Most firms still move paperwork through people. Supplier bills sit in a PDF inbox. Signed agreements arrive as email attachments. A member of staff then reads the file, copies the fields that matter and types them into another application. The work is slow and mistakes slip through, while skilled people spend their time on data entry.
Document processing with AI (also known as Intelligent Document Processing, or IDP) takes most of that load off the team.
How it works
Several techniques sit behind the service:
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition) reads printed or scanned pages and produces editable text
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) works out what the text is referring to
- AI extraction models locate and capture named fields (invoice number, date, amount, supplier name, line items)
- Classification assigns a document type and chooses the correct destination
- Validation compares the captured data with your rules and passes exceptions to a reviewer
Once those steps are in place, incoming files are read in seconds and the captured fields are written into your accounting system, CRM or case management platform.
Common use cases
Invoice processing
Incoming invoices are read and the supplier name, invoice number, date, line items and total are captured, then sent into the finance system. Mismatches (the amount doesn't match the purchase order, or the invoice number already exists) are held for a person to review.
Usual saving: 3 to 5 minutes per invoice. A firm handling 200 invoices a month recovers 10 to 17 hours each month.
Contract review
Contracts are scanned for named clauses (termination, liability, payment terms, renewal dates) and those terms appear in a structured summary. Your lawyers still carry out the legal review. Staff no longer spend that time searching each file for the same clause.
Application and form processing
Insurance applications, loan forms and onboarding paperwork. Submitted data is extracted and written into your systems, so staff aren't re-keying every field. Work that used to take days can drop to hours.
Email triage
Incoming messages are read, grouped by intent (enquiry, complaint, order, support request) and sent to the right team, often with a draft reply attached.
What you need to get started
A defined process. Start with a single, high-volume document type that repeats throughout the month. Finance teams often begin with invoices.
Predictable layouts. Give the model a reasonably stable layout. It can read invoices from different suppliers, yet accuracy is higher when layouts stay fairly consistent.
A destination system. Decide where the captured fields will live. That might be your finance system, CRM, ERP or a database, and you will need API access to it.
A platform to run it on. Microsoft AI Builder (part of Power Platform), Azure AI Document Intelligence, or n8n with AI extraction nodes. Pick the one that matches the software you already use and the difficulty of the documents.
Accuracy and human review
The extraction isn't fully accurate. For well-structured files (invoices, standard forms), field capture typically reaches 90 to 98%. For unstructured material (general correspondence, varied contracts), the figure is lower.
Build a check into the process. High-confidence extractions go through to the destination system. Low-confidence ones pause for a person to confirm or correct. Each correction can be fed back, which raises accuracy on later files.
From extraction to a running workflow
Pulling data out of a document is useful. Connecting that data to the next action is workflow automation. Once a file has been read, the captured fields can move straight into the system that needs them and trigger the step that follows.
How Wanzo implements document processing
We build this work inside our AI & Automation service. We start by choosing the document types that take the most staff time. We then train the extraction models and connect them to the applications you already use. Confidence rules decide when a person needs to step in. Delivery is on a monthly retainer. We deliver the specialist AI with Bloodstone, our automation consultancy partner.
What to do next
If your team still keys this data by hand, pick one document type and start there. Monthly plans start from £495. Write to hello@wanzo.co.uk or use the contact page. Describe the documents you handle and we'll come back with a starting point.