PluggedIN: Intelligent Document Processing

Intelligent Document Processing: The Present and Future of Automated Information Management Q3 2021

IDP at Exela: Current Capabilities and Future Vision

Technology tools like OpenBox and Digital Mailroom are an important and valuable step along the path from paper-based work to fully digital solutions. When combined with other add-ons and additional services, efficiencies are greatly enhanced and valuable synergies become possible. For example, Digital Mailroom’s OCR and ICR technology enables features such as advanced auto-classification and routing, a check deposit workflow, PO-system integrations for streamlined invoice processing, auto-redaction capabilities for sensitive content, and more. It also connects with Exela’s DrySign e-signature platform for streamlined intake and execution of documents requiring a signature. Digital Mailroom and systems like it are essentially proto-Intelligent Document Processing systems. These systems offer huge value in today’s business environment, but the full complement of IDP technology components that have recently been developed offer even more – and the future potential of these solutions is truly enormous.

Exela has been offering digital transformation solutions since long before Intelligent Document Processing became a recognizable category of work. The roots of our technology trace back to the earliest days of image processing, beginning in the early 1980’s. Much has changed since then, other than Exela’s commitment to industry-leading document imaging through our IntelliScan suite of high-speed scanning platforms and our time-tested downstream information management solutions. The predecessors of the highly configurable, multi- use IntelliScan platforms were first implemented to process checks and remittance documentation. Today, IntelliScan has evolved into one of the world’s fastest high-volume scanning platforms capable of high-resolution scanning for nearly every document type imaginable.

The IntelliScan Raptor is a smaller "table-top" scanning system designed to be an affordable and highly versatile multi-function machine.

A Complete IDP Solution

While thescanningstepofdigital transformationmayonly turnapieceofpaper intoan image, it lays thegroundwork for the process of turning inert documents into dynamic digital assets . When combinedwith Exela’sOCR, ICR, MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition), or Barcode Recognition technologies, the IntelliScan platform becomes a more complete document digitization and classification platform, with auto-sorting capabilities.

TheIDPtechnologythatExelaofferspicksuprightwhere Digital Mailroom leaves off to provide a comprehensive solutioncoveringphysical anddigital document intake, processing, classification, data extraction, validation, and enrichment, content indexing and summarization, and integration with downstream systems. Leveraging a growing model library of neural network classifiers that have, on average, been trained on 60,000 images, as well as machine learning-based parsers and validation modules, over 20 million transactions are currently being processed per month. Offered as an on-demand, cloud-hosted capture and processing service, or through a low- or no- code SaaS model (depending on the user’s level of sophistication), IDP can make a notable impact in all industries. At Exela, it is already providing significant value in the healthcare, insurance, legal, and public sectors. In one recent deployment, a major insurance company replaced their standard, rule-based OCR claims processing system with Exela’s scalable neural network-based document classification engine to achieve dramatic improvements in accuracy and processing speed.

The Next Steps

The next step in the chain from digitization to fully automated information management was Exela’s OpenBox software, which has been a valuable platform for our company for years. Capable of processing numerous media types frommultiple input channels, and built with full-featured automatic image import for more than 150 image formats, OpenBox was created to convert document packages into organized, indexed repositories. The enhanced document classification capability OpenBox provides is powered by a combination of classification engines, based on machine learning through various identification models. These models include: Self-Learning (training from example documents), Fuzzy Matching (probabilistic determination), Print Type (free-form classification), and Geometric (shape-based identification). With the addition of configurable business rules, cloud and local hosting options, and NIST and STIG-compliant data encryption, OpenBox offers a secure, flexible classification and information management platform. Similar technology forms the foundation of our highly successful Digital Mailroom (DMR) solution, which converts paper mail and other documentation into searchable, shareable, secure digital assets, accessible through the DMR Portal or by a customer’s preferred third-party platform integration.

Existing IDP workflow for live healthcare deployment

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