A Beginner’s Guide to Intelligent Document Processing

Stepping into the age of digital transformation is no longer a nicety, it’s an all-important necessity. The evolution spreads over all aspects of work, and intelligent document processing is the fact that really gets people talking.

In 2021, a wave of interest in intelligent document processing swept the world, and it seems like this surge isn’t going away. According to research by a revenue impact and advisory firm, MarketsandMarkets, the global IDP market size is projected to grow from USD 0.8 billion in 2021 to USD 3.7 billion in 2026, marking a significant Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 36.8%.

This boost identifies the need for enterprises to upgrade their workflows, and AI and RPA solutions are at the forefront of this change. To help you get a better idea of how you can benefit from IDP, we put down this article on the IDP role in Lead to Cash processes.

What’s Intelligent Document Processing?

Intelligent document processing (also known as IDP) is a technology that uses the combined power of AI and machine learning to automate manual data processing. In a nutshell, the solution is able to recognize text and figures, extract the data from unstructured resources, and then process it as required.

Ron Cameron, the CEO of KnowledgeLake, once referred to IDP as “a combination of tools, processes and experience” in his article for Forbes. By adopting this term to intelligent document processing, one can describe it as a blend of these five disciplines:

• Classic capture tools
• Robotic process automation
• Artificial intelligence
• Cloud technologies
• Business process architecture

So, intelligent document processing is a fusion of the components above — a complex art created to simplify our work life.

Why Enterprises Switch to Intelligent Document Processing?

We’ve already sorted out that the main goal of intelligent document processing is to put data processing on stream. Let’s see how its implementation reflects on enterprises.

Every company generates tons of data. This information can be divided into two main categories:

• Structured data. It is information that is impeccably organized and is stored in predefined formats. For instance, the data in an Excel file is structured.
• Unstructured data. This type of data is stored in its native format and is typically generated by humans. Images, audio, videos, letters, printed documents are examples of unstructured data.

Looking over structured data is a piece of cake, especially if you’re a fan of business analysis tools. With unstructured data, everything is different. It’s incredibly hard to manage. Employees often have to manually process large volumes of this information, and this is a time-consuming activity affecting the entire organization. This situation is aggravated by the fact that unstructured data accounts for 90% of enterprise data, says Wired.

Intelligent data processing tackles this problem by eliminating repetitive tasks within a company. It streamlines information by management by instantly capturing the data and converting it into desirable formats. For instance, Graip.AI platform can convert documents into PDF, XLC, XML, handwritten texts, and others.

Automated data capture and processing helps your company focus on important tasks, rather than routine ones. By integrating IDP into your internal process, you:

• Can process large data volumes at a quicker pace;
• Reduce the risk of possible errors and typos;
• Digitize your enterprise by collecting all the necessary data;
• Help your team concentrate their efforts on high-level assignments;
• Stay ahead of your competitors simply by being faster.

Let’s take a closer look at what IDP is capable of.

Capabilities of Intelligent Document Processing Solutions

As we mentioned before, intelligent document processing wouldn’t be possible without fusing several disciplines into one product. What’s more, every IDP platform comes with its own number of useful features, and some can be more sophisticated than others.

Standard intelligent document processing solutions are typically unable to scan handwriting and are often restricted to recognizing texts/images only.

More high-end platforms like Graip.AI can switch between several machine learning models to process data more precisely regardless of the language used. Another exciting feature is that AI can be trained to spot different use cases (for example, a purchase order) right away, enabling you to polish workflows to perfection, for instance, in Lead to Cash processes.

The Bottom Line

Intelligent document processing aims at helping enterprises and rapidly growing startups take the next step into the digital transformation age. Many internal processes can experience improvements thanks to these systems. In this article, we’ve tapped into Lead to Cash flows specifically to prove the ways IDP can enhance them.

Get in touch

If you’d love to delegate document processing to an AI-driven solution, consider exploring Graip in a free 15-minute session with one of our representatives.