#95 Let's talk about Intelligent Document Processing

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. Yeah, with me here today is Arno. Hello, Arno.

Hey, Sascha.

So yeah, we are back with another episode, and today we will be talking about intelligent document processing and the automation of documents and the benefits of intelligent document processing. So yeah, we know in many businesses there are invoices, for example, other documents, lots of things which need to be processed. Yeah. And for many organizations out there, it is really difficult to deal with the volume. Um, still with documents, although we are living in a very digital time. But still, it's a, it's a very difficult situation to, to go with that volume of documents, uh, and without an efficient way to process them. So yeah, every, every, every company gets invoices, hundreds of invoices, some companies 100,000 of invoices a year. So yeah, it's a challenge, and it's a challenge for productivity. So yeah, the manual handling of documents, it really consumes time and lots of effort. But I think more importantly, it is also a big contributor to errors. And once an error is in a system, in a database and that kind of stuff, it obviously will create even more effort to fix it, to identify it, to deal with it. So it creates even more costs. So yeah, and, and for that reason, intelligent document processing exists and lots of organizations already using it. Back then, I guess it was called just OCR and was a bit of intelligence coming into that, was called IOCR. Yeah. And nowadays was even more sophistication around it. Now we call it intelligent document processing. To tackle all these paper-heavy things within the business. Yeah, but combining this automation with artificial intelligence, organizations can now start reducing that manual processing and initiate more end-to-end processing based on these documents. And yeah, so we will go, as I mentioned earlier, through the benefits of intelligent document processing. And, ja, Arno will kick this off with the first benefit.

Thanks, Sascha. So of course, the first one that is worth mentioning is that there is greater efficiency and cost savings associated with processing these documents if you use automation, because of course there is a reduced need for human interaction. So, you know, organizations out there do need a, a way to unlock information embedded within paper forms or PDF documents and, you know, making that data actionable in, in real time. And intelligent document automation does this by converting all of the unstructured data into usable structured data. You know, and this can be a combination of using AI models, machine learning capabilities, And this is effectively what it boils down to. So just let's just look at how this could affect different industries, because this is a good example on where this applies. So if I look at the public sector, for example, of course, you know, there's constrained budgets within the public sector, revenue shortfalls, and this just means that government agencies have to do more with less. And intelligent document automation creates a very cost-effective solution through a sort of centralized document processing way of doing things. And this, of course, reduces human intervention. If I look at the financial services and banking, there are new technologies that's coming to light every day. Increasing regulation, there's global competition, there's also a lot of new disruptive business models out there, and all of this is shaping the future business landscape. And AI-enabled document processing really enables these financial institutes to streamline their processes and also to adapt to those changing environments out there. More quickly. And, you know, and that gives them a competitive advantage, you know, creates that competitive advantage they, they need. Uh, just briefly looking at insurance, you know, I'm looking at, at forms for adjusters, forms customers filled out, fills out, um, forms that vendors filled out. So, so, and there's, there's loads of other sort of sources where, um, manual document processing actually, you know, presents or creates a nightmare. And intelligent document processing can capture data and intelligently process it into this kind of structured, usable information that allows us to make better decisions, resolve a claim faster. And, you know, not just for insurance companies' benefit, but also for the end customer benefit. If I look at healthcare, for example, if I look at regulatory mandates. You know, there's a renewed focus on optimal patient care to make accurate document processing— well, that makes accurate document processing a very, very high priority. And, you know, intelligent document automation helps healthcare organizations to obviously, you know, deliver the highest quality care while still meeting regulatory standards. And then again, in life sciences, and the final example I want to use, So, you know, there are challenges out there to create new and more effective drugs. And that's, that's becoming increasingly urgent. And, you know, if I look at intelligent automated document processing that uses machine learning and AI, you know, it facilitates sort of that kind of decision-making process that helps these organizations that perhaps are within sight of this industry to manage, you know, a myriad of customers, regulatory compliance, you know, and perhaps track the efficiency of patient studies. So in all, you know, it's all taking documents, all of the unstructured data within, turn it into structured data and, you know, reduce the sort of the need for human interaction to really drive that efficiency and cost savings that, you know, the intelligent processing provides to your organization or to your business.

Yeah, you touched on this healthcare stuff. Yeah, it's crazy how much when you go into a hospital, how much is actually still done manually on forms. Yeah, because everything moves so quick and I guess they don't want to They don't want to just deal with technology tablets, and maybe that technology is not even there because it requires huge investment. But yeah, they're still doing lots of things on paper forms, checklists, patient forms when they are being discharged. There's so much stuff. And then somewhere in the room, someone is just keying that stuff into the patient systems, the NHS system. So it's crazy. So coming, coming to this topic with our background and looking at these businesses, it's sometimes shocking how they have to deal with things. But okay, that's the situation. Um, and, uh, yeah, so hopefully more and more industries will pick it up. Yeah, the public sector and healthcare I think are really, really important, probably more important financial services. But yeah, a key driver of that and a huge benefit of intelligent document processing is the accuracy of data ending up in the systems. So yeah, with the automation, IDP classifies all the documents and extracts that data so consistently. As a human, when you look at the 100th sheet, of course you will start making errors. Is it a 7? Is it a 1? At some point you just key things in like a robot and you make these mistakes, and that will be the data in the system. So yeah, with that AI machine learning included, yeah, you will increase that accuracy a lot. And of course, with the right classification, you can then route it into the right directions of where it needs to be processed. Needs to go for review, needs to go to this department, it needs to go into that system. So that will definitely speed up the process a lot. Yeah, talking about speed, the next big benefit is that speed. So with increased— with that speed, you can increase revenues within the company because everything is processed much quicker. So obviously they have faster payment cycle when you invoice, for example, by automating that data extraction and the validation and pushing that data then into the different systems, accounting softwares, for example. Yeah, the manual data entry will minimize any discrepancies and everyone gets paid faster. So it's a huge, huge impact.

Yeah, and I think another point here is also IDP provides better regulatory compliance due to fewer errors that happens when you process documents. I think a lot of people out there see compliance as a necessary evil. Takes a tremendous amount of time to actually keep your compliance records up to date. If you deploy intelligent document processing, you can actually automate the routines that extracts some of the compliance records from your documents and actually file that away automatically, or actually presented in such a way that your compliance officer can sign that off very quickly. And again, it just makes the, the, the actual compliance exercise, um, quicker. It simplifies it. Um, it reduces the errors, obviously reduces the cost, it reduces the head— headcount. And like I say, you know, out there, depending on the industry— financial services, healthcare, private healthcare— you know, there, there, there is a massive amount of sort of compliance, um, that needs to, uh, needs to be adhered to. And there's obviously severe penalties for non-compliance. Um, so it's a very, very important area for a business, uh, if any, um, to go and apply intelligent document processing to, you know, to, in that part of your business. And again, you know, it sort of strengthens your reputation. So if you're, if you fail a compliance, if, for example, because there's errors, you know, that might have detrimental effects to, to your business. So that's protecting your, your business revenue, business reputation. And some of these things are very hard to measure. In monetary terms. So again, IDP provides that sort of consistent and auditable process that, that eases the burden and stress that companies go through when they sort of look at compliance, compliancy, specifically regulatory compliance, because, you know, it reduces that manual effort and also the potential for human error.

Yeah, it is that. It's exactly that. So the accuracy, the faster delivery of information. So that's all part of the benefits. So yeah, the next one is high customer satisfaction through the delivery of faster and more accurate information and improved customer service. So yeah, with IDP, Intelligent Document Processing, yeah, the process will move faster 100%. And that means customers get what they sooner. And as a customer, of course, that's what we really want. And yeah, it could be something like returns processing, refunds and exchanges. If you think of retail, sort of typical things which happen now after Christmas a lot, I guess. But the faster you can process that with documents processing behind the scene, yeah, you will have happy customers. And of course, you will also have more accurate information in your systems. So your reputation grows. So that's a huge driver for businesses. Yeah, I still can't believe how much documents we still have these days. So yeah, that's a huge thing with the productivity and higher employee satisfaction as well, because when it can be processed automatically, you don't have to process that manually. And yeah, customer satisfaction goes up 90%, for example. Employee satisfaction goes up as well, equally high. So that's, yeah, it's incredible. So everyone should look into Intelligent Document Processing, I think.

Yeah, and I guess it is just one of the examples where automation actually removes, you know, boring repetitive tasks from from staff and, you know, freeing workers from these sort of mundane activities and allow them to focus on sort of value-add things that they actually enjoy doing.

Yeah, as soon as this volume increases, isn't it, then it becomes really a burden.

Yeah. So just in sort of a final sort of closure, benefit of intelligent document automation. Again, you know, the purpose of it is really to extract data and present that data in a structured way. And, you know, if you look at the volumes of documents out there, the number of documents businesses create on a daily basis, that data can be made available to larger processes inside the business because it is structured. It's not unstructured where people have to key it in. And again, And sort of examples that we touch on in some of the industries could be lab results, customer onboarding information, for example, things like order forms. Artificial intelligence that's baked into IDP takes the structured formats, which is not sort of usable, and turn that into structured data that can be incorporated for use in other applications. And it sort of helps your business turn into more of a data-driven organization. So again, in summary, apart from, you know, some of these use cases that we've used, you know, as sort of a takeaway, the benefits is obviously it improved processing time, so processing of documents, which is a benefit for everybody. Having to deal with documents, you know, it, it, it, it introduced efficiency within the business. You know, even, even if you don't really have standardization across the organization of, of, of, of in terms of documents, you know, it can sort of auto tag documents, auto add them to your taxonomy based on the content. Of course, it reduced data entry errors. So if you have a custom onboarding form and somebody traditionally needs to double key that in. You eliminate that element and you could scale your workload. You can grow your business without actually scaling your workforce.

Do more with less.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, very good.

Yeah.

Have a look at the intelligent document automation, document processing. Huge benefits there. I hope this short overview of what it could mean for your business when adopting it was helpful. So of course, as always, if you want to know more, of course follow this, this podcast regularly, and we will cover that topic most likely again with more use cases and will address specific questions from, from, from the community. So if you know, want to know more about intelligent document automation processing and processing automation, low-code, and all other topics beyond. Yeah, make sure you keep following us and visit theautomationguys.net for more content. Yeah, reach out to us with any thoughts, suggestions, feedback, questions. Very happy to pick that up in some of the upcoming episodes. Yeah, and if you like that episode, visit us on the platforms where you listen to this podcast, give us a 5-star rating, would be really, really appreciated. And yeah, we will be back with another episode very soon. And until then, let's automate it.