Documents are the last analog friction in a digital world. The problem is documents are often NOT written in a rules-based way. Not every document will be formatted in a predefined format. In fact, you might have to work with handwritten documents as well. Metaphorically speaking, documents talk in so many different languages. Some require the use of SQL databases, some require unstructured NoSQL databases, some require OCR to be parsed, and others might require a full-blown RPA.
Orchestrating this symphony of specialized tools is the ultimate hurdle. How do you seamlessly manage these diverse Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) methods to ensure every document, regardless of its origin or format, is accurately parsed and its data made usable?
The answer lies in the conductor: iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service). Read on to understand why iPaaS and Intelligent Document Processing go hand in hand when it comes to parsing documents of all kinds and storing them in a structured way.
The Anatomy of IDP: How Documents Become Data
Businesses don’t just rely on structured invoices, CSV files or database-friendly texts. There are so many different instances where businesses have to deal with unstructured data, make sense of it and make decisions based on the data.
Let us give you two scenarios:
Scenario 1: The Legal Firm Buried in Paper
A mid-sized law firm is handling a complex merger. They receive thousands of pages of discovery – a chaotic mix of scanned emails, handwritten notes on legal pads, signed PDF contracts, and faxed financial statements. These are not your typical spreadsheet or SAP reports. These are as unstructured as they can be. Making sense of this unstructured paper trail can be quite a task. A single missed detail can derail the entire deal. Would anyone take the risk of parsing the data manually? And is it even humanly possible to make sense of this unstructured data without errors?
Scenario 2: The Insurance Company and the Chaotic Claim
An insurance adjuster receives a claim after a car accident. The supporting evidence isn’t a simple form – it’s a camera roll of the damaged vehicle, a handwritten police report, a scanned copy of a driver’s license, and a series of emailed witness statements. Again, parsing this kind of report can’t be automated in the traditional sense.
This is where Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) comes in. IDP isn’t a single tool. It is a suite of tools that help businesses automate parsing documents that are traditionally not machine-readable. IDP tools include but not limited to –
- Optical character recognition
- Natural Language Processing
- Computer Vision
- Handwriting recognition and more…
So how can IDP address the document processing challenges in the scenarios mentioned above?
For the legal firm: IDP uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to digitize text, followed by Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify clauses and their context. For handwriting, advanced Machine Learning (ML) models are trained to interpret diverse scripts.
For the insurance company: It employs computer vision to assess vehicle damage in photos and specialized OCR for the handwritten police report. NLP then extracts key entities (names, dates) from all documents for the claims system.
With generative AI suddenly at the forefront of innovation, we will see exciting new ways of processing unstructured documents.
What is iPaaS?
Before going into how iPaaS fits into the scheme of things, let’s first understand what exactly an iPaaS is.
Every business uses multiple different business operations management tools. A business might use e-commerce platforms like Shopify, a CRM like Salesforce, ERP software like SAP Business One, or maybe even shipping software.
These are all disparate software. They may be connected loosely via the default connectors that vendors provide. But these are all spaghetti connectors – SAP is connected to Salesforce, Salesforce is connected to the e-commerce platform, and SAP is again separately connected to the e-commerce platform. They are all connected – but in a very noisy way. There is always the risk of data duplication, incoming orders not going through SAP, and connections breaking without any notification.
An iPaaS acts as a bridge – a single highway where all the systems meet, share data, and hand over tasks. It acts as the central nervous system for your entire tech stack. Instead of a tangled web of point-to-point links, every application connects to the iPaaS just once. This platform then becomes the intelligent control center, managing all data traffic with built-in transformation, error handling, and monitoring. It ensures that data flows seamlessly, accurately, and reliably between all endpoints.
The Power of Combining iPaaS and IDP
Intelligent Document Processing provides the specialized tools, but iPaaS is the intelligent conductor that directs them in a seamless workflow. It decides which tool is best for each document and ensures the resulting data flows directly into core business systems.
Consider a handwritten delivery note that arrives as a scanned PDF. The iPaaS platform orchestrates the following:
| The iPaaS sends PDF documents to an OCR tool like Azure Form Recognizer. |
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| OCR turns the data into machine-readable text |
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| Once converted, the iPaaS automatically routes this text to an NLP service to identify key entities relevant to the business – product, SKUs, etc. |
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| The iPaaS has the capability to transform this validated data to ERP- or CRM-friendly (or both) data so that there is no conflict. |
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| Final Workflow: The platform then triggers an API call to SAP to create a goods receipt note, automatically updating inventory levels and closing the loop on the purchase order. |
You must be wondering what happens if the OCR fails to read a particularly illegible handwritten delivery note. A perfectly configurable iPaaS and IDP integration software like APPSeCONNECT employs error monitoring at every step of the business workflow. Anything out of the ordinary, and you get a timely notification.
Real-World Use Cases
| Scenario | The iPaaS + IDP Solution |
|---|---|
| Healthcare Onboarding | IDP digitizes forms. iPaaS routes the clean data to the EHR and billing systems simultaneously. |
| Mortgage Processing | IDP uses specific tools to parse each document type. iPaaS orchestrates the data into the loan origination and CRM systems. |
| Shipping & Logistics | IDP extracts key data from BoLs in any format. iPaaS validates the data in the ERP and updates the customer-facing tracking system. |
Key Benefits of iPaaS and IDP Integration
Let’s circle back to what we said earlier. At the end of the day, every business deals with human beings. The human mind is unstructured. So there will always be unstructured documents as long as businesses deal with human beings.
IDP tools make sure that this lack of structure does not devolve into chaos – rather, it stays as a testament to the beautifully complex human mind. And iPaaS? It helps IDP tools work in a cohesive way. Here are the key benefits:
- Finally, Say Goodbye To Manual Document Processing
Paper enters the iPaaS once and exits as validated master data – no cut-and-paste. Manual document processing is a thankless job. - Elastic, Not Brittle, Workflows
Need a new OCR vendor next quarter? Swap the connector in minutes; prerequisite rules and retry loops remain intact. - Auditor-Friendly Data Lineage
Every extraction, transformation, and hand-off is time-stamped and traceable inside the iPaaS message log, slashing compliance work. - Faster exception resolution
iPaaS routes low-confidence reads to a human queue, then pushes the corrected values back to all subscribing systems. - Cost-per-Document Plummets
Straight-through rates of 90%+ displace manual keying, cutting labor, late fees, and error-driven rework. - Unified Monitoring Dashboard
Stalled jobs, queue depth, extraction accuracy, and SLA breach alerts live in one pane of glass.
Pitfalls and Best Practices
| Pitfall | Best Practice |
|---|---|
| Don’t fall for 100% accuracy claims by IDP vendors | Aim for maximum confidence thresholds. Scour G2, Gartner and other genuine review sites. Talk with your peers. |
| Don’t connect each of your IDP tools with your business management system on a point-to-point basis | Connect every system through the iPaaS. Remember the Agile Manifesto? |
| Ignoring metadata & audit trails | Store extraction score, model version, timestamp in iPaaS message header |
| Skipping change-management | Map current state, run parallel for 2 weeks, migrate team in waves |
| Letting IT own the project alone | Pair process owners with IT in weekly sprint reviews. NoCode iPaaS software like APPSeCONNECT can be a great middle ground – it can be as complex as the developers want and as easy as the business users want. |
In the end…
We use IDP tools to reduce the complexity in processing unstructured documents. It will be really ironic if the crowd of IDP tools becomes a roadblock in itself. Don’t try to connect IDP tools on a point-to-point basis. It’s destined to fail. Always use iPaaS for clean, intuitive integration between your IDP tools and your business operations management system.
Frequently Asked Questions
iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) is a cloud-based platform that connects various business systems and automates data flows between them, while Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) focuses on extracting and structuring data from unstructured documents using AI, OCR, and NLP. When integrated, iPaaS orchestrates the entire IDP workflow—ensuring extracted document data flows seamlessly into ERP, CRM, or other business applications.
iPaaS acts as the central hub that coordinates all IDP tools like OCR, NLP, and computer vision. It automates the routing, transformation, and validation of document data, ensuring that every piece of extracted information is sent to the right system without manual intervention. This results in higher accuracy, faster processing times, and reduced operational costs.
The integration of iPaaS and IDP is transforming industries such as:
Healthcare: Automating patient onboarding by routing digitized forms into EHR and billing systems.
Banking & Mortgage: Parsing multiple document types and orchestrating the data into CRM and loan systems.
Logistics: Extracting Bill of Lading data and automatically updating ERP and tracking portals.
This combination streamlines end-to-end business operations across sectors dealing with unstructured documents.
Integrating iPaaS with IDP delivers multiple business benefits:
Eliminates manual document processing
Enables flexible, vendor-agnostic workflows
Provides complete data lineage and audit trails
Improves exception handling and accuracy
Reduces document processing costs dramatically
Together, they create a scalable and transparent document automation ecosystem.
Direct or point-to-point integrations between IDP tools and business systems often lead to data silos, broken workflows, and maintenance headaches. iPaaS centralizes and simplifies integration by providing a single connection layer with monitoring, transformation, and error-handling capabilities. This ensures reliability, scalability, and compliance across your document processing workflows.
