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Jun 23 2022

Accomplish digital table extraction – with the right software

table
23. June 2022 von Stephanie Propstmeier

Accomplish digital table extraction – with the right software

Tables often contain the most valuable data in a document. It is therefore all the more important to use software for the digitization of such documents that meets the special requirements of data extraction from tables. In this article, you will learn why Polydocs excels in this field of application and why it can massively reduce the processing effort for table extraction in your company.


Table extraction – the key to more efficiency in your company

In today’s world, tables in all their forms and peculiarities have become an indispensable part of the everyday life of public authorities, companies and even private individuals. Like hardly any other means, they make it easier to bring clarity to data volumes and organizational information.

Tables are used in the respective document to present values or items clearly. The reader should therefore be relieved of the circumstance of having to laboriously read through continuous text in order to obtain the required information – regardless of whether it is the listing of the individual goods in an order, delivery bills or administrative information such as closing accounts or employee details.

So far, so good. But as data in pure print format, such tables are of little use to you today in view of the possibilities that digitalized data processing offers your company. For example, if you want to calculate statistics, evaluations or forecasts for specific sectors of your company from the data listed in the tables, in order

  • to offer even better services to your customers,
  • to remain innovative as a company,
  • to be better than the competition,

it is essential to convert them efficiently into a machine-readable format.

Machine-readable means: not just scanning the document as a PDF or image file, but also making the text and thus the values in the document usable for intelligent machines and analysis applications.

This can include: Quantity data, sequence numbers, percentage data, article numbers, article descriptions, color data of articles, customer numbers, currency data, dates, postal codes, etc. From such data, it is possible to calculate, for example, which items were purchased particularly frequently at which times, in which postal code areas your company may have more customers than in others (and in which areas there is corresponding untapped potential for new customers), which items are frequently purchased together, and much more. The machine-readable digitization of documents is therefore not an end goal. Rather, it forms the gateway to the unlimited possibilities that advanced data analysis offers for increasing your company’s success and optimizing your business processes.


The technical bottleneck: digitizing tables efficiently

However, this is precisely where a major technical challenge becomes apparent. As practical and helpful as tables are for presentation and readability, they are just as difficult when it comes to digitizing the documents concerned in such a way that information can also be processed automatically. The individual formatting makes tables a persistent source of errors for text recognition programs that otherwise get along well with pure continuous text.

Tables are always visually integrated in documents in a certain way. For the well-read human observer, it is usually obvious at first glance where the continuous text ends and the table begins. It is different with programs: It is often not so easy for them to recognize the exact zones of the table and to assign sections correctly.

So far, there is no uniform formula that can be used to unambiguously teach a machine system how to recognize the field boundaries of a table. In each document, tables have different formats (width, height, white space, line density, etc.), which must be individually communicated to a readout program. By the way, this also applies to electronic files where a table is stored in image format, for example.

Thus, it often happens that the machine places a field boundary incorrectly, so that in the digitized output text words from two areas of the document are thrown together, which actually do not belong together in terms of content.

If this only happens with a single-page document, the resulting word salad can be subsequently corrected by human editors. However, when your company is faced with the task of converting entire file cabinets into a machine-readable format, such inaccuracies can quickly become a huge frustration factor.

Not only do they ensure that a lot of working time that could be used for more sensible things goes into troubleshooting. With every additional manual correction that is made, the risk of errors being overlooked due to human inattentiveness increases.

Further problems with the automatic extraction of tables in text documents are caused by the fact that the system sometimes mistakes parts of the continuous text for tables and then reads them in as such. In addition, special characters or dashes, which have an ordering function within the table, are repeatedly misinterpreted during automatic text recognition. By the way, the same applies to logos or other areas of the document that are “meant” as an image but can be incorrectly assigned to a table format by a machine.

As a result, reading out tables in particular becomes a particular hurdle when it comes to preparing documents for further digital processing. In plain language, this means an enormous amount of time and high personnel costs for your company, since the employees in your company ultimately have to transfer most of the values from the printed table by hand and then also thoroughly check and correct them afterwards.

DOC² – our solution specialized in table reading

To help your company efficiently digitize data from printed spreadsheet documents, we use DOC². DOC² is an artificial intelligence-based tool that intelligently extracts content from documents.

DOC²

The biggest advantage is that it requires significantly less human supervision than other comparable systems. A scarce initial effort, in which the fields of a table document are marked, is sufficient to get the automatic extraction running.

If further feedback is then entered by your responsible employee during the digitization process, the system learns to implement these instructions in sequence.

The great benefits for you:

  • Time saving
  • Relieve your employees from tedious and monotonous digitization procedures
  • Reliable data quality through high-level readout technologies

The entire process of digitizing your documents is thus significantly streamlined and your employees only need to perform minor manual processes, while the main part of the digitization process is handled automatically by the system.

The difference is roughly comparable to whether the construction workers on a building site have to heave the bricks into the wheelbarrow under their own power and then push the barrow across the site themselves, or whether they sit in the control cabin of a crane and have the crane move large quantities of building material by means of a few control movements of one hand.

In both cases, human input cannot be dispensed with. However, while in the first case the work process is extremely strenuous and time-consuming, in the second case a maximum of work performance is achieved with a minimum of human effort.

An insight into how to use our table extraction

Practically, the process of table extraction with Polydocs looks something like this for your employees:

The document is first scanned and is thus available for editing using DOC². In the editing mode for table extraction, your employee can only open the scan and, with a few clicks and mouse movements, define the exact fields and areas that are to be read out. In addition, your employee can determine exactly in which target column the values are to be sorted. The special feature of assigning custom columns (i.e. additional columns that can be formatted and edited completely individually) makes the work process especially easy – without any regex or other programming.

Cumbersome additional mouse movements or keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting the values are eliminated and allow your employee to work through the document smoothly and quickly. Selected values are intelligently recognized by the program and automatically transferred to the desired fields as machine-readable values.

A selection of clearly arranged setting options and additional functions also allows you to design the table readout with just a few clicks in the way your employee thinks is necessary for the document in question.

This makes Polydocs the ideal tool for digitizing even complex spreadsheets with just a few simple steps and minimal supervision by your staff.

Furthermore, you do not need any special, cumbersome transmission channels for the transmission of the read and processed data. The data can be transmitted easily by e-mail or by automated assignment to a specified folder.

You want to get a visual impression of how the application of our program looks concretely? You can find a detailed tutorial with a demonstration in real time here in the video on our YouTube channel.

If you have any questions or would like to inquire about a customized solution for your application, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Make digitizing your spreadsheet documents a breeze
– with Polydocs!

FEEL FREE TO CONTACT US

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hERE
table

Written by Stephanie Propstmeier · Categorized: accounting, automation, cost savings, data, DOC², English, Infor, personnel costs, table · Tagged: AI, Infor OS, table, Workflow

May 05 2022

The benefits of artificial intelligence for business processes?

5. May 2022 von Kerstin Mende

The benefits of artificial intelligence for business processes?

Clear and measurable!


According to a Deloitte study📊, 41% of respondents state that the use of #AI has helped them to optimize processes within their company.

For companies that rely on Infor as a software solution, this survey result should already have been clearly confirmed in experience since Infor also uses artificial intelligence.

So how does 👉PolyDocs, our Infor-compatible software solution for automatic document digitization, play into this?

Quite simply:

PolyDocs also uses artificial intelligence. It is designed to read your documents clean and particularly reliable.


After all, the purpose of PolyDocs is to relieve your company of the otherwise tedious digitization process.

And to ensure that this really works on its own and someone doesn’t have to keep correcting the machine’s mistakes, AI is used.


Do you want to make PolyDocs your company’s strong partner for document scanning?
Then contact us – we are happy to advise you!

FEEL FREE TO CONTACT US

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Written by Kerstin Mende · Categorized: artificial intelligence, data, DOC², English · Tagged: AI, Infor OS, Workflow

May 05 2022

Simplified invoice matching – how purchase-order matching becomes child’s play

invoice matching
5. May 2022 von Stephanie Propstmeier

Simplified invoice matching – how purchase-order matching becomes child’s play

Make it much easier for your employees to allocate and compare orders and invoices. In this article you will find out how our AI-based software PolyDocs can help you with this.


An essential step

It is one of the most complex items in the administration of companies – and yet there is no way around it: We are talking about invoice matching (also known as purchase order matching). Each invoice that is sent to your company must be assigned to the associated order and checked for accuracy before the amount due is paid. There is no other way to authenticate the completion of the purchase process.

Traditionally, this process had to be performed manually by a company’s accounting department. The result: An extremely monotonous process that eats up a lot of working time. And since the working hours that your employees have to spend on this also mean a financial expense, this also represents an enormous cost factor in the overall operation of your company.

There are several steps involved in invoice reconciliation:

  • Identification
    The corresponding invoice and order must be combined using the order numbers.
  • Goods inspection
    The goods listed in the order must be matched with the goods invoiced. In addition to the actual description of the goods, this also includes variables such as the delivery quantity, the serial number, the product variant, the size, the material, the color or similar factors.
  • Cost reconciliation
    The invoiced costs must be checked for correctness not only for each individual item, but also in the total amount added up.
  • Authorization
    If the invoice has proven to be correct, the transfer of the amount due must be initiated. However, since the employees responsible for the invoice verification in the company are usually not authorized to authorize the invoice and instruct payment on their own, an additional step is required here. The verified invoice must be presented to the relevant decision-maker in the company for signature. The transfer of the amount can only be initiated after the authorized person has inspected it.

There is no changing the sequence of these steps. However, intelligent and user-friendly software such as PolyDocs can help you make this testing process much more efficient, significantly reduce the time required and eliminate unnecessary intermediate steps.


A software solution that makes the difference

How can PolyDocs become a great facilitator for invoice matching in your company? The focus here is on the following capabilities of the software:

  • Automated reading of table contents
    PolyDocs works on the basis of artificial intelligence. With little effort, your employees can train the program which elements of table contents should be placed in which content fields. The program learns with you, so that the initial editing effort is quickly reduced.
  • Enabling digital further processing
    The table values ​​read in by the program (this includes numbers, product numbers, descriptions of goods, date, etc.) are not just scanned in as an optical digital copy, but recognized as a value. On this basis, the fields can be automatically compared in a further step. The software solution Infor LN is particularly practical for such further processing – because PolyDocs has an interface to it.
  • Simplified data transmission
    In order to forward the invoice amount to the person responsible for authorization, the data that has been read in can be easily forwarded digitally. Until now, this work step for you involved carrying a stack of printed invoices from an employee’s office to the department manager’s office and presenting them for the tedious manual signing? You can save yourself these time-consuming processes by using PolyDocs to prepare your paper documents for further use in ERP software such as Infor. Because after the content has been digitized, the data can be easily forwarded virtually to the responsible person and approved digitally.

You want to use Polydocs as a customized solution for your company?
Then contact us – we will be happy to advise you!

Get in touch

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Invoice matching is tedious?

Written by Stephanie Propstmeier · Categorized: Automatisierung, data, DOC², English, Kostenersparnis, Personalkosten, Rechnungswesen · Tagged: AI, DOC², Infor OS, Workflow

Apr 11 2022

Is your invoice processing too expensive?

11. April 2022 von Kerstin Mende

Is your invoice processing too expensive?

Reduce the cost point to less than a quarter!


How many unnecessary costs does the invoice receipt cause in your company?

Are you aware that the average cost of processing an invoice is 18€?
 
This massive post can be reduced to less than a quarter through the use of Polydocs. To be precise, to 4€ per invoice.


This is because the AI-based DOC² software, with its high-quality automation capability, enormously reduces the time required for processing by your staff:
 

Only half the time is required for the initial effort.

Manual adjustment is completely eliminated.

Find out more details

here
Is your invoice processing too expensive

Written by Kerstin Mende · Categorized: accounting, automation, cost savings, data, DOC², English, invoiceprocessing, personnel costs · Tagged: AI, DOC², Infor OS, Workflow

Mar 14 2022

Cognitive data capture

14. March 2022 von Stephanie Propstmeier

Cognitive data capture

How key AP issues can be resolved by cognitive data capture 💫


Cognitive data capture uses deep neural networks to recognize patterns in a set of data and adapts to a changing input. 
 
Contrary to manual data entry or traditional OCR, it does not require a sizable workforce and the set-up of endless rules or templates. Here is how cognitive data capture can address key AP issues:
 
✅ Large volumes of varying document layouts
👉 Cognitive data capture is able to identify the overall structure and recognize the components on its own. Different formats of the documents are read organically by this technology. 
 
✅ Repetitive work and manual data comparison
👉 The learning capabilities allow advanced and automatic comparison of the data, for instance, against an internal registry of vendors or public registry of companies. 
 
✅ Discrepancies caused by inefficient internal communication
👉 Cognitive data capture is usually a cloud-based solution. It provides access to automatic updates and allows better team collaboration. 
 
Even though the technology is still young, it will only continue to develop and improve within a widening scope of business activities. 💪

Did you get curious?

Improve your processes with this tool

DEMO
Cognitive Data Capture

Written by Stephanie Propstmeier · Categorized: data, DOC², English, IDM Capture, Infor, Infor OS · Tagged: AI, Cognitive data capture, Infor OS, invoice processing

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