Keeping up with new uses for artificial intelligence (AI) is challenging. Deciding which new innovations will actually benefit your organization is even harder. You may be dealing with a mix of paper and digitized documents or have automated processes that no longer meet your needs. Is using AI-driven document processing a technology investment that’s worth exploring? This article explains why it is.
Table of Contents
- Understanding automated document processing
- Benefits of integrating AI with automated document processing
- How AI transforms document processing workflows
- IDP applications across industries
- AI in action at an online home design store
- Practical considerations when choosing AI-powered automated document processing
- Future trends: AI and document processing
- Conclusion
Understanding automated document processing
Automated document processing (ADP) is an inclusive term that encompasses several different methods of digitizing document processing. We're focusing on intelligent document processing (IDP), a state-of-the-art technology that falls under the ADP umbrella and uses the AI to transform the manual processes that are wasting staff time and draining your resources.
IDP is a cloud-based technology built with a highly structured interplay between optical character recognition (OCR), handwriting text recognition (HTR), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) a subset of AI. Machine learning algorithms enable IDP to get smarter from each interaction with your documents and data, continually improving its accuracy and efficiency.
AI for automated document processing
Increase efficiency at the beginning of the document lifecycle with DocuWare Intelligent Document Processing (IDP).
In addition, IDP uses deep learning, a subfield of machine learning, to process data in a logical way that is similar to human reasoning. It uses layers of algorithms, known as artificial neural networks, to perform this analysis. IDP also uses natural language processing (NLP) which enables the software to understand, produce and manipulate human language.
AI plays a crucial role in this type of automated document processing, enabling the system to understand the context. The result is that IDP systems are not just recognizing characters on a page; they are interpreting the meaning behind the text, allowing for more precise data processing, streamlined workflows and simplified information exchange with your other business software.
Benefits of integrating AI with automated document processing
IDP enables more accurate data extraction, even from complex, handwritten or low-quality documents. Its custom or prebuilt AI models can be trained to recognize the unique patterns and configurations found in your documents.
IDP’s AI-powered processing capabilities ensure even the most weathered documents, such as ID cards or vehicle documentation, are precisely indexed and categorized. Document types can be validated and guided through workflows with higher accuracy and less manual intervention. Working with complex data positions like tables and text blocks is no longer an obstacle because of AI capabilities. The entire document lifecycle is optimized from scan or receipt of electronic documents to long-term archiving.
These are a few of IDPs most significant benefits:
Enhanced data accuracy: IDP minimizes errors in data extraction and classification, significantly improving data quality. It capitalizes on advanced AI technologies to classify documents based on their content. It also uses AI analysis to identify and extract important information, such as dates, document types and signatures.
Preprocessing, splitting and cropping: IDP automatically divides batches that contain multiple documents without separator sheets or barcodes. Cropping standardizes the sizes of documents from various sources, ensuring consistent and optimized processing. It can also redact sensitive data to ensure anonymity and secure data handling
Processing complex documents: It can handle almost every document type and format, making it versatile to meet your business needs. Custom or prebuilt AI models boost operational efficiency by automating data extraction and document classification and exporting the data into your company’s workflows.
Efficiency and cost reduction: By automating manual document processing tasks, businesses can significantly reduce labor costs, minimize errors, and reduce processing time. This leads to faster decision-making and enhanced customer service, ultimately driving higher revenue. For instance, a financial institution that automates loan processing can handle more applications in less time, increasing its capacity and profitability.
Security and compliance: Meeting data security and privacy concerns is critical because IDP systems handle sensitive information that must be protected against data breaches and unauthorized access. The technology can use robust data privacy, encryption and security controls and supports adherence with compliance standards such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
IDP software also uses protection algorithms that safeguard processed and stored documents against unauthorized access. IDP also creates audit logs that detail document processing activities that are needed to demonstrate regulatory compliance during audits.
Economies of scale: IDP offers a scalable solution that processes large volumes of data quickly and accurately. The solutions AI models evolve with your organization, managing more documents and adapting to new data types without a loss of efficiency. This flexibility ensures that your document processing workflows remain efficient and effective as your business grows.
How AI transforms document processing workflows
The following examples demonstrate how IDP improves workflows:
- In healthcare, IDP systems can interpret digitized medical records and billing statements. Then its automation technologies use the extracted data to update billing software and patient files. IDP can also scan explanations of benefits documentation and confirm insurance coverage.
- Legal tasks that involve analyzing extensive case documents to extract relevant details are ideal workflows for IDP to handle. For example, it can automatically scan digitized court records and other unstructured documents, then deliver pertinent information via email and case management software.
- Auto insurance companies can use IDP to expedite claims processing. IDP reviews policy documents along with images and photos showing the damage to extract necessary data and calculate a precise coverage amount for the customer. This accelerates the payout process to boosting customer satisfaction and improve efficiency.
IDP applications across industries
Manufacturing
Processes vendor invoices and recognizes and extracts relevant information, such as vendor names, invoice numbers and payment terms with a high degree of accuracy. It also improves workflows in engineering, quality control, purchasing and other departments.Financial services
Speeds up mortgage loan approval, improves fraud detection and confirms trade orders. IDP can also automate loan application processes, digitize paper records, and extract data from balance sheets and bank statements.Accounting
Replaces manual data entry by digitizing invoices, purchase orders, and other common accounting documents and extracting relevant dataInsurance
Assists in underwriting, claims processing, property appraisals and other document-intensive processesHealthcare
Converts patient records into a digital format, handles insurance claim processing and gathers information from medical documents to improve patient record handling and billing. Hospitals can also automatically pull out and sort patient info from notes, test results, and insurance documents, cutting down on administrative work and reducing errors.AI in action at an online home design store
The company achieved this objective by using DocuWare IDP to automate the verification and review processes of all procurement-related documents. As a result, Connox reduced the time spent on order processing by 70%. This significantly improves productivity and operational efficiency.
In addition to time savings, DocuWare IDP improved the accuracy of data entry and classification which led to fewer errors and optimized the entire workflow.
Practical considerations when choosing AI-powered automated document processing
Make sure the IDP solution you select offers:
A user-friendly interface: An intuitive interface promotes faster adoption, shortens training time, minimizes errors, and increases overall efficiency and employee satisfaction
Real-time processing: AI operates on modern graphic processing units (GPUs), you will receive the extracted data in real-time (i.e., under 1 second per document page). GPU technology incorporates an enormous amount of computational capability, it can deliver remarkable acceleration in workloads that take advantage of the parallel nature of GPUs.
Both prebuilt and custom AI models: Prebuilt models are industry or function specific and are trained with the most commonly used documents in that sector. They also use machine learning that continually improves accuracy as you use the IDP solution. Custom AI models are developed and trained to address the unique needs of your particular business or industry. They are built to focus on the document types, data points, and workflows that are most important to your company.
Compliance: Your IDP solution should easy enable compliance with state, federal, industry regulations and with international standards if you do business outside of the US. Look for a vendor with software that achieved System and Organizational Controls (SOC) certification. The certification process was created by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to ensure that a company’s customer data is protected from unauthorized access and cyberthreats. SOC 2 certification ensures you of a high level information security.
Human-in-the-loop: The software should leverage the power of human-in-the-loop (HITL) functions to provide quality control, manage exceptions, enable continuous progress, and appropriately process complicated unstructured data.
Easy integration: It should integrate with customer relationship management, enterprise resource management and business process management software to augment the software’s ability to automate processes involving documents, emails and other unstructured data.
Future trends: AI and document processing
Blockchain technology has the potential to enhance IDP by offering more secure and unalterable transaction records. As companies look for stronger methods to manage and authenticate their documents, the use of blockchain is expected to rise. Improvements to predictive analytics will also have an important role by offering deeper insights that guide decision-making and improve the bottom line.
Conclusion
As technology continues to evolve, companies that embrace document process automation that takes advantage of AI are better equipped to meet future challenges and opportunities. By investing in automation now, your company establishes the foundation for long-term success.To find out more schedule a demo to see the benefits of AI in automated document processing first-hand.
