing can help automate data-centric tasks to scale up delivery. As a result, IDP has better usage in personal finance management, processing of financial applications, credit disbursements, and maintaining and updating financial records.
Financial Services
Every organization has a separate accounts department handling the company’s finance and working with massive amounts of data. Unfortunately, most of these datasets are sensitive and vulnerable to data theft. Intelligent document processing enables a secure and fast method of executing daily tasks, such as paying invoices, managing expenses, filling out tax returns, and managing payroll.
Hospitals and Other Medical Centers
Hospitals and medical centers also handle patients’ documents in bulk quantities. Several document-intensive administrative tasks consume productive hours of doctors and other medical professionals. Any error caused by data entry can literally lead to a life-and-death situation for patients. Therefore, intelligent document processing solutions can benefit healthcare workers by digitizing and updating medical records, accessing patients' notes, dealing with patient registrations, managing prescriptions, and standardizing the medical database.
Retail and eCommerce
Likewise, retail and eCommerce businesses also deal with documents in the shape of invoices, logistic bills, vendor contracts, and others. Hence, IDP is leveraged for shipment tracking and notification, inventory tracking, invoice and billing automation, and CRM automation.
IDP for Powering Business Growth and Transformation
Intelligent document processing helps extract granular insights from enterprise documents, which are data powerhouses. These insights are valuable for businesses and unlock growth opportunities for owners and stakeholders. Furthermore, this software solution frees employees from the burden of time-intensive data entry tasks, enabling them to utilize their expertise in other areas that drive more value to their organization. It boosts operational efficiency, speeds up data-centric operations, and provides personalized services to end users, elevating both employee and client engagements.
Since most operations depend on data and analytics for informed decision-making, data availability in real-time can power game-changing strategies providing a competitive advantage for enterprises. And again, data is essential for helping businesses to migrate their operations to digital platforms. So, in a way, intelligent document processing supports and accelerates enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives.
Conclusion
Intelligent document processing has become the need of the hour because market competition has become challenging. As a result, enterprises need data to stay ahead of competitors with their game-changing strategies. Since enterprise documents carry crucial data necessary for decision-making on time, this software solution accommodates such requirements and ensures owners don’t lose any opportunity for growth.
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