Companies around the globe are deep into digital transformation efforts aimed at increasing overall corporate agility and digitizing nearly every aspect of their business. Such efforts include automated document processing, for which it’s becoming clear that “citizen-led development” is increasingly important.
The global digital transformation market is projected to grow from $469.8 billion in 2020 to $1,009.8 billion by 2025, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.5%, according to Research and Markets. By 2023, IDC projects nearly two-thirds (65%) of global gross domestic product will be digitalized, accounting for $53.3 trillion.
That is a rapid transformation indeed. When it comes to business processes involving documents, companies need to consider who, exactly, is going to take on the work required to automate these processes. If responsibility falls solely on IT and data scientists, it’s going to be a long, slow slog.
Yet that’s exactly the situation companies find themselves in when using many of the intelligent document processing tools on the market. The process requires IT and/or data science teams to try to glean all the steps required in a given process from business process experts. The data scientists then use the intelligent automation tools to build models that automate the process. The models go back to the business process experts, who determine whether they accurately reflect requirements. Chances are, it takes a few iterations before the models work correctly. Any changes to the process requires the dance to start anew.
Process experts build models
That’s why Indico is adamant that intelligent document processing tools must be easy enough to use such that they are accessible to the business process owners who know processes best, whether it’s automating the insurance claims process or onboarding new bank customers. If process experts can use the tools themselves to build automation models, it eliminates the back and forth with IT and data science teams.
Besides being much faster, this “citizen-led development” approach also delivers better results, because the people building the models are those who understand the processes best. They know exactly what fields need to be extracted from each document, for example, in order to produce accurate results – without all the back and forth with IT or data scientists.
Related Article: How Intelligent Process Automation Enables Citizen-led AI Development
Cost savings
The fact that data scientists are not required brings a dual benefit. One is cost, given that data science experts are highly paid. The reason for that is because data science expertise is also relatively rare, making it unlikely that companies would be able to find enough data science experts to take on all of their automation workloads even if they could afford it.
Agility and speed
Enabling business process experts to build models also greatly increases the speed at which companies can automate document processes. With the Indico Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) platform, for example, business process experts can build a highly accurate model by labeling only about 200 documents, which takes just a few hours.
Such capabilities bring greater agility to companies. As word spreads about the success one group is having with Indico’s platform, others take notice. Before long, companies have small armies of citizen data scientists creating models that bring automation to all sorts of business processes involving both structured and unstructured content. That greatly increases process capacity, enabling companies to take on more work without increasing headcount, or to repurpose existing employees for higher value work. Chatham Financial, for example, was able to increase its process capacity by 4 times using the Indico IPA platform.
Citizen-led development: a must for DX
Digital transformation is now a corporate imperative. But relying solely on IT and data scientists to build intelligent document processing models is a complex, costly and time-consuming way to get there. Citizen-led development will help you get the job done faster, at less cost and with more accuracy.
To see for yourself, request a demo of our IPA platform or contact us with any questions. We’re happy to help further your digital transformation efforts.
