It seems like everyone is talking about how they plan to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into their products. But what they often fail to mention is that AI is a tool—and to get the most out of a tool, you need to know how and why you are using it.
One of the best uses your organization can direct artificial intelligence towards is document processing. By bringing the power of AI to bear on your document management needs, you unlock a vast array of intelligent document processing benefits.
Taking advantage of IDP software allows your team to get out of the muck of manual data processing which can be time-consuming, repetitive, and vulnerable to human errors that can throw off your accounting at best and take you out of compliance with laws and regulations at worst.
So let’s walk through what intelligent document processing is, how it can be leveraged to improve your organization’s business operations, and how you can take steps to incorporate it into your technology stack.
Before running down the list of intelligent document processing advantages that you stand to benefit from, we need to clarify what is and is not IDP. We need to do this because with the continuing advancement of AI tools, document processing mechanisms have gone through a lot of changes in the last few years.
You may already use robotic process automation (RPA) and think that you’ve got your document processing solution needs covered. You do not.
RPA is a very effective tool when processing information from structured documents. This can mean copying and pasting between spreadsheets or transferring data from a database. RPA does very well with standardized formatting.
Where it's limited is when encountering data that is not presented in a standard format with which your RPA system is familiar. Think of information getting sent your way in the body of an email or from a form that has been filled out by hand.
Intelligent document management solutions go beyond the capabilities of robotic process automation. Using a combination of AI, natural language recognition software, machine learning tools and more, IDP functionality is vastly superior to RPA.
Another piece of technology that can be confused with IDP is automated document processing, or ADP. ADP utilizes many components of RPA, but augments them with a few other AI tools and optical character recognition software. But ADP doesn’t have as many capabilities as IDP.
ADP operates best with structured documents, much like RPA. It is not as adaptable as IDP because IDP’s large language model continuously incorporates new information to new data. Essentially, ADP is a more limited version of IDP.
Intelligent document processing allows you to pull data from structured sources, but also from unstructured sources. IDP can pull information from PDFs, images, emails, and so on. It even processes handwriting.
Thanks to a combination of the power of large language model AI, natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and machine learning, IDP tools can recognize key data points based on context.
A well constructed IDP program can find, extrapolate, and process key information, no matter how it comes your way. This allows your team to operate more efficiently by automating multiple data processing tasks and paves the way for many other intelligent document processing benefits.
With an understanding of what intelligent document processing is and how it can differ from some other document automation options, we can begin to examine intelligent document processing benefits in earnest.
This will, by no means, be a full and comprehensive list—this is only the start. But, from a data processing perspective, it is a very exciting start.
Searching out relevant data and incorporating that data into a new document takes time. With a well-built content management system in place, it doesn’t take as long as it took in the pre-digital era, but it takes time.
And that time has to go into every single document your team needs to create to keep your business operations moving. Repetitive tasks can consume a significant portion of your team’s prime work hours. While these tasks are important, they don’t allow your team to maximize their brain power and potential ideas. With their time consumed by routine document creation, they can't focus on innovative or strategic initiatives.
IDP automation takes the time your team would spend searching your databases and transferring values and reduces it exponentially. You can automate the parts of your document creation processes that take the most time and are the most repetitive so that your team can focus on higher level tasks with more brain power and a lot more time.
The fear with a massive increase in the speed at which tasks get completed is that it will bring with it a corresponding increase in errors. That isn’t a problem with intelligent document processing because the nature of the programing—including the optical character recognition and natural language processing—drastically mitigates the types of errors that humans are prone to make.
Intelligent document processing helps create streamlined processes. The myriad tools that make up an IDP solution allow you to identify parts of your processes that can be addressed and automated.
You can apply your intelligent document solution to structured and unstructured documents—meaning that you are not limited to automating only processes that involve spreadsheets with specific fields and macros in place.
With IDP, you can pull data from documents automatically, as they come in. You can also build in your safeguards to ensure that common sources of human error are not repeated by your AI, cutting down the time required to double or triple check to ensure that your data was correctly processed.
This is, arguably, the biggest item in a list of intelligent document processing benefits because optimizing and automating these key processes frees your team to focus on applying their creativity and experience toward resolving the kinds of challenges that cannot be automated.
Similar to the efficiencies that can be built into your IDP automations, incorporating automated compliance backstops is one of the major benefits of intelligent document processing. By using IDP to bolster your compliance, you can save yourself and your organization massive headaches.
Your IDP solution helps keep your operations in compliance with laws and regulations by, first, following regulations on data collection that you program into it and, second, by running compliance audits automatically.
Integrating your IDP software into your security protocols also ensures your data and that of your clients and customers is protected from risks to cybersecurity. Maintaining transparent compliance along with upholding security best practices will protect you from costly violations of laws and regulations while building your reputation with your customer base for your trustworthiness with their information.
The sooner you have access to the data you need, the sooner you can leverage that information into well-informed decisions. One of the most underrated intelligent document processing benefits is the way it helps bolster your business insights.
With IDP, you retrieve incoming data from structured and unstructured sources automatically. That information can then be processed and utilized to measure the success of current strategies, to formulate new strategies, and to find more areas in your workflows and processes that can be automated or made more efficient.
Since IDP allows you to process and analyze data faster than you would ever be able to manually—and lets you automate data collection and processing from more file types than ADP or RPA—it means you are able to get a more full view of the business landscape around you quicker than ever before. And that gives you an advantage over any competitor that has not yet embraced the power of IDP.
One of the benefits of using IDP that was touched on earlier was the way that it absorbs new data and information to continually facilitate improved data processing. That also makes IDP a scalable solution.
As the volume of data you need to process increases, your intelligent document processing solution will be able to not only keep up with the increased demand, but, through its ability to audit and examine its own operations, will help you find the best avenues to improve automation and further streamline your processes.
A list of intelligent document processing benefits would be meaningless if your solution doesn’t integrate with the programs and applications that you use to power your operations. Fortunately, IDP systems are designed with integration in mind.
From your CRM to your enterprise content management software and everywhere in between, IDP solutions are made to seamlessly integrate with your full technology stack—thereby allowing easy transfer of important data points between apps and programs.
With some idea of the many benefits IDP can bring your way, it is important to look at how to find the IDP solution that best fits your organization and get it up and running without disrupting your day-to-day operations any more than absolutely necessary.
TEAM IM has a roster of experts that specialize in taking our clients’ document management processes to a higher level. We partner with all the leading enterprise document management systems—including Oracle, Microsoft, M-Files, etc.
Our resources at TEAM IM are very well-versed in artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language recognition software, and everything else that makes IDP such a valuable tool for data collection and utilization.
With our knowledge of how these systems operate and our experience optimizing our clients’ document processing capabilities, TEAM IM can help you find the perfect IDP solution for your current needs and future growth. We have the skills and experience to make your transition to IDP as seamless as can be.
Important data can come your way in any number of formats. You cannot always rely on structured documents coming your way. By making intelligent document processing a part of your processes, you ensure that you will not miss key information just because it was buried in the body of an email.
Taking advantage of IDP opens your team up for higher level tasks that require a human touch while protecting you from common errors or compliance violations. It gives you a more complete view in a short amount of time—allowing you to make better business decisions faster than you ever could before.
There are so many intelligent document processing benefits that will make your organization operate swifter, more smoothly, and more efficiently than you might believe possible.
Reach out to TEAM IM as soon as you can to start your company on the road to vastly improved data operations through the power and capabilities of intelligent document processing.