Is Your Data Dumb? Hook Intelligent Data Capture Technology to the Front End
If document management software is the central core of your data, intelligent data capture technology (IDC) is the front end of it. Intelligent data capture (IDC) automatically grabs field data from scanned electronic documents and sends each item exactly where it needs to go.
What’s the intelligent part?
OCR, machine learning, automation, integration, and validation to name a few intelligent things. Let’s start with OCR and IDC.
Intelligent Data Capture Technology (IDC): A Step Beyond
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a scanning technology that identifies alphanumeric characters on a page so information can be “read” and searched once converted to digital. OCR plays a critical role in high-volume document scanning. Without search capability, scanned documents are simply pictures that aren’t easy to find. Unintelligent.
But OCR on its own lacks context and meaning. That’s where IDC comes in.
By using intelligent data capture technology (IDC), the search-worthy words and sentences created by OCR gain business meaning. IDC makes OCR results relevant.
For example, an OCR system scans a date: 25-November-2020. This may be a completely accurate result, but what does that date mean to someone who reads it? IDC tags that sequence of characters as a payment due date for a credit card statement or a check-in date or check-out date for an AirBnB invoice, or an expiration date on a contract, or some other business interpretation that is driven by the context of the document.
How Does IC Work?
Intelligent data capture software uses machine learning to analyze data and route that information to the right place so it can be seen by the right person. It learns from manually-performed tasks and creates an automated business process. Ideal for Accounts Payable or Accounts Receivable, IDC eliminates the dreaded task of creating templates by hand, ensuring the correct data is OCR’d from these documents. Machine learning creates its own “program” to get the job done. Furthermore, it can handle complex tasks like contract management where it makes a decision based on document content.
IDC has other benefits, too:
Programmatic identification and sorting of documents
Simplified content searchability
Reduced physical storage requirements
Superior data quality
Improved regulatory compliance
Enhanced information security
How Does Intelligent Data Capture Technology Save Time and Money?
Information enters a business from multiple sources: paper and electronic documents, online forms, scanned images, email attachments, incoming faxes etc. The volume and complexity of these inputs require organization, classification, and data conversion—a daunting manual task but not so daunting if automated.
Deloitte predicts that those organizations that immediately flag information as relevant and put it where it should go via IDC will achieve an extra $430 billion in productivity gains in 2020 over their less technology-savvy peers. That’s not a small potatoes figure right there.
Intelligent data capture software includes enhancements to auto-classification that simplifies capture projects without sacrificing accuracy. And, by reducing paper handling steps, IDC minimizes processing errors and accelerates business workflows by making information instantly available in content repositories. All good stuff. And you can take this proven machine-powered capture technology and leverage it to scale; capture a few thousand documents or even several million documents per day, meeting future business growth by:
Reducing outsourcing costs
Creating a competitive advantage by eliminating errors and delays
Putting more control at the fingertips of customer service reps
Creating company-wide consistency and transparency
Optimizing business processes by streamlining the flow of information to key systems
Minimizing regulatory non-compliance risk
Producing immediate results and faster turnaround with real-time capture processing at the first touchpoint
What Are the Core Functionalities?
Device Integration – Capture documents from hundreds of scanners, multi-function devices, file shares, fax, email, and other digital sources
Image Quality Checks – Fuzzy images from low-quality scanners are replaced by enhanced image quality
Document Identification – automatically identify scanned documents based on barcodes, patch codes, or separator sheets
Data Capture – Automatically capture machine-printed text and barcodes to reduce manual data entry.
Business System Integration – Automatically identified documents and extracted data from IDC processes can be routed into your content management systems, workflow processes, and databases.
Data Validation – Set business rules to ensure the accuracy of captured data and reduce errors.
High Volume Batch Capture – Scale from thousands to millions of document images captured per day.
Unified Designer – Easily develop, test, and deploy capture projects quickly by using the point-and-click setup and configuration.
Will IDC Work for My Organization?
Heck yes, it will. IDC streamlines and optimizes operations in every department. Every department? That’s what we said. Check it out:
Cut down manual invoice processing by up to 90%
Reclaim office space
Eliminate offsite document storage
Provide management visibility into invoice aging, cash flow, and AP productivity
Take advantage of early payment discounts and avoid late payment penalties. BAM!
Automate Sales and Order Processing – Improve transaction efficiency, eliminate lost or misplaced orders, and even automate customer credit holds and duplicate sales order checks, plus:
Perform part number and item verification
Improve fulfillment speed
Enhance accountability
Find and achieve measurable efficiencies
Integrate sales with your ERP
Automate Receivables processing – Five great benefits streamline your AR process:
Set up automated invoice reminders and collection emails at user-defined intervals. Generate a call list for collectors to contact customers that are past due. Pay up, slackers!
Standardize your AR strategy by removing a lot of the guesswork and anxiety from payment collections. Put your team on the same page when it comes to customer payment status.
Get everyone working together from the same software and centralized database to improve communication within the accounts receivable process. This also extends to the sales department and customer service, which are often siloed from collections.
Save minutes and moula. By automating your Accounts Receivables and collections efforts, you create an efficient and cost-effective process. Cash flow improves and your staff gets more done in less time. It’s raining greenbacks.
Accurate and timely data. No more piecing together data from multiple sources. Everything is in one place, eliminating errors, duplication, and missing information.
Automating the claims process increases efficiency and cuts operational costs by reducing staff levels, dispensing with seasonal retraining and multi-skilling, and dedicating experienced claims operators to higher-value tasks and complex processes.
In addition, claims processing automation offers:
Lower operational costs. Reducing/automating manual tasks makes your team leaner and more agile, empowering them to add more value in key areas.
Faster decisions, even during peak seasons, increase customer satisfaction and lowers claims costs.
Less turnover of low-qualified and frequently-retrained temporary staff. Exhausting. No thank you.
Medical records classification – IDC identifies medical documents in as little as five seconds. Humans take 40 seconds to perform the same task. This accelerated workflow saves time and money while improving accuracy and consistency.
Intelligent document classification of medical records:
Automates key steps, from scanning and routing to exporting extracted data.
Extracts much of the data needed to process any medical document.
Eliminates entry points for human error and cuts labor costs.
Creates consistent standards and rules to govern medical document types.
IC also provides operational efficiencies to help shorten patient length of stay, reduce labor costs, and improve the visibility of patient information for making better clinical decisions. It also greatly helps healthcare organizations slash the time they spend on medical records digitization. Staff devotes more time to tasks that directly impact patient care and the overall patient experience.
The Time for IDC Is Now
At Revolution Data Systems, our deep bench of consultants bring decades of experience with IDC. We set you up to transform paper and electronic documents into application-ready information to eliminate repeatable and semi-repeatable tasks that humans find no fun. Reach out today to learn how we configure your system to catapult efficiency right from the start with intelligent capture.