GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) Solutionsv3.0

1. Executive Summary

Intelligent document processing (IDP) is supported by advanced technologies like optical character recognition (OCR) for data digitization, natural language processing (NLP) for understanding and categorizing text, and AI/ML for continuous improvement in data processing accuracy. With significant investments in AI, ML, NLP, and deep learning over the last few years, IDP solutions go beyond intelligent OCR and provide several tangible advantages:

• Even with relatively poor quality documents and scanners, IDP solutions can deliver greater accuracy in data extraction than legacy OCR tools can.
• The availability of AI/ML/NLP capabilities in IDP ensures that the strike rate in processing data is significantly higher than with legacy OCR tools.
• IDP tools, in principle, are supposed to function with minimal training in terms of minor template changes, whereas with OCR, this type of flexibility doesn’t exist.

IDP solutions offering a template-free approach can be trained on new document types and layouts using a relatively limited number of sample documents, and such solutions will usually deliver a greater value at a lower cost of ownership.

IDP is flexible and scalable, making it beneficial to a variety of industries such as finance, healthcare, legal, and government. It streamlines operations, reduces the need for manual processing, enhances customer service, and facilitates quicker and more precise decision-making.

Successful IDP deployment involves identifying business requirements and use cases, evaluating the types of data to be processed, and understanding a product’s capabilities for processing, scalability, security, and compliance. This helps to ensure the solution can integrate seamlessly with existing systems to maximize efficiency, accuracy, data integrity, and productivity.

Decision-makers will want to determine whether an IDP solution meets the requirements of complex use cases. IDP solutions should be adopted as part of a broader enterprise automation strategy that uses suitable software products to meet various task, process, and document automation requirements.

Business Imperative
Organizations are inundated with reams of documents and mountains of data from a variety of sources. IDP solutions enable the transformation of documents (PDFs, emails, invoices, paper documents, and so on) containing unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data into digital assets quickly and accurately. IDP solutions use AI/ML, NLP, and deep learning capabilities to improve data extraction accuracy and enable faster processing.

Sector Adoption Score
To help executives and decision-makers assess the potential impact and value of an IDP solution deployment to the business, this GigaOm Key Criteria report provides a structured assessment of the sector across five factors: benefit, maturity, urgency, impact, and effort. By scoring each factor based on how strongly it compels or deters adoption of an IDP solution, we provide an overall Sector Adoption Score (Figure 1) of 4.6 out of 5, with 5 indicating the strongest possible recommendation to adopt. This indicates that an IDP solution is a very credible candidate for deployment and worthy of thoughtful consideration.

The factors contributing to the Sector Adoption Score for IDP are explained in more detail in the Sector Brief section that follows.

Figure 1. Sector Adoption Score for IDP

This is the third year that GigaOm has reported on the IDP space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Key Criteria report highlights the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) for selecting an effective IDP solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that excel in those decision criteria. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading IDP offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.