Documentation is necessary to ensure transparency between the sender and the recipient when processing parcels and shipments. It should be easy for these professionals to fill out forms and transcribe information for any document, but this approach is fragile. Through no fault of their own, industry professionals tend to make mistakes when backlogs rise and stress increases.
The human factor is critical when reviewing day-to-day invoices, bills of lading (BOL), commercial invoices, waybills and customer clearance documentation. People enter the required information into fields and internal systems line by line to charge customers accordingly.
Therefore, when working with large volumes of physical documents, it is easy to make mistakes and decipher something incorrectly, which will lead to a loss of income of up to 12% and an immeasurable loss of time to correct these errors.
This problem is not one-sided but is related to the inefficiency of the entire industry. Data entry teams face different levels of variability due to the multiple formats created by clients and the inconsistencies, nuances and legibility of handwriting, leading many to consider alternatives such as Intelligent Document Processing (IDP).
IDP improves document processing accuracy and reduces back-to-back work, making it the industry’s premier solution to the problems with physical documents. It uses AI and machine learning to provide end-to-end document-centric business process automation for structured and unstructured data such as PDFs, images, and handwritten forms.
IDP not only converts such document formats into structured, machine-readable information, but it does it faster, more accurately, and more efficiently than a human.
Back-office automation is a win-win in the transportation industry. Organizations will not only save revenue that has traditionally been lost due to inaccuracies in paperwork but will focus employees on high-level tasks without getting bogged down in paperwork. With automation support, customers can track information with confidence and receive faster service.