The Crux of Digital Transformation: Dealing with Unstructured Data
As the initial impact of COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns recedes, the business world is slowly coming to terms with a new normal in the workplace. While we inch toward economic recovery, it's clear that digital transformation is here to stay.
Through the last few months, organizations successfully accelerated their digital transformation initiatives to drive efficiencies and support remote work models at scale.
Businesses are keen to invest in applications that give them a unified view of their operations, simplify complexities, track efficiencies, and put them on a growth path.
ERPs, for example, are in demand as they manage and improve business processes and deliver on business outcomes in the most cost-effective manner. And they integrate data from various aspects of the business, including functional areas like supply chain, accounts payables, HR, and inventory management.
The success of these business improvement applications, however, depends on the data fed into them.
Data, therefore, lies at the very heart of any digital transformation initiative. And data-driven business systems have opened up a new way of decision-making based on business insights derived from data analytics.
Data insights validate your business strategy
One of the most critical roles which data insights play is to validate and improve your business strategy.
Data insights help business stakeholders and functional teams with operational priorities and growth strategies. Insights support informed decision-making and help organizations re-prioritize business objectives and re-course their approach as needed.
Large amounts of structured and unstructured data must be processed and analyzed to gain insights.
Extracting accurate and consistent data from unstructured content is critical for maximizing business intelligence and getting actionable insights—and may hold the key to understanding your business better!
Harnessing unstructured data
Let's first look at what exactly constitutes unstructured data. When information exists in non-standard and disparate formats such as invoices, PDFs, images, audio-visual files, emails, or web pages, we refer to it as unstructured data.
Traditionally, organizations store business data in normalized formats that can be handled by structured databases. But in today's digital era, organizations have an influx of large amounts of unstructured data from numerous sources. Managing this unstructured data is challenging, but critical—as this data may hold valuable, actionable business insights.
Unstructured data is growing exponentially and is likely to make up over 93% of all data by 2022. More information is good, you may think, but large volumes of unstructured data pose a challenge in analyzing data.
Challenges in handling unstructured data
Data experts now believe that the most valuable information in companies is often hidden in unstructured formats. Extracting this unstructured data in real-time from diverse sources like emails, spreadsheets, and printed documents is not an easy task. Organizations struggle to locate mission-critical physical documents that may hold value. Further, it is difficult for computers to analyze and process raw unstructured data at scale.
Automation and artificial intelligence come to the rescue here. AI tools such as docAlpha, and technologies such as Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning are helpful for data extraction at scale. The aim is to extract information using Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) technologies and make it comprehensible for computers. The software can then process the data in various ways.
Introducing docAlpha
Revolution Data Systems is a leader in the field of Intelligent Process Automation. RDS's powerful IPA software, docAlpha, ingests different financial documents like invoices, waybills, sales orders, and purchase orders from multiple sources (scanner, email, fax, or a network folder) and file formats. Advanced image processing software removes speckles, auto-rotates, and enhances blurry characters, while advanced OCR technology reads key fields. It auto-classifies and extracts data from documents (e.g. vendor name and order number from an invoice) and matches order quantities and receipts to eliminate duplication. Data validation based on rules and approval routing further streamlines the data and makes it contextual and ready for consumption.
Taking unstructured data to the next level
There is no exact formula for transforming unstructured data into insights and deriving tangible business results. Given the complexities involved in extracting and processing unstructured data, you may feel tempted to let it slip through the cracks—but neglect it, and you risk losing out on valuable insights. And once you have a process to extract and analyze unstructured data, you must also have skilled data scientists or technologies to interpret that data. It is only with deep analysis—and the right technology—that you will derive insights from the data and add value to business bottom lines!
Start your digital transformation journey with RDS
Revolution Data Systems provides scanning solutions to digitize documents as the first step to digital transformation. Increase efficiency by transforming incoming documents into actionable data as it enters your organization with OpenText Intelligent Capture. docAlpha empowers you with AI-based intelligent process automation. We integrate with a range of ERPs—no matter what existing systems you use. We sync with them to harness your unstructured data and provide you with valuable business insights.
In conclusion
A large amount of a company's most valuable information resides in unstructured formats. CIOs must make this data accessible to their employees if they want to position their companies for a data-driven future. They must ensure that data from physical documents is continuously and consistently captured for business insights and data-based decision-making. Are you ready for a data-driven future?
Reach out to RDS. No matter where you are in your journey to digital, we can help you take the next step. Schedule a free consultation with an expert today or request a demo of docAlpha.