Intelligent document processing use cases:
An industry guide

Companies and organizations have plenty of balls in the air. From customer support to strategic business planning, it’s easy to feel like you’re always running out of time or energy. Piled on top is a seemingly endless amount of paperwork, which is both tedious and time-consuming. 

Thankfully, managing business documents and communications into simplified workflows is possible with modern intelligent document processing (IDP) systems.

A capable IDP can help you quickly and accurately process documents, regardless of industry, format, or use case. A fully articulated and configured IDP can set the standard for quality control throughout your organization, helping streamline communication, simplify processes, and get the right information to the right downstream systems with plenty of time to spare. 

For a deeper understanding of how modern IDP solutions work, read on to learn more about the advances and technologies these systems have incorporated over the years. 

A brief history of IDP: What is IDP, and how has it changed?

Before we get into how industries use IDP, we first need to ask ourselves, “What is intelligent document processing?” 

IDP is a technology that lets businesses automatically extract data from structured and unstructured documents, saving them time, money, and resources. IDP is changing how businesses accomplish tasks and maintain information integrity throughout their organizations.

There are several methods used in an IDP solution, either separately or in concert with one another, including: 

1. Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
   In the early days of IDP, organizations adopted optical character recognition (OCR) solutions to scan documents and turn content into machine-encoded text. Paper documents were processed by the OCR, which scanned and digitized the documents for storage and backup purposes. Metadata was assigned to the documents, allowing users to find and organize them in separate libraries.While OCR is certainly faster than manually collecting and inputting data into a digital format, it isn’t completely automated. With template-based OCR solutions, users must time-consumingly reformat documents into the correct template or create new templates, all while correcting mistakes, misinterpretations, and any other exceptions the OCR rejected.
2. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
   Robotic process automation (RPA) was also used alongside OCRs as a productivity tool that automates high volume rote tasks. RPA takes manual labor away from employees, freeing them up to perform more complex tasks, but doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of accuracy or the need for human review and verification of some documents.
3. Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
   With the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, today’s advanced IDP solutions are more accurate and can be fully automated. For example, Rossum uses a combination of AI and computer vision to make extracting data even easier and faster. The software can automatically recognize the context within documents and learns as it ingests more information, therefore growing more accurate and capable over time. Rossum can read and understand data from documents, no matter their format, helping to ease the burden of manual verification that has plagued the IDP industry. Rossum can also bring value in cases where manual verification is not the case anymore (e.g., with less accurate or less efficient OCR/IDP with no continuous learning).

IDP in business

Businesses of all shapes and sizes can benefit from IDP. AI-driven IDP solutions can process documents that don’t follow templates with minimal manual oversight — and they’ll only get faster and more accurate over time. 

IDPs can help companies streamline data extraction and validation, cut costs, improve accuracy, increase scalability, and reduce manual processing time. Since employees won’t spend as much time performing repetitive tasks, they’ll be happier, more productive, and able to focus on driving revenue, making your business more competitive.

Specifically, IDPs can help with invoices and accounting. For example, if you use manual methods, receiving an invoice PDF will mean painstakingly copying over information, validating it, and routing it to the right person, which leaves room for error. Conversely, intelligent document processing PDFs will be a smooth and accurate process that leaves you with little to nothing to do.

IDP is a game changer for HR departments. Adopting IDP in HR means you’ll be able to process applications and come to a decision faster. Your hiring procedures will be smoother than ever, so you can leave candidates with a positive experience. If a company chooses to adopt a modern, capable IDP, HR will thank you.

Additional benefits include:

• Employee and customer satisfaction
• Early payment discounts 
• Meeting compliance requirements

Given how many benefits IDP offers businesses, it’s no surprise that the intelligent document processing market size is expected to grow to $5.2 billion by 2027. 

Rossum is a modern, cloud-native IDP that’s revolutionizing the way businesses operate by providing powerful tools that streamline processes, reduce bottlenecks, and improve overall efficiency. Known for its innovative approach and exceptional customer service, Rossum delivers happier customers, better vendor relations, and higher employee satisfaction, helping businesses achieve greater success than ever imagined. 

Whether you’re looking to enhance sales, provide best-in-class service, or improve your bottom line, Rossum is the solution you need to reach the next level. Rossum is very secure, ISO27001 certified, and offers HIPAA compliance. Rossum has also earned SOC 2 Type II certification.

IDP use cases by industry

In addition to general use cases for all industries, IDP has several industry-specific applications.

IDP in business services/business process outsourcing (BPO)

Organizations in the business services/BPO industry often rely on manual data entry or outdated IDP solutions, but the truth is that these solutions often create more manual work. Not only is it frustrating, but it can damage your business. 

After all, you’ll have to dedicate countless hours to tedious tasks like creating new templates or fixing inaccurate data instead of value-added ones, leaving you to fall behind competitors.

However, a modern, properly deployed IDP can help streamline operations and processes. You’ll have far less manual data entry work, so you can focus on providing clients with the service they deserve. You’ll be able to turn around documents required in claims and billing much faster, such as those required for:

• Customs clearance: Clearing customs always involves quite a bit of paperwork. Not only do customs agents need to know what’s in a package, but they also need to know where it’s coming from and where it’s going. Enter IDPs. An IDP can easily classify and validate data from commercial invoices, bills of lading, and certificates of origin.
• Order management: Mistakes in order management can lead to out-of-stock items and slow cash flow. Luckily, an IDP can accurately process your sales order documents in no time, so you can get products to customers faster and accelerate your cash flow.
• Accounts payable: Accounts payable departments receive countless invoices. Processing invoices accurately and on time isn’t easy with traditional OCR solutions or manual invoice data entry. However, when it comes to accounts payable, IDPs excel. IDPs can improve accuracy and ensure fast invoice data processing, all while reducing costs.
• Accounts receivable: It’s the same story for accounts receivable. IDP can quickly and accurately capture data from documents, regardless of format, saving everyone time and money.

IDPs today can integrate with your existing systems and processes, adding to the solution rather than creating new problems. The right IDP provider takes time to understand your company’s needs and existing automation solutions, then configures the IDP to work seamlessly within systems that work and augment others for improved performance. 

With Rossum, you can expect faster turnaround times, increased employee satisfaction, and more efficient business processes. Our modern document processing solution is highly accurate and powered by AI, so you won’t have to worry about constantly creating new templates or reformatting documents to fit existing templates.

IDP in financial services

Financial services deal with piles of paperwork. In fact, printing and paper costs in the industry reach around $10.5 billion each year! Financial institutions are incredibly dependent on paper, so they have much to gain from using an IDP.

After all, finance documents need to be processed quickly — and they need to be accurate. One error or delay could mean the difference between someone qualifying for a mortgage for their dream home or being forced to keep renting. Similarly, a mistake when processing application forms could mean providing a loan to a fraudster.

A modern IDP can help the financial services industry with:

• Onboarding/KYC: With the help of a quality IDP solution, financial institutions can efficiently and accurately process and extract information from bank statements, ID cards, application forms, W8 and W9 forms, and more, resulting in faster turnaround times and better customer experiences.
• Fraud detection: It’s easy for someone to provide fake documentation or misleading information on applications. Luckily, IDP can auto-extract data from structured and unstructured documents and then seamlessly bring that paper-form data into fraud detection engines.
• Trade finance: Your IDP can quickly and accurately process guarantees, letters of credit, commercial invoices, bills of lading, and certifications of origin, leading to reduced costs and faster turnaround times on trade finance decisions.
• Loan processing: Approving a loan means looking over a lot of paperwork. Fortunately, IDPs can take some of the work off your plate. Your IDP can quickly extract data from loan applications, W2 forms, paystubs, tax returns, bank statements, valuation reports, and title reports, so you can get back to the applicant faster.
• Credit applications: Similarly, your IDP can help with credit applications. Not only will your IDP quickly process credit reports, loan applications, and income verification documents, but it will also eliminate paperwork errors!
• Mortgage processing: IDPs work much the same with mortgage applications. Your IDP can easily extract and validate data from tax returns, pay stubs, W2 forms, 1099 forms, and ID cards, so you can make decisions faster.
• Account management: Your IDP can digitize, extract, and classify data from paper forms and integrate it into your systems, making approving and opening new accounts easier than ever.

Many intelligent document processing vendors are out there, but some are better than others. Reliable, accurate, and fast, Rossum is the perfect solution for financial institutions that need their documents and data processed quickly and accurately and want to reduce their workload. 

For example, we recently helped the Master Trust Bank of Japan (MTBJ) cut its manual workload by as much as 75% while promoting the trust and confidence of its clients and the general public. 

IDP in government

When people think of the government, they think of bureaucracy and paperwork — and there’s plenty of truth behind that. Tax forms, social security documentation, and census forms — can overwhelm an organization. 

However, IDP solutions can process government documents and completely transform your agency’s operations by reducing repetitive tasks, offering workflow automation, boosting productivity, and giving employees time to focus on essential tasks. 

For example, instead of manually processing a barrage of income records and 1099, W-2, 1040, and 5498 forms to mitigate tax document fraud, you can let your IDP handle that.

In addition to financial and tax operations assistance, IDPs can be used to benefit applications and healthcare claims in the following ways:

• Processing application forms: When someone needs to apply for benefits or make a healthcare claim, they submit an application. From their end, that’s one application. On your end, you could be looking at thousands or hundreds of thousands of application forms. IDPs make accurately processing benefits and healthcare claims applications a breeze.
• Streamlining background verification checks: Verifying someone’s background can be a lengthy process, but an IDP can accelerate it. Instead of manually extracting data from an application for verification, you can rely on your IDP to do the heavy lifting. For example, your IDP can extract the names and contact information from an applicant’s references, so all you need to do is call references.
• Reviewing and verifying tax documents: By nature, tax documents contain lots of numbers. While a tired human eye might easily mistake a 3 for an 8, an IDP won’t make that mistake. Even if an IDP has been running for hours on end, it can accurately review, extract information from, and verify tax documents.
• Validating check stubs and invoices: Similarly, check stubs and invoices contain many numbers, and one mistake could have significant consequences. Fortunately, IDPs can quickly and accurately extract and validate data from check stubs and invoices.
• Flagging payment requests: It can be easy for a payment request to slip through the cracks. However, you won’t have to worry about that with an IDP on your side, as IDPs can easily identify and flag payment requests.
• Reviewing military discharge forms: People often need to submit their military discharge forms before taking advantage of the government’s many benefits, which means lots of paperwork. The good news is that IDPs can quickly review military discharge forms, saving everyone valuable time.
• Checking proof of employment forms: An IDP can also help verify proof of employment forms, as your IDP can read, understand, and verify information like names and dates.
• Analyzing patient records and medical reports: Patient records and medical reports contain vital information but are usually quite lengthy. Manually reading and extracting data can take time you don’t have, but that’s where an IDP can make all the difference.
• Verifying driving licenses and government IDs: Every state has its own unique driving license. While most licenses share the same general information (name, birthday, height, weight, etc.), they often use different formats. Extracting information manually or with an outdated document processor can be a nightmare, but IDPs make it easy.
• Processing passports: Passports are another form of identification that contains plenty of useful information, from a person’s name to their date of birth to their place of birth. With IDP, accurately extracting this data is fast and simple.
• Checking utility bills: It can be easy for mistakes in utility bills to occur and go unnoticed. After all, government agencies have a lot on their plates, so utility bills likely aren’t their top concern. Since IDPs can read and understand utility bills, it will be much easier to spot incorrect utility bills.
• Interpreting census forms: Every ten years, the U.S. government conducts a census and receives millions of census forms, each containing names, sexes, ages, dates of birth, races, the number of people who live in the household, and more. That’s tons of paperwork and a lot of data that needs to be extracted, making it the perfect use case for IDP.

Whether you need to process invoices, military discharge forms, tax forms, or government IDs, Rossum has you covered. Our solution is equipped to handle anything you throw at it, so you won’t need to spend time tediously reformatting documents or creating new templates.

IDP in logistics and transportation

The logistics and transportation industry has many moving parts, which means massive amounts of paperwork. Everyone is inundated with documents, but IDP helps with:

• Scheduling: Your IDP can quickly validate data from bills of lading, waybills, and custom forms against back-end databases to ensure everything is correct and SLAs are met.
• Clearing customs: IDPs can acquire automatic classification and validation of data from bills of lading, certificates of origin, and commercial invoices, making clearing customs easy.
• Proof of delivery (POD) data: IDPs can automatically extract data from receipts, invoices, and bills of lading, meaning you can quickly find proof of delivery.
• Delivery tracking: Similarly, your IDP can improve delivery tracking. It will automatically capture and verify data from shipping instructions, waybills, receipts, PODs, purchase orders, and truck hauling tickets.
• Invoices and payments: IDPs can quickly capture invoice data, automatically compare and match purchase orders, and take advantage of early payment discounts. They can also help you pay drivers faster, as they can automatically extract things like driver account details, miles traveled, bill of lading numbers, and pick-up/drop-off locations.
• Freight forwarding: Since IDPs can quickly and accurately extract data from commercial invoices, packing lists, export shipping bills, bills of lading, certificates of origin, letters of credit, insurance certificates, and declarations of hazardous cargo, they’re also powerful freight forwarding tools.
• Technical documentation: You can also use an IDP to extract data from delivery documents for archiving and compliance.

Additionally, IDP solutions can process fuel consumption statements, license forms, and repair bills — and, unlike traditional template-based solutions, modern IDP solutions like Rossum can handle any document. After all, unlike some intelligent document processing companies, we have an AI-driven solution that quickly and accurately understands documents, regardless of format.

IDP in manufacturing

Intelligent document processing also has plenty of uses in the manufacturing industry. For example, an IDP can process delivery notes/orders, product tags, and shipping labels, which makes inventory and supply chain management more straightforward. 

You can dedicate the time and energy you would have spent working on basic inventory and supply chain management tasks toward other projects that could boost revenue or help your business grow.

IDPs can also help organizations in the manufacturing industry process:

• Purchase orders, invoices, and bills of lading: Purchase orders, invoices, and bills of lading are vital parts of any manufacturer’s daily life. However, manufacturers receive many of these documents each day, which means staying on top of everything is a tall order. The good news is that an IDP will not only process these documents but can also automatically route or act upon them, saving you even more time.
• Intake documents: Manufacturers also deal with intake documents from various sources, such as fax, email, or standard mail. An IDP can effortlessly read and add the information in these intake documents into a unified, digital repository that’s easy to use and consult later.
• Change requests, quality assurance records, and proposals: Change requests, quality assurance records, and proposals are other necessary parts of being a manufacturer. However, keeping up with these documents is easier said than done. That’s where an IDP can help. A modern, AI-driven IDP can interpret and act upon change requests, quality assurance records, and proposals, making your life all the easier.

The sky’s the limit for modern IDPs — and Rossum, one of the best intelligent document processing solutions, is ready to help you automate processes and improve operational efficiency. With Rossum’s help, you can reduce pre-processing, validation, and post-processing times. Plus, Rossum generates reports, so you can gain deep, actionable insights into your operations, making scaling much easier when the time comes.

For example, Rossum recently helped EvoLogics build a rich and robust supplier and product database that helped them to reduce document processing times by 74%. With a seamless end-to-end integration of Rossum into its existing systems, EvoLogics ultimately ended all its manual data capture efforts.

IDP in retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG)

Companies in retail & CPG usually work with multiple vendors and even place several orders with the same vendor, which means many documents are flying around.

Enter IDP. Common use cases for IDP in retail and consumer packaged goods include:

• Quality assurance: An IDP can quickly extract data from certificates of analysis, helping you ensure on-time delivery and confirm products meet regulated specifications.
• Order management: Processing sales order documents is tedious, but an IDP can shoulder the burden for you. You’ll be able to avoid errors and out-of-stock items, which can accelerate cash flow.
• Supply chain management: Supply chains are complex — and managing them isn’t easy. However, an IDP can quickly and accurately process delivery notes/orders, helping expedite the flow of goods and services and ensuring customers receive their orders quickly.

While plenty of IDP solutions are available, Rossum’s intelligent document processing platform goes above and beyond. It’s powered by AI, which means it’s fast, smart, and ready to extract data from documents, even when layouts vary. You’ll spend less time creating templates, manually reviewing information, and more time on business-critical tasks.

IDP in technology

Similarly, IDP has a lot to offer the technology industry. Specifically, IDPs can help with:

• New business intake: Every time you gain a new client, you must do a lot of paperwork. The good news is that an IDP can process everything from legal bills to client matter documents to invoices, allowing you to onboard clients faster.
• Energy management: One mistake can be costly when it comes to energy. While energy management meant reading documents line by line, that’s not the case with modern IDPs. An IDP can automatically read and understand utility bills, invoices, and credit and debit notes, so you can easily spot energy consumption anomalies.
• Build costs: Building automation solutions from scratch is expensive and time-consuming, but IDPs are already equipped with automation tools, meaning you can save time and drastically reduce costs.

Not only can you lower build costs, manage energy consumption, and onboard clients faster with Rossum, but you can also improve your workflow and create better user experiences. Plus, you can avoid maintenance since Rossum releases and automatically deploys new features yearly. You’ll have a better experience, and so will your customers.

IDP in healthcare

Paperwork is vital in healthcare. Not only do patient records need to be accurate and accessible to avoid mix-ups, but there are also bills, claims, patient referrals, and surveys to deal with. Working with physical files can mean frantically searching for paperwork, but processing and digitizing documents requires time, money, and human resources. However, IDPs can accelerate the process.

Your IDP can automatically extract data from ID documents, insurance cards, patient registrations, and medical and treatment histories and integrate it into your systems, allowing for a faster, smoother workflow. Plus, your IDP can process surgeon’s preference cards, mitigating risk in the operating room.

Modern IDPs in healthcare come with the following qualities and capabilities:

• Privacy compliance: IDPs are capable of working with various privacy standards, adhering to either industry or government standards depending on region.
• Security and corporate compliance: IDPs can be configured to work within an organization’s own standards for compliance and retention.
• Controlled access: Especially important for privacy standards, IDPs can ensure that sensitive documents are only processed and accessible to authorized personnel and departments within a healthcare organization.

Your IDP also can make a difference in extracting data from HCAHPS and patient referral forms, claims, and billing. For example, your IDP can automatically capture and validate data from UB-04 and CMS-1500 forms, accelerating billing and claims processing.

An IDP can even help with accounts receivable, as it will extract data from bills, invoices, and EOB forms, resulting in a smooth, speedy reimbursement process.

If you’re looking for an intelligent document processing for a healthcare solution that can do all that and more, look no further than Rossum. Rossum is perfect for those in the healthcare industry. Not only can it help you automate manual extraction work, but it can also help with validating data and improving accuracy. 

IDP in insurance

Insurance is another industry where paperwork is unavoidable. After all, companies need to verify that claimants are eligible for coverage and compare them to policy documents, which means reviewing multiple documents. Then, they have to process the claims, resulting in even more paperwork. Unfortunately, many papers are unstructured, making extracting data difficult and time-consuming.

Luckily, an IDP can accelerate data extraction from several types of documents to accelerate the insurance and procurement claims process, including:

• Certificates of insurance: Certificates of insurance verify that someone has an insurance policy. However, each certificate contains a lot of vital information, such as the policy’s expiration date, the names of the individuals covered, the amount of coverage, the type of policy, and a summary of the coverage. That’s a lot of text to manually process, and an outdated IDP solution likely won’t save as much time as you’d like due to the speed and amount of manual oversight required. However, a modern IDP can quickly and accurately read, understand, and extract data from certificates of insurance with no problem!
• Claim forms: It’s the same story as claims forms. They contain lots of data that could be tedious to extract manually or with an OCR, but an AI-driven IDP can efficiently process information from claim forms.
• Receipts: IDPs can also extract data from receipts, regardless of origin or format, making your job all the easier. 
• Invoices: All organizations deal with invoices at one point or another, and those in the insurance industry are no exception. While manually extracting data from invoices can be a long, frustrating, and inaccurate process, IDP allows for fast, easy, and accurate invoice processing that will save you time and energy.

What’s more, IDPs can automatically identify who the customer is and what the claim is for before routing it to the correct department. IDPs can also help with customer onboarding, document verification, and identity document processing.

Rossum is a powerful platform that can automate everything from pre-processing to data extraction to data validation to post-processing. With Rossum, you can say goodbye to spending hours on manual work. Instead, Rossum can quickly process insurance documents, allowing you to approve or deny claims faster than ever and provide customers with better experiences.

Intelligent document processing can benefit all industries

IDP technology isn’t just valuable for one industry — it has plenty of applications across various sectors, from financial services to manufacturing. Whether you have to wrestle with piles of invoices, mountains of claims, or countless tax forms, an IDP can help automate processes and take the weight off your shoulders.

Of course, you can’t just pick any old IDP solution and expect the best results. Outdated IDP solutions can result in additional manual work like reformatting, template creation, and corrections, so you want to choose your IDP carefully. Rossum, a modern, AI-driven platform, can automatically, quickly, and accurately extract data from documents regardless of format, saving you valuable time and energy.