Documents Need Robots Too – The Missing Piece of the Process Automation Puzzle

As organizations roll out their robotic process automation (RPA) initiatives, they frequently encounter efficiency challenges with receiving and processing documents and the information contained in them.

As experts in both RPA and cognitive document automation (CDA), we’ve launched a “buy a robot, get OCR for free” promotion to enable organizations like yours to experience the combined power of CDA and RPA. Before I tell you more about this exciting offer, let’s explore why RPA and CDA are both necessary for organizations like yours to maximize the cost and productivity impact of your task automation project.

RPA + CDA = Strong ROI

RPA accelerates the reliable acquisition, understanding and integration of information from legacy, third-party and web-based systems, so your business processes execute faster. But what about information from unstructured information sources, such as documents, emails and attachments, etc.? CDA uses artificial intelligence (AI) and OCR to automate the acquisition, understanding, and integration of documents needed in business processes. CDA extends the capability of RPA, allowing you to automate more and more of your processing.

Organizations with document-centric robotic processes can leverage CDA to significantly reduce labor costs, boost productivity and efficiency, accelerate business processes, and better engage and empower customers. CDA automates the processing of unstructured data contained in documents and emails―this means understanding what the document or email is about, what information it contains, extracting that information, and sending it to the right place.

RPA, on the other hand, automates repetitive manual tasks that interact with websites and applications, trigger responses and communicate with systems. Together, RPA and CDA automate both electronic data capture and document capture. Translation: reduced operating costs and increased productivity of existing staff, and ultimately, enhanced ROI and accelerated investment payback.

Related: The Connection Between Information Capture and Artificial Intelligence

CDA Must-Haves

What high-level capabilities does CDA deliver? And what should you look for when evaluating CDA solutions? Here is a “must have” list:

True cognitive document automation should enable your organization to

• Create digital images from documents received or imported from multiple sources (mobile, email, MFPs, web, fax, scanners, files/folders, XML/EDI and web services)
• Capture documents from back office data centers, front offices, remote offices or directly from customers
• Perform image perfection of scanned and imported documents, making them process ready
• Automatically classify and separate documents to determine what they are and where they should go
• Automatically OCR, extract and validate data from documents, automating manual data entry tasks – including support for machine print, handprint, cursive, barcodes, bubbles, checkboxes, tables and mailing addresses
• Intelligently automate any document type (i.e., invoices, orders, enrollment and claim forms, mailroom documents, mortgages, contracts, correspondence and bank checks)
• Leverage AI-based machine learning technologies to save time in initial configuration and ongoing maintenance
• Employ efficient user interfaces for exception handling that deliver rapid payback
• Perform PDF image+text generation and advanced PDF file compression
• Deliver images and associated data to repositories and applications via export connectors
• Manage pre-configured invoice extraction across multiple countries and currencies

CDA should operate on any type of unstructured information to enable your robots to handle sales orders, enrollment forms, claims, contracts, correspondence – in fact any document of importance to any business process. However, invoice extraction is one of the most common CDA use cases. Accordingly, Kofax CDA delivers a pre-configured capability, based on best practice methods, to automatically OCR and extract data from invoices across multiple countries and currencies. Just enter field data for a few samples of a supplier invoice, and the system applies AI to machine learn and automatically recognize that invoice’s fields in the future.

Buy a Robot, Get OCR for Free

So, how can you check out the real-world benefits of CDA for yourself?

For a limited time, all customers ordering a Kapow RPA production robot or bundle have the option to receive a Kofax CDA starter package―at no additional license charge.

With the CDA starter package, you can:

• Capture documents from common engagement channels
• Automatically classify and separate the documents
• Automatically OCR, extract and validate document data
• Export or integrate to backend systems and processes
• Take advantage of pre-configured invoice extraction for U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and Spain invoices, so you can start extracting invoice data on day 1.

The CDA starter package includes:

• 100,000 pages per year of document capture/export volume
• 10,000 pages per year of document classify/extract volume, including pre-configured invoice extraction

Automating document processing has never been easier

We are the only single-source vendor to offer both RPA and market-leading CDA, for a complete AI-based intelligent automation solution. Kofax was just rated #1 in enterprise capture market share by IDC in their July 2018 market share report.* Forrester agreed when they rated Kofax the “off the charts” leader in their 2012 multichannel capture wave report.

Act now to take advantage of this offer.