The explosion of unstructured data – emails, documents, social media posts, images, and videos – has left traditional data processing methods struggling to keep up. Despite technological advancements, many organisations find it daunting to extract meaningful insights from this ever-growing sea of information. With unstructured data predicted to reach a staggering 175 zettabytes (175 trillion GB) globally by 2025, the pressure is on to turn this untapped resource into value.
Enter document intelligence, a transformative solution that uses advanced AI to help organisations handle their unstructured data which some estimates think constitutes 80-90% of organisational data. This cutting-edge technology automates data extraction, classification and content analysis, converting raw, unorganised information into actionable insights. From processing invoices to mining contracts, document intelligence can make a massive impact for organisations that are trying to create value from their pools of unstructured data that are growing exponentially – it has become a must-have tool for strategic growth.
How document intelligence works
Document intelligence (DI) combines artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate a wide range of tasks. These include: data extraction – the ability to transform unstructured data into usable formats; data classification and organisation, the automatic sorting and categorising of documents; and understanding – where DI uses natural language processing (NLP) to interpret and analyse unstructured data in documents.
Typical applications of DI include automated invoice processing, contract mining, customer support automation and risk monitoring – tasks that are often time-consuming and prone to errors when handled manually.
Flexibility meets efficiency
One of DI’s standout features is its flexibility. These solutions are technology agnostic and can be built on top of any platform meaning they can integrate with existing systems. Take the automation of invoice processing as an example – the use of document intelligence means invoices can be automatically verified and classified, which significantly speeds up workflows and improves accuracy, which frees up valuable time for higher-priority tasks and speeds up decision-making. It can also have a direct impact on a firm’s bottom line, as it improves cash flow.
Harnessing advanced AI technologies
Document intelligence leverages cutting-edge technologies like large language models (LLMs), generative AI (GenAI), and optical character recognition (OCR). While ‘plug and play’ pre-trained models from providers like OpenAI or Google or cloud-based solutions like Azure or AWS, provide businesses with cost-effective alternatives that can be easy to implement, but costly and challenging to customise, interpret or control. By using open-source models and datasets, companies can reduce costs and maintain greater control over the system’s behaviour. This trade-off between transparency and sophistication is adjustable, allowing businesses to strike the right balance between interpretability, compliance and use of cutting-edge AI capabilities.
Getting started
To make the most of document intelligence, these are useful steps to follow:
- Assess your needs: identify the document-related challenges you want to address in your organisation.
- Choose the right tools: next, evaluate the existing technologies and determine which solutions align best with your goals. Consider topics like technology integration, scalability and company-specific needs.
- Start small: start developing the first document intelligence solution using an agile framework focusing on improvements to refine the technology.
- Implement and monitor: after implementation, monitor your solution’s performance so you can continuously refine and improve it.
- Scale and optimise: the last step would be to expand the solution to tackle more complex challenges and celebrate your achievements along the way.
Of course, while document intelligence offers immense benefits, be aware of any challenges that could arise, like data privacy concerns, integration issues and underperforming solutions. Tackling these obstacles requires adaptability, but the rewards – improved efficiency, reduced costs, and actionable insights – are definitely well worth the effort. Embracing document intelligence means organisations can unlock the potential hidden in unstructured data – it’s about empowering organisations to transform unstructured data into actionable insights and unlock untapped potential and operational excellence.
If you want to speak to anyone at Valcon about document intelligence and how you can use it to harness business opportunities in your unstructured data, please get in touch: [email protected] [email protected]
