The use of Artificial Intelligence in document management

When I was a child, I wondered about how the adult world works. I wondered what kind of relationships people form, what activities they do, what thoughts are most common, and what things motivate their lives. It wasn't until I started working that I gradually got this idea of ​​how this planet works.

I learned how business relationships are formed, how a potential client is prospected, how a deal is negotiated, and how it is maintained over time.

Now that I have a little more work experience, I realize that everything is based on words and numbers. Words reflect ideas and agreements. Numbers reflect economics and performance. And what system has the human being created to capture the words and numbers that translate into all the businesses that move the world? Whether you are in the legal, financial, entrepreneurial or any other field; from day one, we have to live with what is “the word in stone” of humanity: documents.

There is no job in which you do not have to deal with documents. If you are a lawyer, you will have to review thousands of them and write them. If you are an accountant or a financier, you will rely on documents to diagnose a company. If you are an entrepreneur, you must have them to comply with regulations and follow the contractual relationships necessary for your business.

When we think of this word, we always imagine a difficult-to-read contract; but the truth is that a document can be anything that has information of any kind. A book, an ID, a photo or video, a permit, a log. Humans communicate largely through documents. But what makes a document important or not? The answer is somewhat obvious: the information it contains.

The exponential growth of the digital age has caused the amount of information processed daily to grow to amounts that were unthinkable 100 years ago. By 2003, humanity had generated five exabytes in its entire history. By 2025, it is estimated that humanity will generate almost 463 exabytes… a day. This is too much information to process, analyze, and channel not only for any person but for any organization. Furthermore, in such a changing and digital world, all this information is constantly being updated, making staying on top of the latest updates a major challenge.

How can a corporation full of human beings who need to eat and sleep use all this information to benefit themselves and their company? The answer is simple: Artificial Intelligence (“ AI ”).

In a company that has to manage so many documents with so much information, artificial intelligence can become an invaluable asset. How? Here are some possible examples of AI applications in document management:

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Information extraction

It is no secret that reviewing documents to extract what is most useful to us in our work is something we do not like to do. Let us take the example of a lawyer who has to draft the documents for a large transaction between two companies. The lawyer has to read thousands of pages to extract the information he needs to represent his client and draft the contracts for the operation. This activity, famously known as “ Due Diligence ”, is one of the most time-consuming and tedious in the life of a lawyer (as well as expensive, due to the large number of hands and hours that he and his team dedicate to it, making legal services more expensive). 

With Artificial Intelligence, searching for relevant information contained in documents can be greatly simplified. It is capable of reading large sets of papers at once, and extracting the specific information requested by the user in a matter of seconds. Returning to the lawyer example, AI could help the lawyer better locate the obligations to which a company is subject, the attorneys it currently has, its financial statements, and other matters relevant to a transaction.

AI can also extract repetitive or alphanumeric data that all types of organizations must constantly search for and extract. For example, a government entity could extract the identification numbers of its beneficiaries more quickly. An appropriate model would help it review several IDs at the same time, and extract the numbers to another database for safekeeping and tracking.

This technology is also capable of summarizing information in documents depending on the user's needs. An engineer with no legal knowledge could be asked to explain the content of a contract in accessible language. An engineer could even be asked to explain what a document written in another language is about. 

Information analysis

So many documents, so much information, it's likely that companies are missing something. But what? It's hard to know, unless we have a super powerful machine capable of processing thousands of documents at once, extracting their information to identify patterns, categorize data and interpret it. And what else? Oh yes, clearly showing us the conclusions to make decisions. 

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Right, we already have them, and they are the topic of this article. 

Each area of ​​a company generates constant information, which, when effectively analyzed together with that of other areas, can help a business identify opportunities and areas for improvement. AI is capable of bringing an entire documentary collection to life so that it becomes a source of valuable information for your company. 

Thanks to models such as NLP ( Natural Language Processing ), AI will be able to detect issues that only a human being could find. The difference is that AI will be able to do so by analyzing many more documents at the same time, that is, faster and more accurately. 

“Compliance” or compliance with regulations

Companies and their legal departments spend a lot of resources on compliance with the regulations that govern their operations. Manual checklists are created , where the legal requirements that are met are checked off one by one. Likewise, the procedures, permits, licenses and other concessions that companies need to operate are monitored manually. 

Artificial Intelligence is capable of processing documents and, with the appropriate training, telling you which rules or requirements you currently comply with and which you do not. It will be able to tell you which of your permits or licenses are about to expire and therefore you should begin the renewal process. This technology is still in development in many parts of the world, but it will undoubtedly be one of the great applications of AI in the corporate sector. 

Similarly, AI models can be used to identify sensitive or confidential information and ensure that it is stored and managed by relevant regulations. In addition, it can detect inconsistencies or errors in documents, which helps ensure the integrity of the information.

Smart Archive and Co-Pilot

By having a document archive operated with Artificial Intelligence, it will be possible to save a lot of time spent on saving the documents themselves in the archive, categorizing them based on more criteria and finding what you need in seconds. This can be used as part of a Co-Pilot software in which all your information contained in documents is within reach of a question you ask it.

For example, let's imagine that you are preparing a presentation for a potential client in which you want to show them the results that your current clients have obtained with your service. In your document file you have the reports that show these results. Instead of searching the file manually, reading it and extracting what is useful to you, you can ask the co-pilot to find that data for you, and generate a slide explaining it. This would save you several minutes that over time translate into hours . Hours that you can dedicate to doing things that add more value to you and your company.

These are just a few of the possible applications of Artificial Intelligence for document management. Several companies that we haven't heard of yet are developing these types of technologies and more. They will bring our giant document archives to life and turn them into important assets for any company. 

It is well known that we are in the information age. With Artificial Intelligence, we are about to enter the era of processed information, as these technologies will make us see hidden opportunities in the mountains of information we generate every day.

Of course, there are still certain structural and cultural barriers to the full adoption of these tools. However, like all major changes in human history, there will come a point where their adoption will be necessary, because the economy is moving unchecked in that direction.