7 Core Benefits of Intelligent Document Processing
Data is the backbone of every organization’s workflow. This is because it facilitates growth, improves business processes, and ultimately helps to make sales.
However, the need to cut costs, comply with regulations and meet increasing customer demand is putting more and more pressure on the business processes that rely heavily on data and information.
This is particularly true when it comes to dealing with unstructured data trapped inside documents, images, PDFs, and emails.
So how do you keep on top of extracting, classifying, and using this data without overworking your employees and running the risk of errors?
Well, this is where Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) comes in.
IDP is the process of converting both unstructured and semi-structured information from documents such as emails and images into structured, usable information. This can then be used for creating better insights and processes.
In doing so, Intelligent Document Processing can have a number of important benefits for your company and employees.
To help you see how this could be good for business, we’ve outlined seven of the key Intelligent Document Processing benefits below.
Examples of how you might use Intelligent Document Processing
But before we start looking at those all-important Intelligent Document Processing benefits, it’s useful to see how IDP might be used in your business to streamline some of your key business functions.
To do this, we’ve put together examples of some of the most popular Intelligent Document Processing use cases and the industries that rely on these the most. These are as follows:
Banking organizations
From credit card applications to paying in a cheque, banking organizations have to process a lot of documents every day. The nature of this industry means it relies heavily on Intelligent Document Processing to automate these tasks and reduce the risk of an error.
This is why many banking companies will use Intelligent Document Processing for:
- Personal finance management
- Dealing with financial applications
- Credit disbursement
- Maintaining and updating financial records
Financial services
Similarly, accounting and finance organizations deal with a huge amount of data, much of it sensitive, each day. As such, they use Intelligent Document Processing solutions to help them with daily tasks like:
- Paying invoices
- Managing expenses
- Filling out tax returns
- Managing payroll
Medical institutions
For obvious reasons, quick and accurate document processing is crucial in the medical industry and Intelligent Document Processing makes this possible. These tools help healthcare professionals such as doctors and nurses to manage a number of administrative tasks, including:
- Digitizing and updating medical records
- Accessing patients notes
- Dealing with patient registrations
- Managing prescriptions
- Standardizing the medical database
This list of examples is not exhaustive and there are many other roles and industries that require IDP to keep things running smoothly. For example, humanities, HR, recruitment, and insurance companies will all use Intelligent Document Processing solutions in some way or another.
The key benefits of Intelligent Document Processing
Now that we have a better understanding of how Intelligent Document Processing can be used in businesses. This might have got you thinking about how you’d use these solutions in your company.
So next, we’re going to take a look at some of the core Intelligent Document Processing benefits below. And if you’re not already debating implementing IDP in your business, here’s why you should.
1. It boosts efficiency and effectiveness
One of the key Intelligent Document Processing benefits is the fact that these tools reduce the need for human intervention and labour-intensive tasks in many document-centric workflows. The only time that a person may be needed is if there is an issue with the data, one which IDP solutions can’t fix.
In fact, using these IDP solutions, it takes just seconds to extract, convert, sort, and index data. And that includes unstructured documents. This can help to make these important business functions run a lot more effectively.
What’s more, the level of automation that you can get from Intelligent Document Processing solutions increases the overall efficiency of the daily workflow in many businesses.
2. You can save money
One of the key goals for any business is being able to cut costs and keep to a tight budget. And Intelligent Document Processing can help you to see savings almost instantly.
This is because these Intelligent Document Processing solutions reduce processing times, which means they can cut the need to hire as many employees. Plus, these tools can help to save on other operational costs.
With systems and processes running more efficiently (as mentioned above), you’ll see a better return on investment (ROI) than with other software or even human employees. And faster!
3. You can speed up your processes
Handling large quantities of data can be very time-consuming for any person. But the good news is, bots can make light work of processing huge volumes of data like this.
So another one of the key Intelligent Document Processing benefits is the fact that you can speed up your processes.
After all, manually entering data is not only mind-numbingly boring, but it is also very labour-intensive and therefore takes a while.
However, IDP solutions can do in microseconds, which takes people several minutes to do. Now, several minutes might not seem like a lot, but these add up over time.
As such, Intelligent Document Processing solutions are great for cutting down on this time and making these processes way more efficient.
4. It reduces the risk of human error
Unfortunately, human error does happen, especially when you’re trying to input large volumes of data quickly. This can have a number of damaging consequences for a business, especially in the age of GDPR.
But because Intelligent Document Processing solutions eliminate the need for manual work and data entry, apart from dealing with any anomalies or issues, that is, this can massively reduce the risk of human error.
This means it’s not only quicker to extract and organize data, but it also leads to more accurate, quality information.
5. Compliance and data security become simpler
On a similar note, the fact that Intelligent Document Processing solutions are able to automate tasks and reduce the risk of human error also means they can help businesses to be more compliant.
This is so important in today’s digital world when people are growing increasingly concerned about the safety of their data and how it’s being used.
It also makes compliance much simpler because IDP solutions always leave a digital trail. This trail can then be used when auditing and ensuring compliance with data protection regulations. Not to mention that the secure technology provides better cybersecurity to ensure the data within is kept safe, secure, and cannot be misused as it is only accessible to authorized personnel.
6. These solutions are scalable
Another important Intelligent Document Processing benefit is that these solutions can be applied to multiple applications. This means that IDP is easily scalable and can help to automate several important processes across your business.
And this does not require installation and instead serves as a platform that can interpret many different types of documents, of different sizes and sources, without the need to set rules or install different software.
7. It is easy to integrate with your existing tech stack
One of the final benefits of Intelligent Document Processing is that these solutions can easily be integrated with your existing software and hardware.
This means that you don’t need to go out and spend loads of money on new devices or technology to make these work. Instead, you can implement these seamlessly into your existing systems.
This makes the implementation of Intelligent Document Processing solutions much simpler, easier, and more cost-effective.
Make the most of these Intelligent Document Processing benefits
It’s clear to see that Intelligent Document Processing solutions come with a lot of benefits – and this list might not even be exhaustive.
It’s likely that you will also find other less common and perhaps even unexpected Intelligent Document Processing benefits if you implement these solutions into your business.
So what are you waiting for?
A final summary
If you’re thinking about implementing Intelligent Document Processing into your business, hopefully, this guide has helped you to see why this is a good idea.
But with so much information shared here, we thought we’d finish the article by rounding up the key Intelligent Document Processing benefits you need to take away with you. These are:
- IDP can boost the efficiency and effectiveness of your processes
- These solutions can save you money and offer a bigger ROI
- These can also speed up your processes, making them much faster than if they were done manually by a person
- Intelligent Document Processing can reduce the risk of human error
- This makes compliance and data security much simpler as it leaves a digital trail
- IDP solutions are easily scalable and can help you to automate several processes across your business
- Finally, it is easy to integrate with your existing tech stack, so you don’t need to spend money on new technology