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Can Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) meet your enterprise goals?

Dec 14, 2022 | 5 min read

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Libby Marx

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Are you looking to Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) to help transform your enterprise? If so, remember that with any automation project, it’s outcomes, rather than technologies, that really count.

It’s all too easy to select a technology such as IDP, hoping to pair it with RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to drive transformation – and then find it’s not the best fit for the business process you’re trying to automate.

So at Roboyo, we focus on working to clear goals at the outset – including not only those of the process owners and your Center of Excellence (CoE), but the enterprise as a whole.

Goals might include return on investment (ROI), or perhaps customer or employee satisfaction (as emphasized by a 2022 McKinsey survey). But whatever they are, don’t try to approach automation with a ‘one size fits all’ mindset, because as they say: when you have a hammer, you tend to look for nails.

Instead, try to develop an ‘intelligent automation’ approach which takes into account different solutions and techniques.

Of course, IDP is powerful for the right use cases – so read on to find out what to look for, and where our Roboyo experts can help you succeed.

WHAT IS IDP?

IDP is a type of intelligent automation technology which focuses on data capture and document processing. In other words, it’s designed to translate streams of documents into business-ready data.

IDP can:

• Capture a wide range of document types from a variety of sources (including email and paper)
• Identify and sort documents, using intelligent content classification
• Extract metadata from documents using AI (Artificial Intelligence), computer vision and deep learning neural network technology

Automate process steps (RPA post-processing).

HOW CAN IDP HELP YOUR BUSINESS?

To implement IDP, it’s important to understand where it could be a good fit. Typical use cases might be where you need to structure unstructured data; centralize and scale information; and enable end-to-end automation. 

Structuring unstructured data is what IDP does best. A typical use case for a minimum viable product (MVP) might be order processing, invoice processing, and so on.

But there are things to watch out for, too. Complexities might include:

• A huge variation in types of documents to be sorted
• Approval policies
• Complex extraction requirements
• Document quality
• Languages
• Multiple-page documents, where content or tables with data can span different pages
• Trailing documents, such as delivery papers attached to invoices, or terms and conditions.

Keep in mind the 80/20 principle (or even 90/10) when exploring the channels from which documents may be sourced, and the level of effort required to gather them. 

For example, if you are automating a document-centric process where 90% of documents are electronically filled, but the remaining 10% are handwritten, it may be worth using IDP for the 90% – and continuing to process the 10% manually, for the sake of efficiency and ROI.

HOW DO YOU ASSESS WHETHER IDP IS FOR YOU?

When deciding between IDP, RPA, or another tool, ask questions such as:

• What risks do we need to consider?
• Do we need different business stakeholders to sign this off?
• What does this mean from an IT perspective? Are different roles and approvals needed?
• How much of the process or how many cases can we automate? What is the target expectation for this technology?
  
  

As with any other technology, prove the concept early on. At the same time, you need to gain buy-in, understand IDP’s capabilities, and find the right stakeholders to sponsor and evaluate it.

Most importantly, agree to your target outcomes (KPIs) – whether that’s reducing processing time or improving accuracy.

At Roboyo, our experts can schedule workshops with your subject matter experts (SMEs) – auditing areas of complexity and documenting business requirements for both IDP and RPA.

FOLLOW AN IDP PROJECT PLAN

We recommend you follow a clear project plan for IDP. Here are four areas to focus on:

• Scoping. Understand the expectations and requirements of the implementation:
  1. Define requirements, targets, and goals
  2. Determine the detailed project plan
  3. Analyze variations in document types, and conduct extraction analysis.
     
     
• MVP. This approach helps our clients find clarity and focus on the core functionality of the implementation:
  1. Deploy the IDP platform
  2. Define Document Workflow and onboard first extraction models
  3. Collect Feedback and define the next iterations
     
     
• Scaling and stability. Implement the technology:
  1. Stabilize, tune and scale the platform
  2. Onboard the next group of variants
  3. Conduct project setup, variation training, and business rule validations.
• Validate and close.
  1. Assess the project against criteria for success, such as recognition rates
  2. Close the project and share documentation
  3. Train SMEs on the automated process.

At Roboyo, we can help you build and execute a plan like this, tailoring actions to your capacity. 

We can also schedule a kickoff with your team, to help prepare you – and lead change management, so that SMEs are clearly trained to use the tool, building employee confidence.

IDP AND COE MATURITY

It’s also important to understand where automation fits in to your business as a whole – and this is where the maturity of your Center of Excellence (CoE) comes in.

For example, automation should come after other process optimization and standardization efforts – as it focuses on automating the manual process steps themselves. Once your CoE is mature enough to take on an intelligent automation project, IDP can be a solution.

Taking time to consider governance is also key. By evaluating a technology such as IDP from the beginning, you’ll find that when it’s introduced as a viable solution later, the structure and governance have already been sorted out. 

Most organizations start by only focusing on one technology like RPA – then, later on, need to change their ways of working and set up their governance and processes to enable expansion, and this can be quite a heavy lift. 

But an automation program can level up your maturity, in terms of the technology mix.

At Roboyo, our business analysts are experts in helping to:

• Evaluate your existing technology and match it against requirements to fulfill goals and identify gaps
• Discover where existing technologies can be improved or used more smartly – and where additional tools might be needed to close a potential technology gap
• Create a process for selecting the correct tools to scale and automate better – or to automate new processes
• Evaluate the automation lifecycle and propose improvements suited to the level of maturity (e. g. a code repository and release management always need to be there; test automation and continuous integration/delivery [CI/CD] can be brought into the mix later).

HOW ARE YOU INTEGRATING IDP INTO YOUR COE?

Like technologies such as RPA, IDP is a step toward hyperautomation – an ecosystem of automated technologies, working together for the benefit of your business.

Once you begin to prove IDP’s power, you’ll be starting to see benefits in terms of both reducing manual workload and boosting productivity – and as a result, excitement will build across your enterprise.

Then, as new automation opportunities begin to surface, Roboyo experts can help you to build and prioritize a backlog and solution delivery plan – to take your organization to the next level of maturity.

HOW ROBOYO CAN HELP

Our consultants and automation engineers are ready to help your business not only meet your automation goals, but to take them to the next level – book a meeting today.

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