Building and maintaining a solid data foundation is critical to organizational growth. With quality data at your fingertips, your organization can enhance decision-making, boost productivity, ensure business continuity, reduce costs, and improve both employee and customer satisfaction rates.
That’s why more and more businesses are prioritizing data quality. In fact, Gartner predicts that 50% of organizations will embrace modern data quality solutions in 2024. And intelligent document processing (IDP) technology is among them.
Unfamiliar with intelligent document processing? Want to learn more about it? Read our introductory blog post, which covers everything from what IDP is to how it works to the top use cases.
With the ability to convert unstructured and semi-structured data into structured, accurate, organized, and easy-to-use information, it’s no surprise that IDP solutions are top of mind for businesses as the new year approaches. To avoid any IDP-related surprises and stay ahead of the game, however, you need to stay up to date on the top intelligent document processing trends for 2024.
Increase in AI-Enhanced Intelligent Document Processing
According to the ADP Research Institute, 2022 was the first year in nearly four decades where average productivity per worker dropped for three straight quarters. With its ability to eliminate manual tasks and expedite processes, artificial intelligence (AI) has been seen as a beacon of hope in situations like this. For this reason, AI-driven intelligent document processing will likely increase this coming year.
When IDP systems are built with AI technologies, such as machine learning (ML), they can efficiently classify documents and extract data from them once they’ve been scanned and converted to the proper format. AI technologies seamlessly differentiate documents based on content and layout, eliminating human intervention as well as human errors during document classification. AI-enhanced IDP solutions even have the ability to push documents into workflows based on their classification.
The result is much faster document processing. In fact, Forbes states, “many companies are turning to artificial intelligence to reduce document processing times from days to minutes.”
Humanization of Automation with Human in the Loop Processing
While intelligent document processing solutions – especially those enhanced with AI technologies – can automate several tasks, they’re not yet smart enough to handle entire processes on their own. For this reason, human in the loop processing will prevail in 2024.
Now, you might be wondering what “human in the loop” really means. Simply put, it’s an operating model in which humans and machines work together to optimize processes. It enables organizations to ensure accuracy and gives teams peace of mind knowing they can oversee processes for quality control purposes. Teams kept in the loop can even alert intelligent document automation systems of mistakes and make corrections to help the technology learn and evolve over time.
The human in the loop approach can look a bit different in each unique process. When it comes to invoice processing, for instance, humans need to be kept in the loop so they can ensure successful exception handling. The humans mentioned can be in-house employees or outsourced experts if you partner with a business process management (BPM) provider to assist in AP automation.
By keeping humans in the loop in 2024 – regardless of the processes you’re optimizing, you won’t be minimizing your document processing automation initiatives. You’ll be humanizing them and, in turn, ensuring you get the most value out of your software investment. According to McKinsey’s 2021 Global Executives Survey, “executives from companies that have seen success with automation are twice as likely as others to report using human-in-the-loop designs.”
Further Adoption of Cloud Computing to Future-Proof Processes
“The cloud” is a popular – and potentially overused – term. It no longer sounds new and exciting, but it is increasingly critical in today’s ever-changing business world, nonetheless.
Statista found that the share of corporate data stored in the cloud doubled from 2015 to 2022, when it hit 60%. Experts also found that 94% of organizations worldwide leveraged cloud computing in 2023.
Cloud usage is expected to continue rising due to the benefits the technology offers. It helps organizations reduce costs, gain easy access to important business data from anywhere, expedite processes, enhance data security, and ensure business continuity. In other words, it helps companies future-proof their processes. For this reason, it will likely transition from a “nice-to-have” to a “have-to-have” in intelligent document automation solutions in 2024.
More intelligent document automation solutions will incorporate what’s known as industry cloud platforms, which are custom-built for industry-specific processes. According to Gartner, only 15% of organizations are leveraging these platforms today, but over 70% will leverage them by 2027.
Let’s take a look at a scenario to understand why…
Imagine you work at a hospital. You must meet strict patient privacy requirements. This means you need to securely store your data and set up failproof workflows to ensure it safely gets to where it needs to go. Your cloud platform will require different features and will need to integrate with different systems than, say, a retail store’s platform. With an IDP solution that routes data into an industry cloud platform built to your specifications, you can ensure your unique needs are met.
Your Intelligent Document Processing Partner
Now that you know what lies ahead for document process automation in 2024, you need to select the right partner to help you succeed in the new year and beyond.
At MetaSource, we have over 30 years of experience providing IDP solutions to organizations in a wide variety of industries – from healthcare to insurance to financial services. We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. We work closely with our clients to develop and implement automated document processing technology that meets their exact needs. And we’re committed to staying on top of the latest IDP trends, so we can continuously evolve our solutions to ensure your success.
Ready to learn more about intelligent document processing? Contact us to speak to an expert today or download our free IDP guide.
Your Guide to Intelligent Document Processing
Discover why IDP is a pivotal solution in today’s data-driven business world.
