“I’m not sure we can implement this… the information required is complicated to access, stored in different systems, and our teams often need to request paper documents from other teams…” This is one of the most concerning answers we hear when talking to decision-makers about integrating Xtracta into their company software. Unfortunately, this situation is not uncommon.
The lack of accessibility to relevant documents within organisations and the persistence of analog data (printed, hard copy documents) are key reasons why many businesses don’t have transparency around their data. Furthermore, most organisations have difficulty accessing data trapped in physical and unstructured formats and systems that are out of reach and even sometimes differ in terminology. This creates inconsistencies that make business decision-making incredibly challenging; the information cannot be efficiently processed and transformed into deeper insights as it’s not at their fingertips.
But how can companies solve this? We discuss this here. Let’s explore how intelligent document processing (IDP), using external data sources, and human-aided automated processing can bridge data gaps in an organisation.
The Problem: Silos and Human Error
Today, many businesses still rely primarily on a human workforce to file and enter data into systems. Data entry and processing may be separate from core business operations when extracting data manually. This can make accessing data very challenging. For example, when reviewing data for their operation, staff may need to:
- Open the accounting system or their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
- Review various paper documents (trusting that everything they need was correctly filed).
- Access other systems that provide additional data to validate the information they need to process (such as business numbers, product codes, and ID numbers).
All these steps are time-consuming and fatiguing but necessary for decision-makers to gain a complete picture when making executive decisions. Excluding some of this data could lead to detrimental mistakes and miscalculations, seriously impacting the company.
Inconsistencies are often found when different business units need to be unified and account for varying business logic to ensure consistency in reporting and analytics.
Differing data terminology can also be a problem when business units have varying definitions for data elements or methods to calculate the same KPIs.
Businesses of all sizes find themselves in these situations. They need to be able to access and use relevant information from different sources without being stuck in limbo, waiting for other teams to correspond and make it available.
Technology is Advancing, But These Challenges Aren’t Going Away.
Data processing today is increasingly efficient due to innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in machine learning (ML) applications like optical character recognition (OCR). That said, automation technology cannot handle processing tasks entirely without human input. Human management is still required to do a variety of functions like:
- Configure the platform
- Train algorithms
- Monitor outputs and performance
- Ensure accuracy
- Manage exceptions
These gaps in the data will not go away anytime soon, and the issues that arise from them will be reoccurring. The shortcomings in data quality and completeness mean that organisations’ digital analytics cannot fully leverage the rich information available across the business. A backlog of documents and poor and underutilised data can form a bottleneck in data supply, limiting a company’s ability to perform at its peak.
Is Human-Aided Automated Processing the Answer?
Fully automated processing is the long-term goal; however, the idea of companies giving the wheel to AI is still a long way off. Human-aided automated processing is the greatest near-term solution for organisations looking to optimise their systems.
What does human-aided automated processing look like in a nutshell?
- Seamless integration with business systems
- A mixture of scanned paper and digital
- AI-driven document classification and extraction through intelligent document processing (IDP)
- Human review and approval
So many businesses still rely solely on manual entry, with their valuable information on paper, somewhere in the network, and only accessible to some. Digitising this information and bringing it to a unified cloud-based location with a toolset that allows businesses to visualise and analyse it is crucial to making accurate, data-driven decisions.
Buying Data Capture Tools and Gaining So Much More
Human-aided automation solutions like Xtracta help bridge the data gaps and disparity in business.
When clients integrate Xtracta into their company systems, the most immediate benefit they gain is fast and highly accurate data capture and intelligent document processing. However, this benefit is just the tip of the iceberg. What clients gain when incorporating Xtracta includes:
- Access to rich insights from previously unused data
- Access to external data sources that may help complete or validate information
- Streamlined operations, eliminating backlogs
- Greater transparency across teams
- An innovative advantage over the competition
- Fast decision-making based on highly accurate data
Data Matching for Rich Business Data
Powered by AI and OCR, the Xtracta engine can collect data from multiple data sources and use valuable information to validate or complete missing data when automating the data capture process. Through Xtracta’s data matching capabilities, businesses can make accurate decisions based on clear and complete data.
Data matching is the process of comparing data sets to verify whether they refer to the same entity or if duplicate data already exists within the database. This process is critical for comparing data, identifying patterns, and flagging discrepancies. Furthermore, data matching ensures that clients work with clean and accurate data, offering deeper, richer insights into the company.
To unlock your data potential, get in touch with the team today.
Xtracta’s highly accurate data matching capabilities are ahead of the competition. Get in touch with the team at Xtracta to learn about the benefits integration offers and how it can help your organisation today. Make full use of your business data and improve business processes with Xtracta.
