One of the most promising areas for digitization of business is cognitive data capture. Among many applications of cognitive data capture, invoice processing is getting ahead because of fast and effective results that companies get.

In every company, accounts payable department spends most of its time to process invoice data. Invoice processing consists of a series of steps, which must be followed and executed strictly. Data collection, validation, approvals, payment terms and synchronization of all these steps with an ERP or accounting software can easily lead to bottlenecks in any organization.

Instead of putting that much load onto your accounts payable team, you can start using a solution that uses cognitive data capture in order to automate invoice processing.

What is cognitive data capture?

 

Cognitive data capture performs two main functions: Data extraction and data validation/correction. Automation of these two steps are vital for invoice processing, because there are various invoice formats with respect to metadata and you often encounter with several unstructured and non-uniformed data.

As the first step, onVision Invoice Extraction product uses a mixation of OCR and ICR to recognize contents of invoice and extract data with a high level of accuracy. Following this step, machine learning procedure begin to show off its abilities. Each line item of the invoice is analyzed and interpreted by AI. Based on confidince score rating and spatial referencing method, data validation/correction is finalized.

 

5 Benefits of Using Cognitive Data Capture for Invoice Processing

  • Traditional OCR tools can solve some basic problems of invoice processing, nevertheless OCR needs rules and templates to work properly. This means that a human operator needs to define rules and templates for each new invoice format. On the contrary, cognitive data capture is document-agnostic and can learn and operate by itself without any supervision.
  • Automation of invoice processing through cognitive data capturing reduces costs (time, money, energy) and enhances efficiency of the relevant business process.
  • Increased level of control and transperancy is another significant benefit. You can easily prevent fraud, duplicates or any possible malicious attempt, by using cognitive data capture for invoice processing.
  • When you automate invoice processing by cognitive data capture, it works as a catalyst for other enterprise software solutions and business processes. Supply chain management, customer relations will benefit and your ERP system will perform much better.
  • Digitization level of a company depends on the ratio of its paperless and touch-free processes. If you aim at increasing digitization level of company, cognitive data capture is your best servant.

Learn about onVision Invoice Extraction product.

Invoice processing handled by accounts payable department in a company is one of the most time-consuming business functions, which also needs to be performed with high accuracy. Since invoice processing consists of consecutive steps such as; data entry, approvals, transferring to financial system, recording & archiving, payment etc. many companies prefer to automate invoice processing in order to save time and streamline their workflows.

Transforming Invoice Processing

Let’s think about steps of traditional/manual invoice processing and see how to transform these time consuming, repeating steps into a digitalized business process.

  1. The first step of invoice processing is the reception of invoices, which come in a variety of formats. Accounts payable (AP) team needs to handle data entry for all of these different invoice types. In contrary, automated invoice processing is able to extract every type of invoice data in a blink of an eye.

 

  1. Following data entry, invoices are supposed to be distributed for review and approval. If you use paper documents or even Excel sheets or PDFs throughout this step, it is very likely to come up with delays and errors. Automated invoice processing prevents these undesired outcomes by submitting invoice data automatically to your ERP or accounting software.

 

  1. Payment and audition as final stages are also performed effortlessly in automated invoice processing. AP team can anytime reach invoice data easily and quickly, and it is possible to integrate invoice automation with almost every enterprise software solution.

 

 Benefits Of Automated Invoice Processing 

 

  • When you use invoice automation tools, you add more control to and speed up your accounts payable operations. Starting from data entry, human errors will diminish drastically and you will save up to 90% of the time spending for traditional invoice processing.
  • Another significant benefit of invoice automation is increased level of transparency and auditability.
  • One of the most overlooked benefit of invoice automation is increasing data quality and the enhanced ability of acquiring insights.
  • Last but not least, employer productivity and satisfaction will get on top by invoice automation.

Digital transformation has been around almost for two decades, however there is still lots to do to overcome devastating paper work and manual document processing.  Main reason which lays beneath the fact that document processing (invoice processing, banking and financial document processing, legal document processing etc.) couldn’t reach to a higher level of digitalization is the difficulty of transforming contents of custom and arbitrary documents to structured, standardized data.

According to a recent survey, 92% of business leaders agree that companies need to enable process automation technologies. OCR (optical character recognition) technology plays a vital role in this story. It is still the best method to turn print outs into consistent digital data, which can be processed by computers. And the good news is OCR technology is improving constantly. Nevertheless, companies need more complex, flexible and yet accurate solutions than OCR in order to fulfill their challenging document management and digitalization needs.

How Does Intelligent Document Processing Work? 

 

Think about all of these various types of documents, forms, e-mail attachments, PDFs, invoices, receipts, work orders, bank and insurance statements etc. Tones of valuable data are stored in these documents, yet it needs a great deal of time and effort to reach and use them meaningfully.

 

Intelligent document processing (IDP) can be defined as a bunch of solutions come together to transform unstructured data into usable data and finally to create smooth, productive and cost-effective work flows. Most of IDP tools can be easily integrated with enterprise solutions such as ERP, CRM and DMS.

Components of IDP framework are:

  • Data capture & classification: OCR, NLP
  • Data extraction & interpretation: Deep learning, machine learning
  • Data validation & automation: AI, RPA

What Are the Benefits of Intelligent Document Processing?

 

When you run an IDP platform your business gets into a total boost. Typical and obvious benefits of IDP are:

  • Time and cost savings
  • User friendly processes and efficiency
  • Data accuracy & security uplift
  • Higher satisfaction of employers and customers
  • High quality internal project management

These benefits can be designed for a high variety of use cases in a flexible manner. One of the best assets of IDP is this flexibility, which is built on different levels of technology. For example, a medium sized exportation company can limit the solution for scanning invoices and extract invoice data to transfer to concerning parties in seconds. Besides, a large international enterprise would run AI based intelligent document processing in a multi lingual environment. And also can track, interpret and create each business process through robotic process automation (RPA) integration.