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IDP Showcase recording

A Conversation with Element22

It is estimated that 80% of the world’s data is unstructured. Unstructured data cannot be easily sorted and labeled, and the data points you are looking for can be buried within invoices, contracts, emails, reports, and other documents. Because manually capturing unstructured data from these documents has proven time consuming and tedious, Automation Hero’s intelligent document processing (IDP)  technology has proven a natural solution for extracting unstructured data and turning it into useful, actionable data.

While the uses for extracting unstructured data are countless, Automation Hero’s partner Element22 has found a use for it in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting and compliance. Many of the data points that financial institutions and investors look for when evaluating a company’s ESG are found on its website or in its annual report in formats that are not easy to find. Element22 has turned to IDP to read the documents, extract the data, and input into its own platform to compile ESG-related data for a given company.

June 28, 2022, Automation Hero’s Global VP of Sales, Matt Sturges, led a fireside chat with Mark Davies, Parter at Element22 as part of the 2nd Annual IDP Solutions Showcase. They discussed the importance of ESG reporting, and why Element22 relies on Automation Hero’s technology  for extracting unstructured data to be used in ESG reports. 

The following is a recording of the discussion, which includes a demo of Element22’s solution:

Please contact Automation Hero or Element22 to continue the discussion about IDP and ESG reporting.

Business as usual no longer works — especially in supply chain management. Procurement and logistics teams need new tools to keep up with labor and material shortages, route disruption, and record-breaking demand.

AI and intelligent automation are helping burdened supply chain managers not only overcome these challenges but also thrive in the Industry 4.0 era.

In our new e-book, “Remapping the supply chain: How AI helps supply chain and procurement teams stay agile in times of chaos,” you’ll learn:

• How relying only on legacy ERP systems could hold your company back
• How AI-powered data extraction streamlines document processing — including paper
• How to analyze historical data to find new solutions
• What to look for in an intelligent automation platform for supply chain management

In this logistics case study learn how the courier, parcel, and express mail division of a large logistics company worked with Automation Hero to help improve its customer experience around price quote requests with the help of intelligent data recognition. 

The problem: the logistics company was receiving price quote requests through a variety of methods and channels such as email, personal notes, fax, and phone. Workers were responding to such requests individually and manually, which took hours away from more critical, high-value work. 

Another problem: the structure and information level of these customer requests varied widely. For example, if a customer was requesting the price for sending a package from Frankfurt to Hamburg, sometimes the request included the price of the package, sometimes not. And, simply determining how to respond to a customer took so long that customers grew impatient, or they got angry that their request never got a response at all. The long wait times resulted in many negative customer experiences and missed business opportunities. 

Automation Hero used the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in its Hero_Flow platform to create two AI models that solved the company’s problems.

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

Intelligent document processing (IDP) solutions enable the transformation of documents containing unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data into digital assets quickly and accurately. IDP solutions use artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and deep learning to improve data extraction accuracy and enable faster processing.

Over the last decade or so, there’s been a growing need to increase the accuracy of optical character recognition (OCR). Several vendors experimented with a combination of Python code and OCR in what was termed “intelligent OCR.” While data extraction accuracy increased between 5 and 10%, the results still did not meet the requirements of IT, automation centers of excellence (CoE), and process leaders.

However, thanks to significant investments in AI, ML, NLP, and deep learning, IDP solutions are able to go beyond intelligent OCR and provide several tangible advantages:

1. Even with relatively poor-quality documents and scanners, IDP solutions can deliver greater accuracy in data extraction than legacy OCR tools can.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Decision-makers will want to determine whether an IDP solution is a refurbished intelligent OCR tool or a dedicated product built from the ground up to meet 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.

This is the second 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.

The financial services industry has undergone a digital transformation — and the mortgage sector is next. Consumers are gravitating to providers offering streamlined applications and near-instant processing times — something only technology-first companies can offer with intelligent process automation, optical character recognition (OCR) and artificial intelligence.

In our new e-book, “Join the digital mortgage revolution: How OCR and advanced AI can save legacy lenders,” you’ll learn:

• What you can do to cut approval times
• How to future-proof your company with automation
• The differences between legacy automation tech and true AI
• Why digital transformation is easier than you think

Benchmarking Automation Hero, ABBYY, and Rossum AI-based platforms for invoice processing

With a myriad of vendors touting competitive AI capabilities, it’s critical for organizations to evaluate success based on actual performance numbers. As such, we evaluated Automation Hero against two prominent AI-based invoice processing solutions – ABBYY and Rossum.

Automation Hero’s native AI solution outperformed both alternatives by approximately 60% and 100% respectively.

Out-of-the-box processing

To test the robustness of each tool’s AI we used publicly available hotel receipts that accurately resemble invoice document information. Below are just some of the types of information processed:

• Name
• Address / Country
• Confirmation Number
• Charges
• Reference numbers

To keep neutrality no AI models were introduced to previous data or information that would allow recognition or adjustments. This data can usually be divided into 3 categories and you can checkout our benchmark below to see how Automation Hero outperformed the competition in each one. Making it, if not the most one of the most accurate AI platforms on the market to date:

• Global average (Included headers and line items)
• Header average
• Line item average

If you want to know how our platform can improve your invoice processing experience get in touch to request a demo.

RPA alone has restricted capabilities. It performs one action repeatedly without considering nuances or exceptions. For example, if an RPA system was programmed to sort red and blue balls, it would be unable to react in the case of a yellow ball. It’s only able to perform automations within its predefined process.

RPA automations must have these process programmed. They don’t learn or adapt to different workflows, making it impossible to perform complex, human-like tasks on their own.

However, when you add AI to RPA, the optimization possibilities are endless. This powerful combination is called intelligent process automation (IPA), which is a superior alternative to RPA.

Continue reading below to check out five intelligent process automation use cases across five industries.

Intelligent process automation platform among top technologies for sales organizations

SAN FRANCISCO and BERLIN, June 4, 2019 – In less than two years in the market, Automation Hero has been included in Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Sales Technologies 2019 report. Its revolutionary intelligent process automation platform (IPA) combines robotic process automation (RPA) with artificial intelligence (AI) to automate mundane processes and common customer requests while producing data-driven insights to augment employee decision making.

The platform benefits the enterprise across departments but has seen exceptional success in the sales organization due to the high cost of inefficient sales processes. According to Gartner, “Organizations need to rely on forward-thinking providers to fuel their digital transformations and move the needle from reaction to innovation.”

Perfectly optimized for sales

Automation Hero benefits application leaders supporting sales technology investments by intelligently automating repetitive and manual business processes, freeing up employees to impact the bottom line.

According to Salesforce, sales reps spend 64 percent of their time on non-selling tasks with administrative tasks alone taking up 25 percent. CRM data entry is an example of a necessary, but costly process. According to Introhive, CRM users spend 5.5 hours each week on activities and contacts that cost companies $13,200 every year per sales rep; which can add up to millions of dollars each year for large sales organizations. Automation Hero customers in financial services, telecommunications and travel and tourism have cited ROIs in the hundreds of millions by saving each employee up to one hour per day.

Automation Hero tackles repetitive tasks through its simplified user interface in the form of a proactive and adaptive augmented intelligence assistant leveraged by sales representatives. The platform also allows administrators to easily point-and-click together powerful and highly customized automations in a no-coding environment. More than 50 connectors and a custom plugin API ensures legacy compatibility and integration with even the most complex IT systems.

RPA + AI

The startup is challenging the RPA space by taking an AI and data-centric approach. Current RPA technology was architected over a decade ago and is limited to automating simple, repetitive, rule-based click robots. Intelligence, data integration, processing and machine learning are added as an afterthought, making current technological offerings limited to simple tasks.

Automation Hero tackles the problem with a completely new approach. It creates an intelligence fabric by running highly scalable, distributed automation flows that weave together click robots, structured and unstructured data sources, deep learning, data processing and the human workforce that creates an operating system for the modern enterprise.

Gartner Cool Vendors in Sales Technologies, Ilona Hansen, Melissa Hilbert, Theodore Travis, Adnan Zijadic, 16 May 2019

Gartner Disclaimer: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Insurance claims can be printed forms, handwritten doctor’s notes, or photos, leading to confusion for claims management specialists. Automation solves this confusion, improves the customer experience and increases operational efficiency.

Hear from Eoin Grace, Deputy Head of IT at the leading insurance company, Markerstudy, in a Q&A with Automation Hero Insurance Advisor, Martin Bartetzko and Sales Director, Irina Berdisa.

They will explore how:

• Markerstudy embarked on their automation journey from traditional RPA to intelligent automation
• Intelligent automation has significantly helped with the end-to-end process of claims management, specifically around handwritten documents and verification
• Markerstudy has lowered its attrition rate by automating day-to-day work and providing higher value-add activities for employees

Automation is taking the business world by storm. But oftentimes, especially in utilities, it’s often a disjointed approach. Siloed departments, data, and tools contribute to mediocre results and prevent companies from advancing their automation strategies with higher ROI. 

Join HEXstream and Automation Hero as we discuss the future of the utilities industry and the impact of intelligent automation whether you’re just getting started or looking to expand. 

In this webinar you’ll learn:

• What is RPA, intelligent automation and hyperautomation and how they apply to the utilities industry
• Where organizations are being slowed down and obstacles that often come up
• Example applications of process automation, ranging from easy-to-implement to more complex