What is intelligent document processing used for?#
IDP automates this entire process, rapidly extracting critical data and feeding it directly into other business systems like accounting or customer relationship software. This dramatically reduces processing time, cuts labor costs, and improves data accuracy, freeing up employees for higher-value work.
How does intelligent document processing work?#
The system first ingests a document, such as a scanned invoice or a PDF contract. It then uses AI to recognise the text on the page and, more importantly, to understand the document's structure and context. For example, it learns to identify what type of document it is (e.g., an invoice versus a purchase order).
Once it understands the document type, the AI locates and extracts specific pieces of information, like the vendor name, invoice number, specific contract clauses, or the total amount due. It can handle variations in formatting across different documents because it has been trained to recognise the meaning and relationship of the data, not just its fixed position on a page. The extracted data is then structured and sent to other business applications automatically.
How is intelligent document processing different from OCR?#
Intelligent Document Processing is a complete solution that extracts, understands, and structures data for business use. It is often confused with basic Optical Character Recognition (OCR), but there is a key difference. OCR simply converts an image of a document into raw text, like a digital "scan." IDP goes much further by using AI to interpret that text, identify what it means (e.g., "this number is the invoice total"), and extract it in a ready-to-use format, even when the document layout changes.