Intelligent document processing, or IDP, combines capture, extraction, classification, validation and workflow automation to turn business documents into usable data. It can use OCR, rules, machine learning and human review.
Which documents can be processed?
- Invoices and credit notes
- Quotations and purchase orders
- Packing lists and transport documents
- Identity and business records
- Contracts and certificates
- Forms, statements and correspondence
How does IDP work?
- Ingest and preserve the source document.
- Identify document type and layout.
- Extract fields, tables and relationships.
- Normalize and validate the data.
- Route low-confidence or conflicting results.
- Post approved data and retain the audit trail.
IDP vs. OCR
OCR recognizes characters in an image. IDP adds classification, semantic extraction, business rules and workflow. Accurate text recognition does not by itself establish which total, currency or account number should be used.
How should accuracy be measured?
Measure field-level accuracy by document type and risk, not only pages processed. Critical fields such as bank details, currency and totals may require stricter confidence and independent validation.
What controls are needed?
Keep source evidence, extracted values, confidence, validation results, reviewer corrections and model versions. Prevent uncertain output from automatically triggering a payment or compliance decision.
