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Intelligent Document Processing with Generative AI

Chandan Gaur | 28 February 2024

Intelligent Document Processing with Generative AI

Introduction to Intelligent Document Processing

In today's digital age, document processing is critical for businesses. Organizations often need help with data entry errors, lack of scalability, and manual processing delays. Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions transform how businesses handle document processing tasks by automating data extraction and processing tasks. This blog will explore the concept of IDP solutions and their use cases in detail.

Intelligent Document Processing is an Artificial Intelligence-based document processing technology that can segregate data from structured, semi-structured, or unstructured documents. Its capabilities involve transforming all documents into digitally accessible formats and storing the data from those documents for reference in the company's database.

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System Integrators with IDP

System integration firms like Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, and others aim to unify all processes, applications, and software into a single environment. Due to the increasing demand for AI-driven OCR or IDP solutions, many of these companies now offer IDP services. While some system integrators develop IDP solutions in-house, most rely on third-party intelligent document processing partners. Most companies in the system integration market are large and responsible, providing cost-effective solutions to enterprises. However, IDP is only one aspect of their services, so it may not provide the precision required for your documents. It's essential to understand the capabilities and benefits of the intelligent document processing offered by such companies.

Legacy Intelligent Document Processing Solutions

Some vendors that previously provided OCR or RPA solutions have incorporated AI or ML capabilities into their older systems to offer IDP solutions. However, many legacy platforms provide various automated services rather than solely focusing on IDP. Some businesses opt for legacy IDP solutions to save costs or to have a comprehensive tool for their automation requirements. While these solutions may be effective for processing large volumes of simple documents with minimal variation, it's important to note that they may have limitations. Therefore, assessing whether the vendor's current solutions align with your needs is crucial. If your document automation requirements still need to be met, exploring alternative intelligent data processing platforms may be worth exploring.

Intelligent Document Processing Solutions for a Specific Market Niche

In today's market, every product and service is available in general and specialized varieties due to the age of super-specialization, with a specific market sector referred to as a 'niche.' For example, manufacturers used to create shirts in average sizes, but now they offer various fits for different body types. In the same way, many organizations offer Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions tailored to a specific market or use case. If your company has unique document processing requirements, it is advisable to look for specialized IDP solutions that can provide customized and tailored solutions.

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What Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) Solutions can offer?

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) has revolutionized how organizations process their valuable documents.

Document Classification

Document Classification is the process that can categorize documents based on their content. IDP solutions can classify documents such as purchase orders, invoices, forms, and bills of lading. This classification helps organizations to manage and process documents more efficiently.  

Document classification is a crucial task that facilitates easier retrieval and better decision-making. Here are a few examples of document classification use cases:

  1. Invoice Processing - IDP can be used to automatically classify invoices based on their content, such as the vendor's name, the date, and the invoice amount. By doing so, IDP can help organizations to streamline their accounts payable processes and reduce manual errors.

  2. Legal Document Management - IDP can classify legal documents based on their content, such as contracts and agreements. This can help legal firms to manage their documents more efficiently, ensure compliance, and reduce the risk of errors.

  3. Healthcare Document Management - Based on their content, IDP can classify healthcare documents, such as medical records and insurance claims. This can help healthcare providers to manage their documents more efficiently, improve patient care, and reduce the risk of errors.

  4. Human Resources Document Management - Based on their content, IDP can classify human resources documents, such as resumes and job applications. This can help organizations to streamline their recruitment processes and improve the quality of their hires.

  5. Banking Document Management - Based on content, IDP can classify banking documents, such as loan applications and credit reports. This can help banks to streamline their loan processing operations and reduce manual errors.

Data Extraction

Data extraction is the process of identifying and extracting relevant data from documents. IDP solutions can extract data from various types of documents, such as invoices, purchase orders, and forms, among others. This data can then be used to automate various business processes, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, and inventory management.

IDP solutions use a combination of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and machine learning algorithms to identify and extract data from documents. OCR is a technology that converts scanned images or pdfs into machine-readable text. ML algorithms train the system to recognize and extract specific document data fields.

IDP solutions can benefit organizations in several ways. Here are some key benefits of using IDP solutions for data extraction:

1. Improved Accuracy - IDP solutions can extract data with high accuracy, reducing the risk of errors that can occur with manual data extraction.
2. Increased Efficiency - IDP solutions can extract data from documents much faster than humans, increasing efficiency and reducing processing times.
3. Cost Savings - IDP solutions can reduce the need for manual data entry, resulting in significant cost savings for organizations.
4. Scalability - IDP solutions can process large volumes of documents, making them scalable for organizations with high document processing requirements.

5. Better decision-making - IDP solutions can provide real-time reporting and analytics on document processing, enabling organizations to make better-informed decisions and optimize their business processes.

Data Validation

IDP solutions can validate data from various sources, including structured and unstructured data, and from PDF, Excel, and CSV formats. These solutions can detect missing, incorrect, or duplicate data and provide automated solutions to fix them. By utilizing IDP solutions for data validation, businesses can reduce the time and resources required for manual data validation processes, improving operational efficiency and reducing the risk of errors in data processing.

1. IDP solutions can validate data from multiple sources - IDP solutions can validate data from various sources, such as invoices, purchase orders, receipts, contracts, and other documents. This can help businesses ensure the accuracy and consistency of data across different types of documents.

2. IDP solutions can improve data quality - By automating data validation processes, IDP solutions can improve data quality, reducing errors and inconsistencies in data processing. This can lead to more accurate and reliable data that can be used for decision-making purposes.

3. IDP solutions can detect fraud - IDP solutions can detect anomalies and inconsistencies in data, which can indicate fraudulent activities. This can help businesses identify and prevent fraudulent transactions, reducing the risk of financial losses.

4. IDP solutions can save time and resources - By automating data validation processes, IDP solutions can save time and resources that would otherwise be required for manual validation. This can lead to increased operational efficiency and productivity.

5. IDP solutions can provide real-time feedback - IDP solutions can provide real-time feedback on the quality of data, enabling businesses to make timely decisions based on accurate and reliable information.

6. IDP solutions can be customized - IDP solutions can be customized to meet business requirements and regulatory compliance standards. This can ensure that data validation processes are aligned with business goals and regulatory requirements.

In summary, IDP solutions can automate and streamline data validation processes, reducing the time and cost required for manual validation while ensuring data accuracy and consistency, and compliance with regulatory requirements.

Data Integration

IDP solutions can be integrated with various data sources such as databases, spreadsheets, and cloud services. They can automate the data integration process, reducing the risk of errors and improving operational efficiency. Additionally, IDP solutions can handle structured and unstructured data from various formats and perform data mapping and transformation to align data from different sources to a standard data model.

Real-time data integration is also possible with IDP solutions, allowing businesses to access and analyze data as it is generated. IDP solutions can also be configured to comply with data privacy and security regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2, ensuring that data is processed and stored securely and confidentially.

In summary, IDP solutions can streamline the data integration process, making it possible to aggregate data from various sources, automate data entry, and transform data for analysis. This can improve operational efficiency and provide real-time data insights for decision-making. Additionally, IDP solutions can be configured to comply with data privacy and security regulations, ensuring that data is processed and stored securely and confidentially.

Reporting and Analytics

Reporting and analytics are critical for monitoring and measuring the performance of business processes. IDP solutions can provide real-time reporting and analytics on various aspects of document processing, such as document volumes, processing times, and error rates. This reporting and analytics help organizations identify areas for improvement and optimize their document processing operations.

1. Real-Time Reporting - IDP solutions can provide real-time reporting on various aspects of document processing, such as document volumes, processing times, and error rates. This real-time reporting can help businesses identify improvement areas and optimize their document processing operations. For example, suppose a business is processing a high volume of invoices. In that case, IDP solutions can provide real-time reporting on the number of invoices processed daily, processing times, and error rates. This information can help the business to identify bottlenecks in the process and take corrective action to improve efficiency.

2. Data Visualization - IDP (Intelligent Data Processing) solutions refer to software tools that use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to process large amounts of data and generate insights from it. These solutions can also be used for data visualization, which refers to the graphical representation of data to communicate insights and findings effectively.

3. Predictive Analytics - IDP solutions offer businesses the ability to use predictive analytics for forecasting future document processing patterns and trends. Through the analysis of historical data, IDP solutions can recognize patterns and trends, which can then be utilized to make predictions regarding future document processing metrics such as processing volumes, error rates, and processing times. A practical example is a business using predictive analytics to anticipate the number of invoices requiring processing during the next quarter. The business can allocate and plan resources by having advanced notice of this information.

4. Customizable Reports - IDP solutions can provide customizable reporting capabilities that enable businesses to generate reports tailored to their needs. Businesses can choose the data points they want to include in their reports, and IDP solutions can generate reports customized to their requirements. For example, a business may want to generate a report on the processing times of invoices for a particular supplier. The business can get a clear picture of the supplier's performance by customizing the report to include only the relevant data points.

5. Compliance Reporting - IDP solutions can also help businesses generate compliance reports demonstrating their adherence to regulatory requirements. For example, businesses may be required to demonstrate compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, or other regulations that govern the processing of personal data. IDP solutions can automate the generation of compliance reports by extracting the necessary data from documents and generating reports demonstrating compliance.

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Use Cases of IDP Solutions

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions can be used in various industries and applications.

Healthcare

IDP solutions can automate medical records processing, insurance claims processing, and medical coding, improving operational efficiency and reducing errors.

In the case of Insurance claim processing, when a patient submits all required documents for claim medical insurance to the hospital, the hospital will be forwarded the to the insurance company with the given documents, then with the help of Intelligent Document processing insurance company will verify the all the documents (like Aadhaar Card, Birth Certificate, Passport, Driving License, Pan Card, Voter's ID, etc.) and check eligibility with the conditions of the patient. Then proceed with the eligible amount to the hospital.

Finance and Accounting

IDP solutions can automate invoice processing, expense reporting, and financial statement analysis, improving operational efficiency and reducing errors.

Intelligent Document Processing can help with invoice processing in financing by automating the extraction of data from invoices and reducing the time and effort required for manual data entry.

introduction-icon  IDP's roles in Invoice Processing for Finance 
Here is a step-by-step overview of how IDP can help with invoice processing in financing:
  • Document Ingestion: The first step in IDP is to ingest the invoice documents into the system. This can be done through various methods, such as scanning, emailing, or uploading invoices to a designated folder. 
  • Data Extraction: Once the invoices are ingested, the IDP system uses advanced algorithms and machine learning models to automatically extract relevant data, such as invoice number, date, total amount, and vendor details.
  • Data Validation: The extracted data is then validated to ensure accuracy and completeness. Any errors or missing information are flagged and can be corrected by the system or reviewed by a human operator.
  • Approval Workflow: Once the data is validated, the invoices are sent through an approval workflow for processing. The workflow can be customized to meet the organization's specific needs, including the number of approvals required, routing rules, and escalation procedures.
  • Integration with financial systems: After the invoices are approved, the IDP system can automatically integrate with the organization's financial systems, such as accounting software, to generate payments and update financial records.

Overall, IDP can streamline invoice processing in financing by reducing manual effort, increasing accuracy, and improving efficiency.

Logistics and Transportation

IDP solutions can automate shipment tracking, freight billing, and delivery confirmation, improving supply chain visibility and reducing processing times.

Retail and E-commerce

IDP solutions can automate order processing, returns processing, and inventory management, improving operational efficiency and reducing errors.

Government Sector

IDP solutions can automate document processing for government agencies, such as permit applications, licenses, and public records, improving operational efficiency and reducing processing times.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, intelligent document processing (IDP) solutions have become increasingly popular due to the need for efficient and accurate document processing. Several types of IDP solutions are available, including standalone IDP software, IDP services offered by system integration firms, and legacy IDP solutions. Choosing an IDP solution that fits your company's specific document processing needs is essential, which may require a specialized or customized IDP solution. Additionally, being familiar with the capabilities and benefits of IDP solutions provided by different vendors is crucial. By considering these factors, businesses can improve their document processing efficiency and accuracy, resulting in cost savings and increased productivity. IDP solutions can be used in various industries and applications to automate document processing, improve operational efficiency, and reduce errors. By automating repetitive and manual tasks, IDP solutions can free up time and resources for businesses, allowing them to focus on core business activities and provide better customer service.