Buried under invoices, purchase orders, and contracts? Manual document scanning is slow, error-prone, and tedious. Even with the best apps, like those reviewed on https://scanner.biz/reviews/best-free-scanner-apps/, large volumes of work take significant time.
Fortunately, automation can help. Automating your document scanning processes can dramatically increase your business’s efficiency. With an Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) platform, your organization can create smoother, smarter document workflows.
This post provides a complete overview of automating document scanning workflows, covering definitions, benefits, use cases, and a step-by-step process. We’ll show how an IDP platform can streamline your operations. Let’s begin!
What is a document scanning workflow?
A document scanning workflow involves capturing, processing, and storing physical documents digitally. Traditionally, this manual process includes physical scanning, naming, and organizing files.
This labor-intensive task often leads to errors in document sorting and indexing. However, technology now allows you to streamline and automate these steps, reducing manual effort and increasing productivity. Additionally, you can always use a quick alternative like the scanner.biz smartphone app to quickly digitize documents.
How to automate your document scanning workflows
Document digitization doesn’t have to be complicated. With scan services, you scan your documents, and we handle the rest, from capturing to extracting and exporting, everything runs in one smooth, automated flow.
Here’s how to set up your document scanning workflow in just a few steps:
Step 1: Scan your documents
Convert your paper documents into digital files. You can use a scanner or your smartphone camera.
For best results, we recommend using scan services’ mobile scanning SDK for higher-quality scans and more accurate information extraction.
Save your files in a cloud folder (e.g., Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox) for easy access.
Step 2: Set up your account
Before creating your first workflow, sign up on the Platform. Fill in your name, email, and other details.
You’ll receive ~€25 in free credits to explore and test the platform.
Step 3: Select input source
Once logged in, create an organization and a project. Go to Project Settings then Services. Enable Document Capturing – Generic model and Flow Builder.
Next, in Flow Builder, click New Flow. You can start from a template or scratch; we’ll start from scratch.
Now, choose your input source – where your scanned files are stored. For example, Google Drive.
To add this, click the 1. Select Trigger bubble and search for Google Drive -> New File. Link your Google Drive on the right and select a parent folder for your documents.
Run a quick test to ensure the input works before proceeding.
Step 4: Extract the data
Next, capture and extract data from your files. Click the + button below 1. New File – Google Drive to add a new step. Choose the capture type; for our scenario, we selected Document Capture: Generic.
Connect this option to your Google Drive folder and select a file input. The platform handles reading, capturing, classification, and data extraction.
The platform can also verify document authenticity, detect fraud, and alert you if files are compromised.
Remember to test extraction to ensure it works as expected.
Step 5: Select output source
Now that your data is captured and formatted, decide where it should go. You can store it in the cloud, email it, or integrate it into applications.
For simplicity, we chose Google Drive again and opted to create a new file. Choose Google Drive -> New File and connect it to your Drive. Select the component that will provide the name of your new file, the text, and the content type.
Test the full flow one last time. If everything runs smoothly, your document scanning automation is ready!
