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Automate Data Capture for Infor ERP

document processing

We have received the order and it is being processed…

confirmation
from Leni

We have received the order and it is being processed…

Ever heard or received a message of this kind? For sure. Everyone who has ordered from Amazon, has also ever received a message about the acceptance of his order. This message is nothing more than the so-called order confirmation (AB). It serves to fix a previously created order or customer order again in writing (by mail, fax or mail). The writing of an order confirmation is not obligatory and is also not bound to a certain form. However, it has become so common that it can be regarded as a rule today.

By sending an order confirmation, misunderstandings can be prevented, as everything can be recorded and checked in writing. In the case of a verbal/telephone order, it can be used as a reassurance. It informs the customer about the current status and gives him more security. And if a dispute should arise, the order confirmation can serve as evidence.

In order for an order confirmation to be valid as a piece of evidence, it should contain the following information:

  • Description and quantity of the goods
  • Price / cost of freight and packaging
  • Date of production and delivery (expected)
  • Regulation on delivery
  • Terms of payment
  • Retention of title / reference to the general terms and conditions of business
  • Contact person / contact details

Of course, just like invoices or orders, order confirmations are among the documents in a company that need to be processed. 

And this is exactly where we come into play. With our DOC² software solution, developed precisely for this area, we help you to process documents in a simple and intelligent way. DOC² is based on an AI swarm intelligence and has the ability to keep learning (machine learning). DOC² is not only able to read header data, but much more.

You want to know what? Do not hesitate to contact us.

We will be happy to make an appointment with you and show you what is possible with DOC².

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confirmation

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Online retail lives on it …

Order
from Leni

Online retail lives on it …

Without any order, online retail cannot survive. But orders are also the order of the day in manufacturing companies or for service providers. Orders are documents that companies either place or receive. But what is meant by “purchase order”? What must be included in a purchase order?  What types are there?

A purchase order refers to an order to a supplier to deliver a specific good

It is likewise a binding declaration of intent by the buyer to purchase goods on the specified terms. Purchase orders are legally binding, meaning that the supplier is obligated to deliver the goods on the agreed terms and the buyer/customer has an obligation to accept and pay in return.

Although a purchase order is not bound to any particular form, it should be clearly written to eliminate errors/misunderstandings.

The following items should be included in a purchase order regardless of the transmission method (letter, fax, mail, electronic): 

  • General data (address of the purchaser and the supplier,..)
  • Reference to the offer
  • order explanation / order number
  • exact information about the ordered goods (price quantity)
  • terms of delivery and payment.
  • if necessary reference to the AGBs

Legally seen (BGB §§ 145 ff) an order is either an application or an acceptance. For example, if you receive an offer from a supplier and then place an order, this is called an acceptance. In this case, the purchase contract is concluded under the conditions stated in the offer.

On the other hand, if an order is placed without a prior offer, it is called a request. In this case, the supplier usually confirms the order by means of an order confirmation, and a purchase contract is then concluded as a result.

In a company, compiling or placing a purchase order is often a routine purchasing task. But purchase orders, just like invoices, are documents that need to be processed. With DOC², we want to support you in exactly this. DOC² is our software solution for intelligent and simple document processing. It is based on KI swarm intelligence, is constantly learning and gives you real added value in the area of document processing. You gain time that you can invest elsewhere. And time, as we all know, is money. 🤑

Want to learn more about how this is possible?

Then don’t hesitate to ask us.

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order

Image credit: Header & Featured image from jannoon028 onFreepik

Comparing pears with apples

Comparing
from Leni

Comparing pears with apples

The market today is littered with offers of various products and services. For companies, that means it’s a constant struggle to stay competitive. Users, on the other hand, are spoiled for choice. It is not always easy to find the right one right away. Especially when it comes to larger investments, it is advisable to take your time and compare offers. There is no question about that. 

However, when comparing, care should be taken not to compare pears with apples.

Let’s take document processing software as an example. 

It is not possible to make a blanket statement: Software is equal to software or document processing is equal to document processing. Document processing in a document management system (“apple”) usually does not have the same capabilities/possibilities as software developed exclusively for document processing (“pear”). You may be thinking: both are for processing data after all. Yes, they are. And yet, one is a pear and the other is an apple. 

With DOC² we have a document processing solution that brings you far more benefits. DOC² uses AI swarm intelligence that allows you to continuously benefit from the experience of other customers, so you don’t have to start from scratch. It is reliable and self-learning, even with user corrections, and complex calculations are no problem.

Take your time, but not too much :-), when making your decisions and always ask yourself the questions “Am I comparing pears with apples?” or “Apples with apples?”

Feel free to challenge us with your documents 🙂

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Comparing

Image credits: Header & Featured image from Polydocs

Document processing with Doc2 Version 2.0

Doc2
from

Document processing with Doc2 Version 2.0

The extraction of data from PDFs and scanned documents might not be the most interesting or challenging issue of the century. It doesn’t give you the opportunity to control a robot, play virtual games or helps you express your creativity. Instead, it’s plain diligent work, something that “KI” promised to automate but hasn’t achieved yet. Nonetheless, the processing of documents, meaning the conversion of analogue data into a digital format, describes a subtle challenge – a complex task, that is so easy and yet so difficult to resolve.

Document processing with Doc2 Version 2.0, the conversion of analogue data into a digital format – an easy and yet so difficult task to resolve.

We at Polydocs realized after completing several different projects, that document processing is omnipresent – from companies to non-governmental organizations, from little businesses to large corporations – there is always a PDF that needs to be digitalised!

The processing of documents is therefore not just difficult, it might also be in urgent need.

This blog post explains the framework for the development of document processing solutions and describes what we are working on for Doc2 Version 2.0.

Document processing with Doc2 Version 2.0 is based on the principles:

Annotations are indispensable: There is no simple nostrum. Even if you have a good model, you still must make sure to fine tune your data. Ideally you should have an annotation tool with integrated fine-tuning, or you are flexible enough to integrate the mechanism.

Generate multi-modal models: When analysing a document, we are not just relying on the text. Instead, we are taking all information (position, font size, etc.) as context, to make use of all these attributes. A plain OCR (optical character recognition) or a simple text-based approach is insufficient to resolve this task.

Always correct. OCR– and document layout models are not always perfect, hence the necessity for humans to correct the results in the system. The correction can be used to train your model or as the penultimate step before saving the results to a database.

Formularverständnis

Understanding the form

All the above-mentioned principles have been considered in Doc2. The document describes the typical document processing workflow:

Dokumentenverarbeitungsworkflow

Annotations are indispensable

Labels are indispensable for every solution in document processing. Documents tend to be very diverse, even if they have distinguishable patterns. A tool for reliable document labelling is therefore required.

Generation of multi-modal models

An additional reason why processing of documents is such an attractive problem lies in its multi-modal nature – textural and visual information is readily available. Unfortunately, rough solutions for document processing tend to only use one or the other:

Image centred approaches involve a lot of complex business rules around the frame of limitation and text placement to obtain the required information. They often rely on templates that aren’t scalable. Text centred approaches are based on NLP-pipelines for OCR-captured texts. However, text blocks are not compatible with the domain where these models were originally trained, leading to a mediocre performance.Fortunately, multi-modal models like Doc2 have the ability to learn from textural and visual information. Not only word and image itself, but also their positions are embedded for a certain document. The interactions between them are then learned, aided by predefined training goals.

The Doc² model learns from textual as well as visual information and learns about the interaction between them.

Always correct

We think that even with the most efficient document processing systems, human knowledge and experience for corrections and assessment must be incorporated. Human-in-the-loop can serve as a final inspection for the output of a model. We can reuse the corrected annotations to further refine the model and close the loop.

Final remarks for document processing with Doc2 Version 2.0

This blog post gives an outlook on our Version 2.0, describing the most important aspects of a document processing solution: an annotation mechanism, a multi-modal model and a step for assessment.

Machine learning was promised to automate manual labour. However, it looks like we hit a wall and instead started to automate creative works. In my opinion, we have optimised the search for nostrums: a big model is fed with input to receive the desired output. Manual labour, such as the processing of documents, is not like that. Instead, they are generally custom-made: you must label the data, make sure all elements of the document are incorporated and correct the output of the models – and one big model does not suffice. There are several models, extracting different things.

document processing

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