What Is Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)?

The river of documents that flow into a business can become a flood, making it increasingly difficult to pull high-quality data out of the raging rapids and get it where it needs to go. To stay competitive now and into the future, businesses need to simplify document-intensive processes and take advantage of new technologies that amplify productivity.

This is where Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) software fits into the enterprise technology stack. IDP software leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate document and data processing workflows, reduce repetitive manual tasks, improve accuracy, and significantly increase business productivity. IDP sits at the intersection of advanced data capture and business process automation.

IDP solutions use advanced technologies such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), and machine learning (ML) to automatically classify, extract, and validate data from documents such as invoices, purchase orders, and contracts.

IDP has become increasingly important in today's business landscape, as organizations face growing pressure to quickly process documents of various types from various sources, with data accuracy and compliance top of mind.

Successful IDP solutions not only increase business efficiency but also reduce costs associated with manual workflows and human error correction. As tools of efficiency, IDP solutions should be easy to use and easy to integrate with other enterprise applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems.