Late last year, ABBYY teamed up with FreightWaves to survey logistics providers about document handling and processing habits. While results showed that most companies across the supply chain are making efforts toward document digitization and process automation, it was also clear that many companies continue to run into document verification hurdles on a regular basis.
The push toward digitization is not surprising. While the logistics industry was once seen as a technological holdout, it has undergone a veritable tech revolution over the past several years. This trend will only continue to accelerate as partners within the space demand greater connectivity and consumer visibility expectations grow.
As shippers move to digitize their documents and automate their processes, they should focus on making sure both efficiency and accuracy benchmarks are met. One document processing error can sideline an entire shipment, undermining profitability and customer satisfaction.
“It is important for shippers to be competitive, and the world is digitizing really quickly. It is no surprise that about half of the supply chain leaders say information verification within their processes has become a big deal,” Bruce Orcutt, senior vice president of product marketing and management, at ABBYY said. “You have to get the documents right, and you have to get the information within those documents correct.”
The shipping industry runs on documents. While automation runs on data, the day-to-day conducting of the business – the shipping and receiving of goods – takes place in documents. Historically, efforts to bring the worlds of automation and documentation together have been clumsy at best.
Lately, however, organizations have focused more investment on making the integration between those two worlds more seamless so shippers can achieve higher reliability and better verification.
“Even with organizations that have managed to automate a lot of their document processes, they still run into verification challenges,” Orcutt said. The information on shipping documents is often complex and highly variable. Traditionally, we have to rely on experienced workers who understand those details to make a judgment call on what they mean. Judgements about complex information must be made in context.”
The complicated nature of these documents has made it difficult to circumvent the human-heavy approach to document processing. This compromises speed and efficiency, especially during a national labor shortage.
Some companies – including ABBYY – have turned to artificial intelligence and low-code/no-code platforms in order to bridge the gap between document processing and automation.
“AI adds a layer of decision-making on top of the simple data extraction,” Orcutt said. “Verifying the information and making sure it is correct is vitally important, but at the same time, information can be read in multiple ways and must be understood within context. Documents contain more than just data points.”
In order for AI to be successful in the document processing space, the software must be able to continuously learn just like an experienced operator who is an expert at assessing these documents and making swift judgment calls. ABBYY is arming AI software with pre-trained document skills in order to make intelligent document processing a reality.