What Is Intelligent Document Processing?

If you are engaged in running a start-up, then chances are you are also involved in a substantial amount of document processing – and, these days, that processing is more than likely ‘intelligent’.

What is document processing? Essentially, it refers to the process of converting data from either hand-written or typed documents into structured data that is suitable to be used for business purposes. Until recently, document processing was done manually, taking up a significant amount of time and effort. 

However, these days, thanks to the advent of 21st century technology, companies now have access to an array of convenience-boosting software and cutting-edge virtual tools – including, most notably, artificial intelligence – that can automate the processing of their assorted documents. This is known as Intelligent Document Processing, and it has a number of crucial benefits, which will be explored below.

Why Is Document Processing Necessary?

Document processing – whether it is carried out ‘intelligently’ or manually – is so essential for businesses and other organisations because the vast majority of data (80-90%) is unstructured. In this disordered state, it has no use; in fact, without adequate processing, it would be difficult to obtain any of the valuable information that this data may contain – particularly as there is such a vast amount of data to go through. 

To give you a good idea of the sheer volume of data that companies around the world have to contend with, the IDC predicted that worldwide data storage would reach 11.7 zettabytes this year (2023). That’s a mind-boggling amount of data that needs storing and analysing.

What Documents Can Be Processed?

There are many different types of documents that can be processed using Intelligent methods. These range from emails and spreadsheets, through to scanned images, manually produced documents such as hand-written forms, and PDFs.

The latter could be in their original or compressed form, with the latter taking up significantly less space and offering the added benefit of being encrypted for secure processing. If you want to know how to compress PDF files, it’s simple – all you need to do is invest in a helpful tool such as the Smallpdf PDF compressor, which can reduce the size of these files by up to 99%. 

When it comes to more specific examples of documents that businesses may frequently find themselves processing, the list includes items such as invoices, loan applications, contact forms, contracts, insurance claims, payroll reports, and many more. 

As you can see, these are highly important documents, but without the document processing procedure, their crucial information wouldn’t be captured, analysed or used by the business or organisation they were sent to.

How Does Intelligent Document Processing Work?

Intelligent Document Processing is a multi-faceted procedure that relies on a variety of cutting-edge tools and software, developed over the past few years. Here are some examples of the most important types of intelligent document processing software, and a description of what they do. 

• Natural Language Processing: Natural language processing (or NLP) is a tool that can be used once a document has been processed to become machine-readable. Consisting of algorithms that scan the text to pick out vital information, natural language processing helps machines to grasp the content and the context of each document. It can also help them understand elements of language that can be tricky for artificial intelligence to master, such as idioms. 

• Optical Character Recognition: Optical character recognition is a highly useful tool that many people already have in use on their smartphones, particularly the latest models. Essentially, OCR removes all of the text, numbers and characters from a document or file – for instance, an image, a form, or a PDF – which then allows that information to be independently analysed and edited. 

• Robotic Process Automation: Robotic Process Automation uses bots to carry out the work that human data entry workers have been accustomed to do –extracting important data from a series of similar documents, using pre-prepared rules or guidelines for their extraction. However, because bots never need to take a break, this work can be carried out much faster than if it was done manually, and without the risk of human error. 

• Machine Learning: Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence that has been carefully designed to mimic the way in which human beings absorb and process information. In other words, the algorithms are designed to actively learn and hone their abilities to carry out their required duties, using data to guide them. There are many examples of machine learning all around us in society, including image and speech recognition software on our smartphones, and the machine learning technology used by PayPal to try and detect fraud. 

What Are The Benefits Of Intelligent Document Processing?

As you may imagine, there are a number of significant advantages to Intelligent Document Processing (or IDP, as it is also known), no matter what kind of business or organisation you are involved in.

These advantages include:

1. Better Quality And Accuracy – Perhaps one of the most important benefits that IDP brings is a much greater accuracy of document processing. This is because there is no risk of human error – whether through typos or misunderstandings – and because it is a form of artificial intelligence that is collating and storing the data, it is carried out to a consistently high standard at all times. 

2. IDP Saves Businesses Money And Time – Processing documents is a time-consuming, laborious and highly tedious task for human employees; it can also be considered as a waste of their office time, which they could be dedicating to more important tasks. By employing artificial intelligence to carry out this job instead, your start-up employees will be free to do the work they are passionate about, which will be better for their job satisfaction, and for your profit margins. Being able to automate the document processing procedure also means that you won’t have to spend more money hiring additional staff – or outsourcing the work – to fulfil your processing requirements. 

3. IDP Helps To Ensure Compliance – And Improve Security – Another crucial benefit of intelligent document processing is its ability to improve the regulatory compliance of companies and organisations – for example, with GDPR or HIPAA. This is due to its heightened accuracy, which makes significant errors much less likely, allowing businesses to avoid incurring fines or perhaps even a lawsuit. Intelligent document processing also boosts security, as all of the documents that have been intelligently processed are then stored in databases which are only accessible by certain authorised staff. This helps to prevent data breaches due to errors or malicious attacks, which could significantly damage a company’s reputation. 

4. Improved Customer Satisfaction -Finally, another important advantage of investing in intelligent document processing for your start-up is that it will help you to boost your customer satisfaction levels. This is because the document processing procedure will be conducted much more quickly and effectively, which means that any important paperwork can be processed in good time, providing a pleasing turn-around period for your clients.

Overview

While manual document processing used to be unavoidable, these days there is no good reason for business employees to continue with this time-consuming task. Artificial intelligence can carry out this tedious but essential role with speed and accuracy, freeing up human staff members to turn their attention to higher-value tasks. 

It’s a solution that offers the best possible results for both businesses and their customers, and, perhaps most importantly, allows organisations to remain on the right side of the law.