Document Automation Using Straight Through Processing

Document Automation Using Straight Through Processing

(Last Updated On: May 11, 2022)

We live in a fast-paced, on-demand world where we want almost everything to happen instantaneously. Be it calculations or searching a document on desktop or on drive, we want such activities to happen in no time. Business processes, over the period of time, have evolved immensely and have been able to automate many such operational processes. Straight-Through Processing is one such aspect that provides the much required edge to end-to-end document processing automation.

Intelligent document automation is the need of the hour as digitization of the physical documents promises to help businesses achieve non-linear growth. Reduced paper clutter on your desks will help increase the ability to focus on core aspects of business and fill the industry gaps by outsourcing mundane tasks such as data entry and filing invoices and receipts. Straight-Through Processing adds an additional level of intelligence to the document process wherein documents that match certain criteria are automatically processed without any human intervention.

Before we deep dive into document automation and Straight-Through Processing even further, let us first understand the issues with existing document processing methods.

When it comes to processing documents manually, challenges are plenty. Here are some of the many challenges of processing documents without any automation:

High Error Rates:

Documents that are processed manually, may contain a lot of errors as these documents are manually entered into the system one by one. Invoices and receipts have much crucial information that has to be highly accurate such as unique document numbers, total billing amount, item descriptions and so on. If these details are not accurately added to the system, it may lead to many issues with vendors and other partners.

Accuracy can be only improved through the adoption of appropriate technology and organizations that do adopt such automation solutions, will reduce their margin of error drastically.

Operational Inefficiencies:

Various types of operational inefficiencies can occur if there is no automation in place for processing documents. Inefficiencies such as sending the invoices or receipts on time, payments being processed without final check of documents, untimely coordination between accounts department and other departments, etc. Such management related issues can slow down the growth of the business for the organization at large.

Backlogs:

One of the key issues of not having document automation is the issue of clearing documents on time. Since documents are processed manually, the time taken to clear each and every document is quite high. And if a peak business season arrives, then the backlogs will keep on increasing. This becomes a direct hurdle for business growth. Organizations are not able to scale up in such scenarios as they are not able to process documents that they have in their stockpile currently.

Lack of Business Focus:

As mentioned above, backlogs and operational inefficiencies can occur if there is no document automation in place. Apart from that, for organizations to increase their revenues, they need to think of new avenues that they can focus on and scale up in. But such critical thinking may not take place if the firm is struggling to service the existing clientele due to lapses in the documentation.

It, therefore, becomes highly important for organizations to outsource or automate document-related activities if they are looking to increase their service offerings.

Underutilisation of Human Resources:

Processing documents manually is a mundane and monotonous task. Such tasks may also lead to a decrease in employee morale over a period of time if there are dedicated personnel performing such activities on daily basis.

Critical thinking and ways to use human resources to their full potential should always be an aim for a firm and therefore, such activities should be considered for automation. An increase in turnover rate due to a decrease in employee morale may not be the most suitable way for an organization to progress.

Automating Businesses with Straight through processing (STP)

Intelligent Document Process (IDP) is the way forward to automate document driven processes. Using advanced AI-driven technology that can detect and extract information intelligently, even from handwritten documents, will drastically reduce the overall processing time for documents and improve operational efficiency.

Straight Through Processing adds an additional level of maturity when it comes to processing documents. OCR technology can help extract information accurately and contextual AI can help to capture information from any and all kinds of invoice or receipt templates.

But what Straight Through Processing really does is that it enables end-to-end automation for documents that match certain data validation criteria. This removes/minimizes the need for human intervention and the information from the documents is stored on the cloud directly.

Straight Through Processing enables segregation of information that match the unique set of criteria set by the organization and based on the set criteria, information from documents is extracted, processed and stored automatically.

Document Classification, Data Extraction based on WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) principle and Postprocessing (Data Validation and Data Transformation) are the three main crucial stages of document automation.  Once the extracted information is matched with the set criteria, Straight Through Processing takes place. KlearStack AI can directly store information on QuickBooks or SAP. If the KlearStack API is used, then the information can be stored on any software or tool.

Conclusion

KlearStack AI can enable complete automation for several types of documents. Our self-learning AI-driven technology will ensure that data is not only accurately extracted but also contextually understand the document and fill in the information appropriately. If you would like to know more about our solutions, click here and connect with us.

Ashutosh Saitwal
Ashutosh Saitwal
www.klearstack.com/

Ashutosh is the founder and director of the award winning KlearStack AI platform. You can catch him speaking at NASSCOM events around the world where he speaks and is an evangelist for RPA, AI, Machine Learning and Intelligent Document Processing.