Intelligent Data Capture: Beyond Invoice Processing
You have probably read many articles espousing the benefits of technology that automates the capture of data from paper-based documents and seamlessly integrates that data with business application software. In fact, according to a recent study by Harvey Spencer and Associates, the data capture software market is approaching $1 billion in size, with 38% of the market focused on transaction and process management applications often referred to as intelligent data capture solutions. Unlike structured forms processing solutions that rely on the use of templates to capture and recognize data on fixed format forms, these include the capabilities to recognize mixed groups of semi-structured documents.
Tackling complex documents: While use of these solutions has been extremely effective for processing invoices, explanations of benefits, claims forms, etc., we see a greater opportunity to tackle even more complex documents. In particular, as optical character recognition (OCR) technologies continue to improve recognition rates and data capture vendors expand their extraction capabilities—especially the ability to accurately extract information from documents hundreds of pages in length, with complex tables of information spanning multiple pages—the ability to process complex documents, such as sales orders, is quickly becoming a reality.
The challenges of sales order processing: Generally, sales orders come in to an organization through a variety of channels: phone, fax and mail. Customer service representatives (CSRs) process the phone orders, entering them directly into the sales order processing system. However, if an order is faxed or mailed, a CSR typically must manually enter the required fields. For many large corporations, it's not uncommon for sales orders to be dozens of pages in length with hundreds of discrete items that must be entered. Since sales orders come in a variety of formats and can be changed at will by customers, sales order processing can be challenging the system is labor intensive, tedious, often prone to error and takes the CSR away from what should be his or her primary focus—delivering customer service.
Applying intelligent data capture to sales order processing: Let's take a look at how a data capture solution can automate the sales order process. First, documents are imported into the system from a file server. Files are converted to text using OCR, and pre-processing features automatically correct and enhance the images—especially needed for low-resolution documents such as faxes. Some solutions have built-in classification capabilities and can sort documents by type, eliminating the need for pre-sorting batches in the mailroom or during scanning. The extraction phase applies intelligence to accurately locate and "extract" fields of data from the sales order. In this step, validation routines are typically added to ensure that data is correct before passing it through the workflow.
Virtually all data capture solutions include the ability to present the image of the sales order along with the extracted fields to a verifier for further review. This occurs when the system detects issues with the automated extraction, such as when the OCR quality is poor. Only those documents with questionable results must be verified.
Several solutions include the ability to train the system during production processing. As the verifier makes corrections, the system keeps track of the corrections and then attempts to apply what it has learned to future documents that it processes.
Take caution. While this "learning" capability has been effective for simple document layouts in which only header data (PO number, PO date, vendor name, etc.) is extracted, very few data capture solutions have a proven approach to applying learning techniques to extraction of multi-page tables or tables with rows spanning multiple lines.At the end of the process, classification values and field data can be exported into virtually any back-end system.
Sales order processing—reaping the benefits: By using a data capture solution to automate the sales order process, organizations can eliminate resource-intensive manual data entry, accelerate time to get a new order into the system, handle more orders in less time, and significantly reduce the cost to process each order—yielding bottom-line cost savings and a significant return on investment. Eliminating errors helps organizations avoid delayed shipments and eliminate costly mis-shipments. One of the most important benefits is the ability to refocus CSRs to their primary task, delivering quality customer service such as proactively providing order status information, making timely order processing adjustments and ensuring delivery of expedited shipments.
Evaluating Data Capture Solutions
Deploying an intelligent data capture solution to augment an organization's sales order process can provide a 40%-80% savings in time and costs. When evaluating solutions, please consider the following:
- How quickly can the system be operational?
- How much additional effort is required to maintain the system for optimal results?
- Can it process complex and multi-lingual documents?
- How simple is it to "teach" the system? Does it include learning how to extract line item detail?
- Does the system offer the capability to identify and validate order information against back-end systems?
For more information on SER and how we can solve your data capture challenges, contact us at 800.274.5676 or at Ser Solutions, Inc,