ProcessMaker predicts five major trends in intelligent document processing for 2021: 1) Increased accuracy IDP solutions due to new technologies and human input Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions convert unstructured data within business processes in different document types like text, email and PDF into usable data. To classify, categorize, extract and validate this data, IDP solutions use AI-technologies such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), computer vision, machine learning (ML) and deep learning like Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). As these technologies will keep evolving in 2021, documents can be processed more accurately with IDP. This also applies for more complex documents, such as tables and variations in layouts. Richard Smit developer of ProcessMaker IDP: “Despite the fact that IDP solutions are getting smarter, human input is and will remain indispensable for optimizing these solutions in 2021. The knowledge of these professionals can be used for training and the verification of the results. Subsequently entering their feedback back into the system will further increase the accuracy of this software.” 2) Need for digitization and improving customer satisfaction are important reasons for purchasing IDP solution The corona pandemic will accelerate the use of IDP solutions within organizations in the coming years. Because many employees are currently working from home they have no or limited access to physical documents. As a result, the demand for digitization is increasing and document automation with IDP will more than in the past become a necessity in 2021. Another important reason for deploying IDP solutions will be the need to increase customer satisfaction. By automating document processing, employees can gather and process files much faster. This efficiency boost enables employees to use their expertise to offer their customers a better and more personalized service. 3) Adoption IDP will also grow outside the financial services industryBanks, insurers and healthcare providers are precursors in the field of IDP solutions. Common examples of IDP solutions deployed in these industries are KYC (Know-Your-Customer) verifications, financial due diligence, invoice processing, claim processing and patient onboarding. In 2021, the demand for IDP will also increase outside these industries. Richard Smit: “Business integrity and compliance are becoming increasingly more important. We already observed this in the financial services industry, where "Know Your Customer (KYC)" programs are widely used. IDP solutions already deliver a valuable contribution to the success of these types of programs. Compliance is expected to become increasingly important in other industries in 2021. This mainly concerns companies in the logistics, manufacturing and telecom industry. ” In the past, most documents were printed first, filled in and / or signed and then digitized by scanning them. OCR solutions then made these documents searchable, a complex and error-prone process. However, in this age of digitization, more and more documents are created digitally. This could be e-forms, but also digitally signed formal documents. These ‘digital-born’ documents are instantly searchable and are better suited for document automation with IDP solutions. In 2021, we will see a shift from more generic IDP solutions to solutions developed for specific industries and processes. IDP solutions could start supporting pre-built use cases like Know Your Customer, claims processing and GDPR and privacy legislation for example. This simplifies implementations and reduces the time to value by half. “Besides specializing IDP solutions for certain industries, we will also see that IDP solutions integrate better with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions in 2021,” concludes Smit.
