The Five Pillars of a Strong IDP Strategy

Establishing a clear and effective IDP strategy is the best way to ensure your documentation continues to run smoothly with new IDP technology. 

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) is quickly becoming a key component of today’s businesses. In industries from healthcare, financial services, construction, and more an AI-based approach to document processing can dramatically cut down on costs and labor hours. But, among all the frenzy about new IDP technologies, it’s important to remember that any new technology is only effective when you know how to use it. 

Implementing IDP without a clear strategy can lead to a steep learning curve and frustrated employees. A good IDP is a reliable asset for all your employees, but only if everyone understands how to use it. Let’s take a look at the key ways to establish an effective IDP strategy with sustainable outcomes. 

Pillar #1: Make sure your document processing is adaptable. 

Adaptability in processing formats and layouts is a central component of any advanced IDP setup. The idea behind adaptability is to convert unstructured and semi-structured data into structured data — which your IDP technology can then record, organize, and interpret.

Traditional OCR and older IDP services had limited adaptability, often requiring manual oversight and preset documentation templates. For an adaptable documentation solution, Rossum uses a highly flexible approach to document input. 

Here’s how it works. Whenever formatting changes during document input — with layout shifts, new logos, or template updates, for example — Rossum document processing uses AI-based image processing called computer vision to structure your data. With contextual document analysis, Rossum looks for important data and uses machine learning to improve over time. 

Adaptable document processing reduces the amount of work you need to process documents and improves the accuracy of your documentation. Consequently, finding an adaptable IDP solution is central to any effective IDP approach. 

Pillar #2: Implement a fast and accurate processing solution. 

The goal of any IDP solution is to make document processing faster, and more accurate. If your team is bogged down in manual adjustments, paper records, or inaccurate processing, your new technology might not be much of an improvement over your old approach. 

For a fast, actionable turnaround, you’ll need the right implementation team. Figure out who your management will be, and make sure you’re working with them to establish an effective chain of command. Finding the right people for the job is an overlooked part of IDP implementation, but it’s just as important as the technology in creating a streamlined documentation process. 

Getting the right information is key, but getting the right information quickly is just as important. When new data is coming into an organization, having it accessible to the right people as soon as possible is what makes a great IDP system truly invaluable. 

Pillar #3: Make sure your solution offers additional automation. 

Document processing technology has come a long way in the past few years, and Rossum is proud to stand at the forefront of new IDP developments. Before you invest in an IDP solution, make sure you understand all the automation your technology offers. To get ahead of the competition, it’s important to find an IDP that does much more than just character recognition. 

Traditional OCR and IDP services often use a HITL (human-in-the-loop) structure, which sends challenging data to a human for manual processing. Compared to other IDPs, Rossum allows you to build in additional automated steps in your documentation process. Whereas other IDPs will simply spit out an exception for human correction, you can build in a step for Rossum to complete that exception as a human would. That way, you can automate further steps to save more time. 

Pillar #4: Establish effective organizational communication. 

Your IDP technology is only as efficient as your team is. Even with highly automated AI technology, the benefits of good communication cannot be overstated. Once you establish the right management structure and team members, your IDP technology is in a good place to make your work easier. 

But the right IDP technology can help with your communication structure, too — Rossum’s processing services help you to streamline organizational communication, and automate additional processing for approvals. With our adaptable approach, you can tell Rossum to complete exemptions, without needing to pass each exemption along for review.

By reducing the number of manual steps required in document processing, Rossum allows you to reduce the human touch, and operate more efficiently as a team. 

As a result of these improvements, you’ll get the information you need from important documents effortlessly and without the need for additional communication among employees. By reducing the number of manual steps required in document processing, Rossum allows you to reduce the human touch, and operate more efficiently as a team. 

Pillar #5: Understand how to handle post-processing exceptions.

IDPs are spreading like wildfire because they can process vast amounts of information more quickly than humans can process documents using a paper-based workflow. In fact, forty-two percent of workers say paper-based workflows reduce productivity — and minimizing paper workflows is Rossum’s specialty. But even with the best technology, there will sometimes be sections of a document that aren’t readable by the IDP. That’s why you need a post-processing contingency plan. 

Highly unstructured, handwritten, or unusually formatted documents will sometimes need a human touch for effective processing. The final pillar of a strong IDP strategy is to plan your approach for post-processing exceptions. To keep data flow as fast as possible, you’ll need a modern, sophisticated IDP solution that minimizes the number of hand-corrected exemptions, without sacrificing accuracy. That’s where Rossum comes in — when a document is processed with Rossum, you can depend on nearly 100% accuracy, every single time. 

Implementing Your IDP Solution with Rossum 

When all your employees are used to traditional, paper-based recordkeeping, you need to make the transition from old-school to new-school as seamless as possible. Before you invest in an IDP strategy, remember the five pillars of IDP success: adaptability, efficiency, additional automation, organizational communication, and minimal exceptions. 

Just because a document processor calls itself “intelligent” doesn’t mean it has everything you need for optimal, automated processing. Rossum is the only IDP provider that can achieve all five pillars with pinpoint accuracy. Contact us for a demonstration, or to learn about the difference between Rossum’s cutting-edge IDP solutions for yourself.