Intelligent Document Processing or IDP is a technology that automates the process of extracting data from unstructured or semi-structured documents such as invoices, receipts, contracts, PDF forms, and other scanned copies or images or PDFs. IDP combines technologies like Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), computer vision and Machine Learning (ML) to recognize and understand the content of the document and extract relevant data.
IDP or Intelligent Document Processing can be used in any industry or organization that relies on manual document processing tasks including manual data entry from documents and can help improve efficiency, and productivity while reducing costs and human errors.
How to start with Document Processing
Invoice Processing: IDP can automate the extraction of data from invoices such as vendor or supplier name, address, invoice number, payment due date, line item details, tax information, sub total, amount to pay etc. and automatically populate them into relevant fields in an accounting system such as SAP, Quickbook, Netsuite etc. reducing manual data entry and human errors. Invoice processing is very useful for companies who deal with multiple vendors and invoices. Accounting firms (CPAs) who handle multiple clients and many invoices can save tons of time and money and increase efficiency in the Accounts payable process. Today, accounts payable automation is incomplete with the invoice processing OCR or IDP.
Contract Management: IDP can help automate the process of reviewing and processing contracts by extracting key information such as payment terms, clauses, contract end-date, year-on-year fees increment etc. and generating alerts when contracts are due for renewal or review.
Insurance Claims Processing: IDP can help automate the processing of insurance claims by extracting relevant data from claim forms such as policy numbers, claim amounts, and dates of service, and automatically routing them for further processing or payment. RPA or API can be used to populate the extracted data into other systems such as ERP.
Loan processing: Loan processing involves huge amounts of physical document processing. IDP can extract relevant information from documents such as ID cards, address proof, bank statements, tax returns etc. and process them further by applying business rules. It saves a considerable amount of time and increases efficiency in the loan processing process.
HR Document Processing: IDP can automate the processing of HR documents such as resumes, job applications, and employee records by extracting relevant information such as contact information, education, work experience, and skills and populating them into relevant fields in an HR system. It does the initial screening of candidates.
Finance function and CPA firms: CPA firms and finance function handles a lot of documents such as receipts, invoices, bank statements, credit card statements etc. IDP can automate and extract data from all these documents with high accuracy and populate them into the finance system, increasing efficiency, productivity and reducing cost and time.
Legal Document Processing: IDP can automate the processing of legal documents such as contracts, agreements, and legal briefs by extracting key information such as parties involved, terms, and clauses, and flagging potential issues or risks.
Overall, Intelligent Document processing can help organizations to increase efficiency and reduce costs in processing documents in any form including scanned copy, PDF, images etc.
