Enterprise Guide to IDP

Designed to help you determine whether IDP is the right solution for you and your data extraction goals.

Scroll through and become an IDP Guru or instantly download the entire guide to share the knowledge.

Questions answered:

What is IDP and how does it differ from OCR?
Which industries are using IDP?
What impact is IDP having on the workforce?
What questions should you ask before opting for an IDP solution?
Who is pioneering IDP technology?

Definition: Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)

IDP is a solution that transforms unstructured data from your documents into usable information and automates business processes by contextualising the document, understanding the data, extracting it, and sending it to the right place. The best IDP systems process data from any document in any language.

A man asking himself what is intelligent document processing?

Five Advantages of IDP

How exactly can IDP technology transform the way your enterprise processes document data?

The number 5 surrounded by the 5 advantages of IDP: Speed, Accuracy, Easy Processing, Cost-Efficiency, and Productivity

Why Automate Document Processing?

Enterprises typically send and receive enormous amounts of documents each year. In most cases, all these documents are processed manually and take extensive and expensive resources to be processed.

Case: Allianz Suisse - Saves 1.5 FTE/year

As an example, Allianz Swiss is saving about 1'500 hours or 1.5 FTEs per year after implementing IDP in one of their processes.

Benefit Example:

Enterprises are able to extract product information from purchase orders, giving them even more insights into their customer purchasing habits.

When Is IDP an Effective Solution?

Every enterprise constantly searches for ways to make their processes more efficient and their teams more productive. Ultimately businesses want to scale and grow while avoiding bottlenecks and the best way to do that is by automating repetitive tasks. Enterprises processing large amounts of documents that vary in complexity save the most from using IDP.

IDP gives the quickest ROI for enterprises that:

Struggle with document-heavy processes
Need to streamline tasks
Are looking to save time and money

A man sitting on documents researches if Intelligent Document Processing is an effective solution

Definition: OCR

OCR, an abbreviation for Optical Character Recognition, converts image-based documents into text-based documents.

READ HOW TO PROCESS DATA USING INTELLIGENT OCR

Given Example

How Are OCR and IDP Different?

Main Difference Between IDP and OCR

IDP is not just a better OCR but something new. IDP is an AI-powered self-learning system that can process and understand unstructured data from documents, just like humans do—allowing you to automate all your document processing tasks at scale. Unlike OCR, IDP can learn to recognise the context, structure, and semantics (e.g., year) of a document and analyzes over 70 reference points to determine what those characters mean.

OCR Versus IDP in Practice:

OCR can tell us that certain pixels are the numbers 1 9 8 0 – but it does not understand that it's a year and part of your Date of Birth.

However...

IDP does understand that 1 9 8 0 is a date of birth. And IDP's value is processing documents automatically by transforming unstructured data into a machine-readable form more reliably and with more incredible document processing customisability. Below is a checklist for you to clarify how the features of OCR and IDP differ.

OCR vs Acodis Flowchart — Which One Fits Your Data Extraction Needs Best?

Find your right solution flowchart help IDP AI Data extraction

MIT Study Insight

"A 2020 study conducted by MIT suggested that a mere 25% of enterprises fully utilise data. And in doing so, make decisions that have significantly higher returns than those who don’t."

Ultimately, using technology, such as IDP, could enable enterprises to better access and use their data.

(Source: MIT, 2020)

A document is digitised using Intelligent Document Processing and yielding ROI and data insights

IDP can extract data from documents and transforms it to useable insights

Automating Contract Processing, Once and For All

A document is transformed into data through Intelligent Document Processing

Even if your enterprise only processes contracts: layouts, lengths, structures, and contexts will continuously change. This currently makes data extraction a pain to keep as efficient as possible.

Intelligent Automation

The future of IDP enables businesses to evolve past the stress related to processing documents. Even if document semantics change, IDP is intelligent enough to learn and continue without needing a team of data scientists.

Impact of IDP on Workforce

Data Entry Clerks Become Teachers

Roles, such as data clerks, would ultimately be transformed into "machine teachers", ensuring smooth operations across the platform.

They would be able to monitor the flow of data, teaching the software to become even more intelligent - being able to add more value to executing, and steering, the way data is processed.

IBM Study: Data Analysts Spend 80% of Their Time Collecting Data

Data analysts only spent 20% of their time analysing data. The majority of their time was spent collecting and cleaning up data from various sources.

(Source: IBM, 2017)

Intelligent Document Processing extracts data from documents and transforms it into usable insights at scale

Ask Your Team:

Before investing in any enterprise-wide technology, it's always important to ensure that goals and expectations are aligned across your team.

A magnifying glass investigating questions and functions of Intelligent Document Processing

Here Are Some Questions to Ask When Considering an IDP Solution:

Do we need to process large amounts of documents? (IDP is most effective this way).
What are our document data extraction goals? (For help on this, see our Flowchart in the IDP Guide).
Why does OCR take more time to integrate compared to IDP?
What issues do we currently face with manually processing data?

How to Implement Enterprise IDP

Enterprise projects are typically a success if you focus on solving one process first by selling it internally as a test.

Important: build your test on a scalable IDP platform with extensive enterprise experience (because enterprise requirements are very different from SMBs).

Request extensive demos from suppliers and check their reviews on platforms like G2.

Run your test with a supplier you trust and has the right resources to achieve quick results and help you navigate the journey to convince your internal stakeholders.

Data is analysed by an intelligent document processor before data is extracted from document

Ultimately, the future of data extraction from documents is one of automation.

Companies that hesitate to adopt IDP fear the complexity and time the process of transforming all their unstructured data into structured data may entail; however, integrating IDP is seamless, and businesses typically begin seeing a return on their investment within one year.

IDP is Allowing Businesses To...

Streamline data entry processes, thereby minimising costs and increasing productivity
Easily access valuable data that empowers analysts with the information necessary to make sound suggestions that lead to quicker and better business decisions
Empower workforce to focus on big picture tasks and improve workforce morale

Sound like your goals? Get in touch and we'll explore how your organisation can benefit from IDP.

A gear with document processes being automated by intelligent document processing surrounding it

IDP Industry Leader

IDP Pioneers

Acodis has been pioneering document data extraction since its founding in 2016. As every business process starts, finishes, or involves documents, Acodis can classify, extract, and automate them within seconds.

Self-Learning, Made For Humans

The document automation tool is diverse enough to meet all of your data requirements: whether you need a reliable PDF data extractor or an automated data entry program.

Any document, any language

Acodis can process any document type from any language and will seamlessly integrate with your systems. You can easily export your data from Acodis via API to feed and enhance your ERP, CRM, or RPA system of choice.

Swiss Made

Acodis is a thriving SaaS founded in 2016. We are based in Winterthur, Switzerland, with a team of twenty-seven people.

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Your Guide to Fully Automating Your Document Processes