Intelligent document processing: A comprehensive guide

Data has reached a point where it becomes cumbersome to identify what’s valuable and what’s background noise. Mining large quantity of data for actionable insights can be time-consuming and costly affair. This is where intelligent document processing (IDP) comes into play.

IDP can trace its origins back to the earliest optical character recognition (OCR) solutions. These early attempts simply transformed character images into machine-readable text. Today, intelligent document processing boasts capabilities fueled by artificial intelligence. This allows it to tackle all sorts of data, regardless of the document format – structured, semi-structured, or unstructured – and integrate seamlessly into practically any process across any industry.

Processing documents with AI accelerates data entry and analytics in all industries. According to one report from Business Wire, this $1.1 billion IDP industry will spike up to $5.2 billion in the next three years.

What is intelligent document processing?

IDP applies artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques to provide structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents that allow technology to understand, read and process content in documents.

Intelligent doc processing tech has come a long way. Early on, it was just about turning scanned characters into machine code, like a fancy translator for letters. Then came natural language processing (NLP), which added a layer of understanding to the text conversion process. But for a long time, IDP was stuck in the back office, away from the real action with clients, suppliers, and employees.

That’s all changing now. Modern intelligent document processing goes way beyond basic data extraction. It’s about using content to create smooth experiences for customers and staff. This new approach starts by re-imagining workflows, then leverages cutting-edge AI to make information instantly available and useful at the precise moment it’s needed.

The evolution of IDP

How does the intelligent document process work?

Imagine a system that can understand plain English in your documents, just like a helpful assistant. That’s what IDP does. It figures out the meaning of words, so it knows if “jaguar” means the animal or the car, and “Sue” is a person’s name or something legal.

IDP goes beyond simple keyword searches. It reads the whole document to understand the context, just like a human would. This lets it pull out information with impressive accuracy, and it keeps getting better as it learns from new documents.

How Needle – our genAI framework with IDP can help your business

With Needle, the ability to extract insights from mountains of information means you don’t have to be an expert in machine learning. The key to scaling the solutions and connecting you to diverse data sources is allowing it to adapt to various document types.

What are the benefits of intelligent document processing?

Across industries, businesses are in a squeeze to achieve more and do it faster with improved efficiency. To address this, many organizations are prioritizing enhanced customer and employee interactions to strengthen revenue, profit margins, and customer loyalty. Intelligent document processing offers substantial advantages on both fronts. By leveraging document-handling capabilities that mirror human understanding and management of information, IDP delivers these key benefits:

Boosted efficiency: Manual data extraction and entry are labor-intensive and costly. IDP automates these tasks, saving significant time and money while reducing errors that can be expensive to fix.

Simplified compliance: IDP minimizes the risk of human error, making it easier for businesses to comply with regulations. Digital audit trails created by IDP bots provide clear documentation for audits.

Improved customer experience: IDP frees employees from tedious AI document processing, allowing them to focus on providing better customer service. Customers benefit from faster processing times and smoother interactions related to their accounts, claims, or cases.

Scalability: IDP is adaptable and can be expanded across departments. You can train it to handle a specific document type (like invoices) in low volumes (think 100 documents daily). Conversely, you can train it to manage hundreds of document types (invoices, claims, bank statements, applications, receipts, etc.) and process thousands of documents per minute.

Enhanced accuracy: Manual data entry is prone to errors, which can have costly consequences. IDP utilizes intelligent technology to extract information with exceptional precision, minimizing errors and ensuring the integrity of your data. This translates to better decision-making based on reliable information.

Top 5 IDP use cases you need to know about

Across industries, businesses struggle under mountains of paperwork. Invoices, contracts, reports – they pile up, slowing everything down. Enter intelligent document processing, a revolutionary tool streamlining workflows and boosting efficiency. Let’s see how it is revolutionizing various industries:

Legal

The traditionally paper-heavy legal industry is ripe for IDP’s magic touch:

• Contract management made easy: Extract data based on specific points, facilitating smooth contract execution.
• Information at your fingertips: Organize legal documents and recall information based on keywords with ease.
• Digital case files: Create summaries and identifiers, simplifying and speeding up case reviews.

IDP streamlines legal processes, making them faster, more secure, and more efficient.

Manufacturing

From invoices to order forms, the manufacturing industry juggles a variety of documents. IDP brings order to the chaos:

• Invoice efficiency: Extract invoice information into clean, digital formats, saving time and eliminating errors.
• Interdepartmental congruity: Extracts data from paper order forms, digitize it, and route it to the right teams, fostering smooth collaboration.
• Quality-check: Extracts data from quality-check documents and structure it for easy access, ensuring consistent quality.

IDP automates not just core processes but also the deskwork, giving manufacturing a much-needed efficiency boost.

Healthcare

The healthcare industry embraces digitalization, and IDP leads the charge:

• Patient onboarding streamlined: Extract, organize and store medical history, test results, and other vital patient details, for seamless onboarding process.
• AI-powered accuracy: AI ensures the right information gets attached to the right patient for accurate healthcare delivery.
• Profiled professionals: IDP condenses healthcare professional credentials and uses AI to analyze and categorize them for easy access.

IDP brings a digital revolution to healthcare, improving accuracy, efficiency, and patient care.

Logistics

Imagine logistics companies soaring high, not bogged down by shipping documents. IDP makes this a reality. Here’s how:

• Automated processing: Streamline processing, data extraction, and analysis of invoices, inventory lists, and more, supercharging operations.
• Fuel bill fixer: No sweat with fuel bills! IDP digitizes and logs them for easy accounting.
• Streamline driver payments: Mileage tracking and secure bank account details ensure automatic driver payments.

IDP brings order to the logistics chaos, making it fly higher than ever.

Real estate

Accuracy and security are real estate’s superpowers. IDP equips you with both:

• Contract clarity: Intelligently extract and analyze data from property contracts, ensuring everything’s up-to-date and relevant.
• Data harmony: IDP keeps track of all property-related data across systems, intelligently handling rentals, leases, sales, loans, and more.
• Growth guidance: AI analyzes trends based on data collected, generating reports that empower better growth and expansion decisions.

IDP ensures real estate transactions are efficient, secure, and well-informed.

Future opportunities and implications of IDP with generative AI

Generative AI is poised to revolutionize the future of IDP by transforming it from a data processor to a strategic decision-making partner. This powerful technology can generate innovative solutions to complex challenges, optimize resource allocation for maximum efficiency, and derive valuable insights hidden within data. However, the key to utilizing IDP’s capacity lies in fostering collaboration between AI and human experts. Human expertise brings the crucial elements of interpretation, ethical considerations, and contextual understanding to the table. This synergy ensures comprehensive and informed decision-making, paving the way for transformative advancements in personalized medicine, sustainable resource management, and scientific research.

By responsibly embracing generative AI solutions and prioritizing a collaborative approach that combines the strengths of both AI and human experts, we can create a future brimming with possibilities. This future will see IDP act as a catalyst for innovation, accelerating progress and creating a positive societal impact through responsible use of this powerful technology.

Over the years, we at Softweb Solutions have learned that clients would like to have skills that are ready-to-go and that they can latch onto. We deliver just that. Let us know your document process needs, and we’ll get in touch with you to work on it.