A major challenge for most businesses in the digital age lies in collecting and converting raw information from countless sources into business intelligence for decision-making. For a long time, relying on manual methods not only causes countless manual data entry issues but also slows down the decision-making process. The solution is business data capture solutions – intelligent technology platforms that use AI to automate data collection, including from complex sources such as documents and images. In this article, DIGI-TEXX will help readers learn about these technologies.
The Challenge of Data Overload in Modern Businesses
Modern businesses are overloaded with data. Business information flows in from many different channels and formats: invoices, contracts, orders, customer records, emails, and even images. Managing and processing this massive volume of data presents serious challenges:
The Cost and Error Problem
The biggest problem is the reliance on manual data entry issues. Employees spend a large portion of their time repetitiously entering data, resulting in high labor costs and significant error rates (typically 1% to 5% of data entered). These errors are not only costly and time-consuming to correct, but can also lead to financial errors, payment delays, and poor decision-making.
Speed and Timeliness
Business owners know that speed is key to doing business. But manual data collection and processing slows down everything from responding to customers to closing the books. Data trapped in paper documents or emails cannot be used in a timely manner to make strategic decisions, reducing the organization’s overall AI workflow efficiency.
Format Complexity
The variety of document formats – from highly structured forms to unstructured documents such as contracts, and especially data embedded in images (e.g., photos of receipts, ID cards) – presents challenges that make data capture complex. For example, manual extraction of image data capture is virtually impossible or prohibitively expensive.
What Are Business Data Capture Solutions?
Business data capture solutions are software systems designed to automate the identification, extraction, and transformation of data from physical and digital sources into structured data, ready for integration into business systems (e.g., ERP, CRM, DMS).
These solutions encompass a comprehensive processing cycle:
- Capture: Automatically receive data from channels (scanners, email, portals, APIs, mobile devices).
- Recognition: Use technologies such as OCR/ICR/OMR to recognize text, handwriting, and marks on documents.
- Extraction: Leverage AI to identify and extract important data fields based on context.
- Validation: Automatically check the validity and accuracy of extracted data (e.g., against existing databases).
- Export: Transfer processed data to end-user business systems.
With the help of AI, modern business data capture solutions now not only extract data but also understand the meaning of the document.
How AI and Automation Enhance Data Capture
Artificial Intelligence is the key factor that makes modern business data capture solutions powerful and different from traditional OCR/Form Processing systems. It is AI that brings intelligence, adaptability and superior accuracy.
- Eliminate Fixed Template Issues: AI with deep learning and natural language processing capabilities helps the system extract data from unstructured documents (e.g., contracts with different layouts) without creating pre-defined templates. This has helped to almost completely eliminate manual data entry issues related to document diversity.
- Enhance AI Workflow Efficiency: AI does more than just extract data; it also integrates document classification and intelligent routing. For example, an email with an invoice will be automatically classified by AI, extract data and trigger an AP approval process immediately. This creates end-to-end AI workflow efficiency, accelerating business processes.
- Enhanced Accuracy: AI models continuously learn from each document processed, improving data extraction accuracy over time. When the system encounters new data or difficult layouts, AI flags it and sends it to a human for validation (Human-in-the-Loop), then learns from that intervention.
- Image Data Capture: AI is the only tool that can efficiently process image data captured from sources such as mobile receipt photos, ID photos, or even video data. AI models can differentiate between backgrounds, brightness, and obstructions to extract hidden text.
Types of Data Capture for Different Business Needs
Business data capture solutions are customized to handle different document types and data formats, meeting the specific needs of each business process.
Document Capture
This is the most common form of data capture, focusing on processing traditional business documents such as contracts, invoices, purchase orders (POs), and shipping documents.
- Goal: Convert static paper or PDF documents into structured data.
- Technology: Use advanced OCR and AI to understand the context of unstructured documents.
- Benefits: Improve AI workflow efficiency in Accounting, Purchasing, and Legal departments.
Form Capture
This form focuses on processing structured or semi-structured forms such as applications, surveys, and tax forms.
- Goal: Extract data from pre-defined or repeating fields.
- Technology: Combine OCR, ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition – for handwriting), and OMR (Optical Mark Recognition – for checkboxes).
- Benefits: Significantly reduce manual data entry issues in Customer Onboarding and HR processes.
Email Capture
Today, emails are an important source of business documents, as they sometimes contain invoices, reports, and customer service requests.
- Goal: Automatically monitor inboxes, classify email content, and extract attachments.
- Technology: NLP to understand email content and AI to classify attachments.
- Benefits: AI models ensure important documents in emails are immediately fed into automation processes (e.g., transferring invoices in attachments to payment processes), improving AI workflow efficiency.
Image Capture
A form of data capture from image files (JPEG, PNG) or photos taken from mobile devices.
- Goal: Extract data from sources other than official documents (e.g., photos of receipts, ID cards, signs).
- Technology: Uses Computer Vision and AI to handle variations in brightness, angle, and noise.
- Benefits: Expands data collection range, enables image data capture from any physical source, supports expense/refund processes, and identity verification.
>>> Read more: What Is Business Process Management (BPM) and Why It Matters
Future Trends in Business Data Capture
The future of business data capture solutions will continue to be shaped by the convergence of AI and other automation technologies, and over the next few years, we’ll look at some of the trends that are likely to occur
- Hyper-Automation and Data Fabric: Business data capture solutions will integrate more deeply with Hyper-automation platforms (combining RPA, BPM, and AI), making data extraction a seamless part of complex business processes. This trend will also connect to the Data Fabric architecture, allowing collected and cleaned data to be used immediately across various analytics applications.
- Focus on Template-less Data: The development of more advanced AI models will help business data capture solutions completely eliminate template dependency, allowing accurate extraction from any new document the first time.
- Enhanced Image Data Capture: Image data capture capabilities will become increasingly sophisticated, including data extraction from 3D images, video, or more complex environmental data sources, expanding the range of applications from receipts to product quality inspection.
- Automated Analytics: The solution goes beyond extraction; the future of AI models will automatically analyze and provide AI document insights as data is collected (e.g., automated contract risk assessment, expense trend analysis from invoices).
Conclusion
Business data capture solutions are at the core of digital transformation, helping organizations convert static information into actionable business intelligence. By leveraging AI to gradually reduce and eventually eliminate manual data entry issues. From complex image data capture processing to enhanced AI workflow efficiency, these solutions not only save costs but also increase the speed and accuracy of every business process. With extensive expertise in business data capture solutions and AI workflow efficiency, DIGI-TEXX is committed to helping your business build a solid data foundation. Contact us today to explore customized automation solutions.
