Digital transformation in industries where enquiries and applications are rife has often come in the form of Intelligent Document Processing (IDP).
Many businesses that see a stream of applications daily, mortgages, referencing, rentals, medicine etc will understand the pain points of having a backlog of applications to analyse. IDP helps dramatically by lending speed to that process. So, what is IDP and how does it work?
What is Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)?
This type of document intelligence converts physical documents into a digital form originally through optical character recognition (OCR) - which converts the words and numbers on the original document to a machine-readable text. Once the conversion has been completed the user can find the document as a PDF and search for whatever information they need!
This tech has allowed for a much more efficient process where users no longer have to read through the whole document to find the information they need, which takes a lot of time and frustration. With OCR, data can be extracted much faster, making the process a lot more efficient and much less painful! OCR was just the beginning of automated document processing.
As intelligence document processing has now become so advanced, it is able to read and process documents without users, such as those in the finance industry, having to do any manual work. The software can automatically pick up addresses, names and incomes, placing them in the correct fields and calculating what they are scripted to. This saves tremendous time and the efforts of employees having to manually search for this information through each document to authenticate an application.
As we all know the quicker the service, the happier the customer! Therefore IDP has been huge in easing the manual burden upon financial services when dealing with a heavy influx of constant enquiries and applications from customers, therefore streamlining business operations and contributing tremendously to revenue.
A deeper look into document intelligence
Within IDP lies robotic process (RPA) automation which allows software to deploy and manage bots to act as humans to engage with digital platforms. In practice, this means understanding and navigating systems, extracting specific information and entering certain information. IDP contextualises this information in order to make more skilful programmed decisions. IDP and RPA work hand in hand to select relevant information effectively and accurately.
With thousands of institutions opening digital platforms, customers now have 24/7 access to a company's services even when they are not actually operating. This creates a huge influx of work when employees reenter the office and are therefore put under immense pressure to process these enquiries and applications. This manual process was super inefficient, taking huge amounts of time and labour costs from employees.
IDP provides the functionality to process documents faster, cheaper and much more effectively. Therefore, IDP has become absolutely essential, particularly in the financial sector.
In a nutshell, the main benefits are:
Automation instead of manual labour
Simplification of tasks
Increase in efficiency and productivity
Allows scalability
Less financially heavy
Accuracy
Customer satisfaction
How document processing works
Document Processing used to be a heavily tedious process. Now it follows four simple steps:
Categorisation
The layout and structure of the document is analysed by human written programming language
Extraction
The OCR software carries out the text transcription which converts the typed text on the documents into data. Handwritten text recognition analyses and converts handwriting on the document.
Detection
Although OCR is great software, it isn't always accurate and therefore needs someone to review it to flag any errors
Data Storage
The final document is now in a digital format and now is stored in a format suited to computer applications.
Here are two key factors that must be considered before initiating document processing:
Effective categorisation
Categorisation and organisation of documents are absolutely essential to creating an effective system in order for documents to be easily found and accessed by those who need them. If this is not in place it will be extremely difficult for the department to run smoothly and productively as it will be highly time-consuming for employees to be searching for documents.
APIs and integration
Integration is key to ensuring a smooth transition from data conversion to storage. A tried and tested integration system must be in place so the data can be stored smoothly and securely in a compatible system with the in-house software used by the company.
Steps of IDP
IDP works to turn unstructured data into usable information, which is absolutely essential for businesses converting to automated processing. Here are the steps IDP takes:
Pre-processing
The software categorises the digital documents data and assigns it to certain groups.
Document classification
Once this identification has occurred, OCR is utilised to understand the type of document it is
Data Extraction
The categorised data, such as names or addresses, is placed correctly into the software using OCR and HTR
Domain-specific validation
This step ensures the information is correct using programmed rules
Enhanced Validation
RPA provides straight processing without the need for human intervention as it allows for enhanced intelligent automated processes, and ultimately automated risk underwriting.
Human validation
The final stage requires human eyes to validate whether the information is accurate
The distinction between document processing and IDP lies in the fact that IDP utilises AI and Machine Learning (ML) whereas document processing does not. This huge software advantage means IDP can:
Use automation to process data much faster
Analyse and process unstructured data
Have a much higher accuracy thanks to ML
be more efficient which decreases costs for the business
Increase the security of data
Key features of IDP software
Deciphering handwriting
Handwriting that is unable to be read by employees can cause delays. This causes a huge backlog of applicants who may be requested to redo applications. With IDP, OCR and AI, hard-to-read documents are able to be quickly read, understood and translated.
Digitising documents
IDP completely rids companies of the burden of numerous paper documents and instead can scan them into systems automatically and insert the relevant details automatically.
Extracting information accurately
Selecting the relevant and accurate information from documents can be a tiresome and inefficient process when done manually, taking up numerous hours of labour paid time. However, IDP can automatically capture the relevant information from documents alleviating time and money invested into the manual process.
Organisation
With huge amounts of documents streaming 24/7, document management is absolutely essential. However, trying to organise physical documents manually is a huge and difficult task. With IDP, documents are automatically organised and therefore easily managed with the software building archives to ensure fast data retrieval.
This coupled with document analysis technology that Homeppl have developed can massively improve business processes for companies that receive applications on a daily basis. Here's how...
Where can document intelligence be used?
Document processing can be used across almost all industries as its capabilities cover numerous avenues of work. Some examples of these sectors include:
Fraud Detection (in rentals and financial industries)
Fraud is rife in many industries at the moment. The finance industry requires fraud detection at every level, especially when analysing incoming applications. This is no less apparent in the rental industry in which Homeppl operates in. We use our self-developed document analyser to detect modifications to original PDFs and other documents by scrutinising font analysis, image overlaying and a document's metadata.
Mortgages
Document analysis and organisation help mortgage companies can get back to their customers much faster with thousands of enquiries flooding their systems all the time.
Insurance companies
Highlighting key information from applications is essential in determining eligibility for claims at a much faster rate.
Healthcare
IDP allows quick extraction of key medical information from documents despite the differing layouts they may come in. Homeppl's technology can speed up and make accurate any medical referencing or applications required.
Legal
Across the legal industry, documents are used consistently. IDP allows for these documents to be processed and analysed efficiently to extract the key information from court documents or agreements.
Across all the industries detailed, Homeppl’s incredibly advanced document analysis tool is extremely useful across all in analysing documents that flood these companies and providing accurate analysis and authenticity verification where it is most needed.
