In today’s digital world, the sheer volume of data generated is staggering. By 2025, it’s projected that the world will produce a whopping 181 zettabytes of data — that’s 329 million terabytes, every single day!
As a business, you must have various documents across departments, from customer records to financial reports, proposals, and training materials. Mining this vast amount of data for actionable insights can be both challenging and time-consuming. That’s where Intelligent Document Processing or IDP comes into play.
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) is a workflow automation technology that uses AI and machine learning to scan, read, extract, categorise, and organise large amounts of data into meaningful information. The technology can process many different formats of documents including papers, PDFs, Word docs, spreadsheets, and more.
By transforming unstructured data into meaningful insights, IDP helps businesses enhance efficiency, make informed decisions, and improve customer experiences. To help you get the most out of this technology, here is a detailed guide that delves into the ins and outs of Intelligent Document Processing (IDP):
How Does IDP Work
There are a few stages to Intelligent Document Processing. These stages include:
- Document Ingestion: Ingesting documents from various formats and sources.
- Document Prep: Enhancing documents through flipping, rotating, and cleaning for optimal readability.
- Document Classification: Classifying documents by intelligently separating and matching them to predefined types.
- Smart Data Extraction: Using trained machine learning (ML) models to extract relevant data.
- Data Validation: Ensuring data accuracy by cross-referencing with internal and external sources, incorporating human review for exceptions when needed.
- Data Integration: Seamlessly integrating extracted data into multiple tools and applications, including Business Process Management (BPM), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.
Benefits of IDP
- Cost Saving: By automating manual data entry and processing tasks, IDP reduces labour costs. You can reinvest these saved costs in other business areas and relocate the workers to more meaningful activities.
- Accuracy: Unlike manual workers, digital workers are 100% accurate. This capability of IDP reduces human errors, leading to increased accuracy.
- Employee Productivity: By automating routine document processing tasks, IDP frees up employees, allowing them to focus on more important and impactful work, resulting in increased productivity.
- Customer Experience: With the help of IDP, you can deliver faster and more accurate services, resulting in happier and more satisfied customers.
- Scalability: As your business grows, so does IDP. This means that IDP can effortlessly handle an increasing number of documents, ensuring your process remains efficient and scalable.
Use Cases of IDP
Intelligent Document Processing is utilised in a range of industries. Here are some IDP use cases:
- Human Resources Department
In Human Resources, IDP is utilised for automating the onboarding process. This includes extracting and verifying information from resumes, applications, and employee surveys.
- Financial Services and Banking
Banks and other financial firms process large amounts of data that require high security. With the help of IDP, these firms can securely automate data-heavy processes, including loan applications, mortgage applications, financial statements, invoices, and receipts.
- Insurance
Insurance companies can use IDP to enhance their claims processing, policy management, and underwriting functions. IDP efficiently extracts relevant information from various sources, including insurance forms, medical records, and claims documents. Additionally, it captures critical data points such as case numbers, license plates, and customer information.
- Healthcare
IDP can help healthcare organisations collect accurate patient information, facilitate quicker reimbursements, and ensure regulatory compliance by extracting information from billing and insurance forms, medical reports, and lab reports.
How to Choose the Right IDP Software
With so many IDP software available in the market, including the ABBYY Flexicapture, Rossum, and Docsumo, choosing the right one can feel overwhelming. To help you, here few steps to follow to find the best IDP software for your organization:
- Understand Your Business’s Needs
A one-size-fits-all approach never works. That’s why you need to carefully understand what your business’s data processing needs are. Ask yourself questions, like – What format is most of your data in? Do you have more structured or unstructured data? How much of your data processing do you want to automate?
- Determine What Data Needs to be Processed
Depending on the industry, the data and type of documents you need to process will vary. This is why your next step should be identifying and understanding the data processing needs of your organisation. Identify the time required to process each of your data sets and which one would most benefit the from automation. Documents that demand the most time for manual processing are best to be automated using IDP.
- Look for IDP Software that Meets Your Requirements
After identifying the workflows and processes that you need to automate, the next step is to look for IDP software. Base your decision on the needs and automation requirements of your organisation. Consider factors like implementation speed, maintenance ease, support levels, compatibility with your documents, and whether the software can significantly enhance accuracy and reduce errors.
Overall, Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) can be a game changer for your organization, providing your organisation a competitive edge. By leveraging IDP software such as ABBYY flexi capture software, organisations can streamline workflows, reduce costs, and unlock valuable insights from their documents.
