Document Management in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation

Digital document management for company business processes is no longer an option but a necessity. The good thing is that the market of software technologies offers a wide range of document management software (DMS) systems that cover the needs of small organizations to enterprises. This, in its turn, forms a demand for big data analysis, which is handled by Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics platforms.

To finish it with abbreviations, both DMS and BI tools tend to use state-of-the-art technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Let’s see how using all these systems can make our work more efficient.

How DMS Has Changed with the Rise of AI, RPA, and Cloud Architecture

With AI, RPA and cloud architecture evolving, DMS systems elevated to a new level. An example of AI teaming up with DMS is smart scanner apps that remove shadows from scanned paper documents.

As a result, a digital copy of high quality is available for further actions. It can be easily converted into another format like PDF, edited and even made fillable with the help of another AI technology called OCR (optical character recognition). Once the form is ready, it is pushed to document management workflow for data collection, eSigning, sharing between company members and clients.

It’s worth mentioning that workflow automation is a required component for DMS. It implies creation of an automated process for tasks and documents that are routed between the participants of the business process as per configured rules. Once all the tasks are completed, the corresponding data automatically goes to the cloud storage, is sent via email, and gets included into reporting and analysis.

After, DMS is imposed with one more requirement that is integration with a BI platform. In particular, the integration should ensure automated extraction of the data collected with forms managed in DMS, and its transfer to a BI tool for further reporting and analysis. Varying in pricing and functionality, all BI platforms offer data reports that can be filtered, visualized, analyzed and shared with the team and stakeholders.

To get an idea of a BI platform, check the main market players like Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Qlik, Domo, Business Intelligence by SAP, etc.

A good example of RPA at this stage would be PowerBI Robots that allow users to schedule automatic screenshots of their reports and dashboards and send them via email or to a file system or SharePoint server.

Benefits Intelligent Document Automation Can Bring

Reasons to adopt smart document management workflows together with BI platforms are numerous and depend on the company type, service and operational tasks. The initial goal is typically to save time and reduce paper use, though you can also get plenty of other benefits.

Digitize document turnover, eliminate lost/damaged documents and illegible handwriting, reduce printing costs and hours required for manual filing and audit preparation.
Streamline collaboration between office-based and field team members.
Collect data offline that is vital for teams working on remote sites without a regular internet connection.
Ensure the transparency and unanimity of the document flow.
Make the project management process as efficient as possible for all parties.
Store all documents in a digital format within one centrally-accessible platform.
Ensure security and backup of sensitive data.

Benefits of Adopting a BI and Analytics Platform

Ability to check what is going on the project.
Ability for local sites to immediately identify and ﬁx issues.
Access to granular data, for analyzing and comparing multiple sites in the ﬁeld.
Ability to identify trends to optimize eﬃciency.
Aggregation of all forms for resource planning.
Revealing hidden bottlenecks, defects and missing information.
Reporting for compliance with regulations (e.g. OSHA)

Keep in mind though that all these benefits can be achieved provided you use a document management tool and BI platform that are designed to solve your particular business problems. It’s also important that the tools you choose not only possess useful functionality but go along with a team of experts who can guide you through the onboarding process and provide further support whenever you may need it.

Final Thoughts

Documents are important for any business. How efficiently you extract valuable data from them and further process it determines the overall operational success.

A combo of an intelligent document management system and BI tools creates a balance between data collection and processing, which lets you share insights and make well-informed decisions faster. This, in its turn, helps businesses design better project solutions, generate more revenue, and stay ahead of competition.

Want to know how your organization can benefit from intelligent document automation?

Olga Zakharova

Product Manager at Fluix