Intelligent document processing relieves organizations of a problem that plagues every organization. Healthcare, retail, banks, governments—nearly every industry struggles with it. The Hill even found it at The White House, in which the publication dares say that classified documents aren’t the problem. But the real problem is that there are far too many of them. And it’s an issue most organizations contend with every day. According to Accenture, 80% of an organization’s content is unstructured. This means emails, resumes, text documents, agreements, handwritten notes, legal reports—nearly anything that falls outside the prescriptive format of a spreadsheet or receipt. Too many unstructured documents with too few management strategies lead to data overload that spirals out of control. Here are the five trends organizations are eyeing in 2023 to improve automated document processing.
AI in Document Automation
AI has become the driving force behind document processing technologies. It borrows from technologies you use every day, like Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Many malls and sports arenas have upgraded to smart parking structures. How many times have you returned to the lot only to completely forget where you parked your car? Stroll up to a special booth and type in your license plate—OCR scans all the license plates to locate yours. Similarly, in the U.S., you can sign up with the Postal Service for Informed Delivery. This is another magic trick of OCR. Cameras read the address on envelopes and packages and pass the information along to sorting systems. Not only does the extracted data help direct mail more accurately, but you can receive a photo digest of all the letters en route to your home or business. OCR turns IDP into a mega-scanner, capable of ingesting and processing all the documents supporting your operations. Applications, forms, and contracts are just a few examples. Computer vision technologies like OCR, and its slightly more advanced companion Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), are two technologies behind document automation. OCR handles the basics: pictures or scans of typed text on standardized documents like invoices, receipts, or envelopes. ICR tackles the outliers: kooky fonts, notes taken by hand, or a doctor’s trademark sloppy scratch-writing are where ICR shines.
