How Intelligent Document Processing Can Streamline Your Accounts Payable Function

In the modern business environment, automation has the potential to improve efficiency and significantly reduce costs. Yet many organizations still need help to realize its full potential.

That’s because success is built on three critical considerations - an appropriate use case, intelligent implementation, and focused and tailored digital solutions. In most cases where automation does not have the desired effect, a business has not considered at least one of these foundational elements.

EDC’s Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solution is an example of automation executed in the right way. It facilitates data extraction from physical and digital documents, reducing the time your team spends on processing by up to 40%. And by consistently registering a 99.5% accuracy rate, it also cuts your costs by around 20%.

With this in mind, we wanted to examine how IDP hits an automation sweet spot, how it applies to accounts payable functions, and why now might be the time to incorporate it into your commercial workflows.

Manual processing is costly and inefficient

Any professional involved in accounts payable administration will appreciate that the processes are ripe for automation. Paperwork-heavy and largely dependent on manual document processing and data entry, considerable time is spent simply transferring information from physical or electronic documents to the company’s internal digital systems.

In the past, automation was hampered by an inability to interpret and extract data from non-standardized structures and formats. On invoices, crucial information is often displayed and labeled in different ways. Simple variations in how information is presented (eg. Invoice Number and Invoice No.) made automated data extraction difficult and processing errors more likely.

In a multi-cultural and multi-lingual region like the Middle East customers frequently provide invoices in English or Arabic languages (or a combination) This requirement for Arabic language processing adds to the complexity of the solution required.

As a result of these common variations in formatting, organizations have to rely on time-intensive manual processing that is prone to human error and is in no way cost-effective. Additionally, the inefficiencies in manual Accounts Payable admin are compounded by the way these processes divert valuable human resources away from more complex work that makes better use of employees’ talents.

A cost-cutting solution that improves the value of collected data

IDP solves these issues by enabling intelligent document scanning and deploying an OCR solution (Optical Character Recognition) together with advanced AI data extraction functionalities, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning. This enables the solution to classify and categorize documents based on their content and extract data with a remarkable 99.5% accuracy rate.

Whether on-premises, hybrid, or cloud, IDP integrates with your business’s internal systems, facilitating direct data sharing. By extracting metadata, such as dates, names, and reference numbers, the solution also streamlines search and retrieval functions in the future.

The benefits associated with IDP technology are clear. Enhanced data accuracy, improved operational efficiency, and significant cost savings. But the solution also contributes to a more transparent and accountable system, making it easier to demonstrate compliance with relevant regulatory environments. This further expands its potential applications.

For instance, in the financial sector, IDP can be used to automate aspects of KYC, KYB, and AML compliance, loan application processing, regulatory reporting, contract analysis, and trade finance document processing.

IDP is digital automation perfected

IDP is a powerful and innovative solution that is changing the way businesses think about accounts payable automation and processing. By maximizing process efficiency, the technology cuts costs, improves data accuracy, and enables employees to dedicate more time and resources to tasks that require uniquely human qualities, such as emotional intelligence and nuanced judgment.

In a business environment where digital data increasingly drives growth, IDP simplifies data collection, entry, and management, making information more accurate, accessible, and valuable.

IDP also works to eliminate data silos, ensuring all data is collected centrally and enriching records by linking related documents to provide a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of the information at your disposal.

Reach out to our expert team to learn more about EDC’s Intelligent Document Processing solution.