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12 Best Document Data Extraction Software in 2024 (Paid & Free)
Learn how automated data extraction can revolutionize your business by enhancing data accuracy, reducing costs, and accelerating document processing. Get insights on the types, benefits, and implementation strategies.
Efficiently managing and utilizing data has become extremely important for operational success. Organizations are inundated with vast amounts of data daily, ranging from customer details to financial transactions.
However, traditional manual data entry processes often lead to errors, inefficiencies, and significant resource wastage. This challenge is further compounded as businesses scale, making data accuracy and timely processing paramount.
According to Gartner, poor data quality costs businesses an average of $12.9 million yearly, a staggering figure that underscores the critical need for efficient data management solutions. Moreover, companies that have transitioned to automated data extraction methods have reported a reduction in data entry time by up to 70%, leading to substantial improvements in operational efficiency.
A compelling example of this transformation is the Voltus case, a virtual power plant operator facing significant challenges in processing over monthly processing over 250 unstructured utility bills250 unstructured utility bills monthly.
Their operations managers manually scanned these bills, consuming over 11,000 person-hours each month and delaying their payables by 48 hours. With Document AI integration for automated data extraction, Voltus achieved remarkable results:
The shift from manual data extraction to automated extraction is more than just a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic imperative for businesses looking to enhance accuracy, reduce costs, and streamline operations.
Data extraction is the process of transforming unstructured or semi-structured data into structured information. This structured information provides companies with meaningful insights for reporting and analytics.
Data extraction helps consolidate, process, and refine information stored in a centralized location for further analysis and record-keeping. It is the initial step in ETL (extract, transform, load) and ELT (extract, load, transform) processes.
Automated data extraction is the process of extracting unstructured or semi-structured data without manual intervention. An AI/ML-based technique is used for automated data extraction.
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) is an automated pipeline with components like document classification, data extraction, and data analytics. The most essential element of IDP is data extraction, which is responsible for extracting key-value pairs and tables from the document.
A key-value pair is a type of data extracted from documents. A key-value pair consists of two related data elements: a key, which is a constant that defines the data set (e.g., Invoice number, Seller address, Total amount), and a value, which is a variable that belongs to the set (e.g., INXXXT65532, 240 Washington St, Boston, MA 02108, United States, $68637). Fully formed, a key-value pair could look like these:
Invoice number = INXXXT65532
Seller address = 240 Washington St, Boston, MA 02108, United States
Total amount = $68637
Generally, a table provides a functional, structural representation that organizes data into rows and columns and aims to capture the relationships between different elements and attributes in the data. Another type of table is nested tables, which are generally present in documents like rent-roll and are hard to extract.
Tables also vary in layout based on the type of document. Financial statements, rent rolls, and invoices all have different layouts.
Data extraction automation is feasible and increasingly essential for organizations seeking to efficiently manage large volumes of data. Traditional manual methods are labor-intensive, prone to errors, and time-consuming.
In contrast, automated data extraction leverages advanced technologies like AI, machine learning, and OCR to streamline the process, ensuring speed, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness.
There are several ways in which automated extraction can be done. Some of them are:
AI and machine learning (ML) have revolutionized data extraction by enabling systems to learn and adapt over time. These technologies analyze vast amounts of data, recognize patterns, and make data extraction more accurate and efficient.
For instance, machine learning algorithms can detect and adapt to various data structures, enhancing the system's ability to handle diverse and complex data types, whether structured or unstructured.
This adaptability allows organizations to automate data extraction across various industries, including finance, healthcare, and retail.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is a cornerstone of automated data extraction, mainly when dealing with scanned documents, images, and PDFs. OCR software converts printed or handwritten text into machine-readable data, significantly reducing the need for manual entry.
Modern OCR systems can even handle complex layouts and varying fonts, extracting data accurately from various document types.
This capability is essential in industries like finance and insurance, where documents such as invoices, claims, and forms need to be processed quickly and accurately.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a powerful tool for automating the extraction of information from complex documents. It enables systems to understand and interpret human language, automating the classification and indexing of unstructured data in legal contracts, emails, and reports.
By applying NLP, organizations can automate tasks that traditionally require significant human intervention, such as summarizing documents, extracting key details, and categorizing content. This speeds up the process and reduces the risk of errors.
Automated data extraction systems are designed to scale effortlessly with an organization's needs. As data volumes increase, these systems can handle the growing load without compromising performance.
This scalability ensures that businesses can continue to process data efficiently as they expand, making automated data extraction a long-term solution that adapts to changing business needs.
Additionally, these systems are flexible enough to integrate with various data sources and formats, ensuring a seamless transition from manual to automated processes.
One critical advantage of automated data extraction tools is their ability to integrate seamlessly with existing enterprise systems, such as CRM, ERP, and other databases. This integration ensures that data flows smoothly across different departments and processes, reducing the risk of data silos and improving overall operational efficiency.
By aligning with current workflows, these tools minimize disruption while enhancing the accuracy and speed of data processing. Through these technologies, businesses can transform their data extraction processes, reducing manual labor and errors while increasing the speed and reliability of data processing.
Automated data extraction deals with various data types that organizations need to process. The nature of this data can vary widely, from structured data like databases to unstructured content such as emails, PDFs, and images.
Here’s an overview of the main types of data typically involved in the data extraction process:
Structured data refers to highly organized and formatted information to make it easy to search, retrieve, and analyze. This data is stored in tabular formats, typically within relational databases, where each row represents a unique record and each column represents a field or attribute.
Structured data relies on a fixed schema, meaning the data type stored in each column is predetermined. Because of this rigid organization, structured data can be easily manipulated using Structured Query Language (SQL) and other database management tools.
The predictability and organization of structured data make it suitable for traditional data processing and analysis.
Some examples include:
Unstructured data is information that needs a predefined format or organization, making it difficult to process and analyze using traditional data tools. Unlike structured data, unstructured data doesn’t fit neatly into a table or database.
Instead, it exists in formats like text, images, audio, and video, where the content is free-form and not easily searchable or categorized.
The complexity of unstructured data lies in its diversity; it can include anything from handwritten notes to social media posts and emails to multimedia files.
Processing unstructured data often requires advanced technologies, such as natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and computer vision, to extract meaningful insights.
Some examples include:
Semi-structured data is between structured and unstructured data and contains elements of both. Unlike structured data, it does not conform to a strict schema, but it still includes organizational tags or markers that separate data elements, allowing for partial organization.
Semi-structured data is flexible; it can be modified without altering the entire data structure. This flexibility makes semi-structured data more accessible to manage and process than fully unstructured data but still more complex than structured data.
Technologies like XML (Extensible Markup Language) and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) are commonly used to store and transport semi-structured data because they allow for hierarchies and relationships within the data.
Some examples include:
Textual data consists of written or printed words that convey information through language. This data type is pervasive across domains, from business documents to literature. Textual data is inherently unstructured, though it can be semi-structured when organized in formats like forms or tables.
Extracting meaningful information from textual data often requires natural language processing (NLP) techniques, such as text mining, sentiment analysis, or named entity recognition.
Due to its complexity, textual data can convey direct facts and subtleties such as tone, intent, and context, making its analysis both challenging and insightful. Some examples include:
Numerical data is inherently quantitative and is shown as numbers. It is used extensively in statistical analysis, mathematical modelling, and financial calculations.
Numerical data can be discrete, where values are countable and distinct (like the number of products sold), or continuous, where values fall within a range and can take any value (like temperature readings).
Numerical data is crucial for making data-driven decisions, allowing for precise measurements, comparisons, and trend analysis. Its structured nature makes it ideal for storage in databases and spreadsheets, where it can be easily manipulated and visualized. Some examples include:
Image data comprises visual information captured as photographs, scans, or other digital images. This data type is inherently unstructured, as it does not contain easily extractable fields or records like structured data does.
However, image data can be analyzed and processed using optical character recognition (OCR), image recognition, and computer vision.
These technologies extract information such as text, objects, and patterns from images. Image data is used across various fields, including healthcare, security, marketing, and more, often requiring sophisticated algorithms to interpret and utilize the information contained within the images. Some examples include:
Audio data refers to information captured in the form of sound recordings. It is often stored in formats like MP3, WAV, or AAC. Audio data includes spoken words, music, environmental sounds, and other acoustic elements.
Extracting meaningful information from audio data typically requires speech recognition, sound analysis, or signal processing techniques. Speech-to-text technology, for instance, can convert spoken language in audio recordings into written text for further study.
Beyond transcription, audio data can also be analyzed for tone, emotion, and specific sound patterns, making it valuable in areas like customer service, media, and security. Some examples include:
Video data comprises visual and audio content captured in a motion format, such as MP4, AVI, or MOV files. It is more complex than image or audio data because it combines visual and auditory information over time.
Extracting useful information from video data involves analyzing frames (images) for objects, actions, or patterns and processing the accompanying audio. Video analysis can involve object detection, facial recognition, motion tracking, or audio transcription.
This data type is essential in security, entertainment, and education, where visual and auditory elements are crucial for conveying information. Some examples include:
Geospatial data, or spatial data, describes the physical location and characteristics of objects or phenomena on Earth. This data type is often represented by coordinates (latitude and longitude) and can include additional attributes such as altitude, address, and geographical features.
Geospatial data is crucial for mapping, navigation, and location-based services. It is typically visualized through Geographic Information Systems (GIS), allowing users to overlay different data types on maps for analysis.
Geospatial data is collected from various sources, including satellites, GPS devices, drones, and surveys, and can be used for a wide range of applications, from urban planning to disaster management. Some examples include:
The data extraction process acquires data from source systems and stores the extracted data in a ‘data warehouse’ for further examination. There are two options for extraction methods:
Establishing a visual integration flow is imperative when extracting data logically. It helps developers devise a physical data extraction plan.
With the logical map in place, you must decide on which extraction approach to choose:
All data gets extracted directly from the source system in its entirety. You don't have to account for any logical data, such as timestamps, to be associated with source data since you are copying everything contained in the source system, entire tables, in one go.
For instance, assume that your source database has 500 records or more. Copying the table using the SELECT and FROM database commands would be faster.
If you include the WHERE clause on timestamps, extraction will take longer, depending on the table size and whether the timestamp column is indexed.
This approach extracts data in increments. It also extracts data altered or added after a well-defined event in the source database. Well-defined events mean anything trackable within the source system via timestamps, triggers, or custom extraction logic built into the system.
In transactional operations, standard master tables such as Product and Customer comprise millions of records, making it illogical to perform complete extraction every time and analyze the previous extraction with the new copy to mark the changed data.
A physical extraction performs a bit-by-bit copy of the full contents of a mobile device's flash memory. This extraction technique enables the collection of all live data as well as data that is hidden or has been deleted. By creating a bit-by-bit copy, deleted data can potentially be recovered.
Source systems typically have certain restrictions or limitations. For instance, logical data extraction from obsolete data storage systems is inconceivable. Data extraction from such systems is only feasible via Physical Extraction, which is classified further into Online and Offline Extraction.
There are three methods to extract data from documents:
Humans read the document and manually enter the data into the systems. Manual data entry can be a simple and easy-to-use method for entering small amounts of data.
Still, it can be time-consuming, prone to errors, inefficient, and expensive for businesses that need to process large volumes of data regularly.
The method first uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to convert images of text into machine-readable text. The OCR information is sent to the next steps of the pipeline.
The next steps use hard-coded rules and workflows varying for each document type. Custom rules are written using both image and text-based patterns.
Straight-through Processing (STP), a metric used by Document AI companies, can be defined as the percentage of documents processed/extracted without needing any manual human correction.
Rules/template-based extraction provides perfect STP for data extraction from structured documents. However, it is not a reliable data extraction solution for semi-structured documents because different rules need to be written for various formats and document types.
Furthermore, these rules need to be updated even for minor changes to the structure. The documents may come from third-party sources, so their format is out of our organization’s control. For instance, today's average mortgage application exceeds 350 pages and over 60 major document types.
This solution cannot handle the variety and complexity of documents coming from diverse sources and struggles to provide consistency in the process.
AI/ML-based extraction is used for automated Data extraction. This method also first uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Along with the text information, layout and style information is vital for document image understanding.
Today with the advancement of Artificial Intelligence, more specifically the innovation of MultiModal learning for data extraction, we get highly accurate State of the Art (SOTA) results.
AI/ML Based extraction has made significant progress in the document AI area. This method makes it possible to extract data from documents with varying content and structure. It can deal with the variety and complexity of documents from diverse sources.
It can further adapt to changing structures by finetuning or pretraining the model on the updated data structure. Hence, it can be a reliable data extraction solution for both semi-structured and unstructured documents.
Document AI companies have generic AI models for different document types like W2 forms, W9 forms, Acord forms, Bank Statements, Invoices, Financial Statements, Rent rolls, etc.
For each document type, models are trained on a huge volume of data consisting of varying content and structure. We can simply use those models as they provide great accuracy and high STP. For even higher accuracy, we can easily finetune the model on our data.
Suppose you need to extract data from a high volume of semi-structured and unstructured documents.
In that case, your obvious choice will be to use AI/ML-based data extraction as it is more flexible and accurate than both the other methods. Let’s further discuss the advantages of ML-based extraction over rules/template-based extraction:
Overall, AI/ML-based data extraction is more flexible, adaptable, and accurate than rule/template-based methods, making it a better tool for extracting data from various sources.
Data extraction is useful for businesses in many industries, including lending, insurance, commercial real estate (CRE), and logistics.
Some examples of how data extraction is used in these industries include:
Data extraction facilitates companies to migrate data from documents, credentials, and images into their databases.
This feature helps avoid having your data siloed by obsolete applications or software licenses. Let's have a look at some use cases of data extraction in different industries in detail:
Real estate investors analyze historical sales data for a specific property and compare it with similar other properties on distinct parameters to estimate the investment potential.
Most property managers extract this historical data from various document types and categorize them in a structured manner before comparison. However, manual extraction is susceptible to all kinds of errors, thus resulting in inaccurate data sets and erroneous estimates.
Logistics service providers extract and analyze heaps of data from invoices, bills of ladings, as well as other documents, and manually feed in updates to the TMS or ERP.
Commodity traders, shippers, food producers, and logistics providers are required to process hundreds of Bill of Lading documents every day. This process is executed manually, which is prone to human errors and delays.
As a property manager, you might have your desk or email inbox flooded with applications for properties that you manage. Weeding through all the paperwork to extract the core information that differs from application to application can get extremely tedious.
Such credentials hold the utmost significance, and thus, the sensitive information must be handled scrupulously.
Today, many invoices are sent in PDF format via fax or email. Individuals manually input the data into their ERP platform, Excel sheets, or any preferred software program.
However, since enterprises send and receive thousands of invoices every day, it becomes unavoidable to have automated accounts payable solutions to alleviate the load of manual entry and make the payable workflow system quicker, more accurate, and error-free.
When picking a document processing software for your business, you should be careful about different features that different platforms offer. Something that might work for one company may not work for the other. Therefore, you must have the following parameters in mind when making a purchasing decision:
The data extraction tool must be able to extract data without losing information from different document types, such as contracts, delivery notes, accounts payable, and more, and categorize them in their respective blueprints.
Companies prefer a data extraction tool that delivers swift results; however, it must also be highly accurate. The extracted output must retain information, and the tool must be able to extract tables, fonts, and crucial parameters without compromising the layout.
Pick a data extraction platform offering secure storage and seamless backup options. Cloud-based extraction enables you to extract data from websites seamlessly at any time.
Cloud servers can swiftly extract data relative to a single computer. The quickness of automated web data extraction affects the speed of your reaction to any rapid events that impact your enterprise.
Advanced automated data extraction software must operate on a simplistic UI. The layout of the software interface at launch must be simple enough to navigate you through executing a grinding task.
Besides providing an easy-to-use UI experience, the platform must also not compromise on the essential features.
Pricing might not be the most crucial factor, but it is a thoughtful consideration. It might not be a wise decision to invest in exorbitantly expensive software with extravagant features that do not apply to your company or choose the wrong pricing plan.
Consider evaluating the features of the software while ensuring that the cost stays within your budget.
Docsumo is a powerful and flexible solution for automating data extraction, designed to meet the diverse needs of modern businesses. With cutting-edge AI technologies, Docsumo simplifies the automated extraction process, making it efficient and highly accurate. Some key features and benefits of Docsumo's automated data extraction:
Docsumo’s powerful and adaptable solution makes it an ideal choice for businesses looking to optimize their data extraction processes.
Whether using pre-built models or creating custom solutions, Docsumo ensures that data extraction is seamless and highly effective.
The impact of Docsumo’s automated data extraction software is exemplified by its work with National Debt Relief, one of America’s largest debt settlement firms. Facing the daunting task of processing over 350,000 debt settlement letters annually, the firm needed a solution to handle the complexity and volume of its data extraction needs.
By integrating Docsumo’s Document AI, National Debt Relief was able to achieve:
Daniel Tilipman, Co-Founder & Executive Board Member, noted, “Docsumo does an excellent job for our specific use case. Debt settlement letters vary a lot from each other, but Docsumo manages to capture data accurately almost every single time at an unprecedented processing speed.”
With a proven track record, Docsumo is a go-to solution for businesses looking to revolutionize their data extraction processes.
Get Started today to discover how Docsumo can streamline document management and operational efficiency.
Automated data extraction is transforming how businesses manage and utilize data. By leveraging advanced technologies such as AI, OCR, and NLP, organizations can streamline the extraction process, significantly reducing manual effort, improving accuracy, and speeding up data processing.
Whether dealing with structured, unstructured, or semi-structured data, automated solutions provide the flexibility and scalability needed to handle diverse data sources efficiently. As the examples and tools discussed in this guide demonstrate, automation is not just a trend but a necessity for businesses aiming to stay competitive in a data-driven world.
With solutions like Docsumo, organizations can easily integrate automated extraction into their workflows, cutting costs, minimizing errors, and unlocking valuable insights from their data. Investing in automated data extraction enhances operational efficiency and positions businesses to adapt quickly to future challenges and opportunities.
As data grows in volume and complexity, the need for reliable, scalable, and accurate extraction methods will only increase, making automation a crucial element of any forward-thinking data strategy.
Automated data extraction software is a tool that uses technologies like AI, OCR, and machine learning to automatically capture and process data from various sources, such as documents, images, or web pages. Unlike manual data entry, which is time-consuming and prone to errors, automated extraction software can quickly and accurately extract data, reducing operational costs and improving efficiency.
Both automated data extraction and entry streamline data processes but have different roles. Automated data extraction captures and converts data from unstructured sources like PDFs into structured formats. Automated data entry inputs structured data into systems like databases or CRMs, improving accuracy and speed while reducing manual work.
These tools improve efficiency, reduce costs, enhance accuracy, and scale quickly, making them crucial for handling large data volumes.
Using technologies like NLP and OCR, automated data extraction tools can process unstructured data such as emails, social media posts, and scanned documents.
Custom AI models are beneficial if your business has unique data processing needs. They can be trained to handle specific formats and improve extraction accuracy over time.