Intelligent Data Interchange How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Document Exchange

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With AI, Intelligent Data Interchange (IDI) is revolutionizing document exchange. Through error correction, data enrichment, and scalability, IDI becomes indispensable. Is this the new standard in document exchange?

Philipp Futterknecht is Co-Founder at H&F Solutions.

For decades, ERP systems have provided valuable services in optimizing central internal business processes. By integrating artificial intelligence into these systems, efficiency has already been increased in many areas.

A new focus is, however, directed at the exchange of information between ERP systems—communication with business partners in the form of documents, such as invoices, orders, or order changes. But traditional approaches quickly reach their limits here. New technologies like Intelligent Data Interchange are necessary, providing a modern solution for automated and intelligent data exchange.

In the history of commerce, the exchange of documents such as orders and invoices has always played a central role. While this process was primarily paper-based until the 1970s, the introduction of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) brought about a fundamental change. Electronic data transmission became the standard, particularly with the advancement of ERP systems.

Despite its widespread acceptance, traditional EDI technologies face significant challenges that limit their effectiveness and scalability, pushing companies to their limits.

High Costs, Low Agility: The Price of Outdated Data Exchange Methods

A central problem is the limited flexibility of the standards. These often do not allow for the consideration of individual requirements of trading partners. This results in rigid processes that are difficult to adapt to dynamic market changes. In addition, manual post-processing is a significant weakness. Approximately 85 percent of the data sets transmitted in document exchange require interventions, whether for error correction or adaptation to specific requirements. This is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors.

Another obstacle is the high implementation costs resulting from the proprietary nature of many EDI systems. These complicate interoperability between different platforms and lead to complex, costly integration processes. This poses a significant burden, especially for smaller companies. Additionally, the shortage of skilled workers exacerbates the situation further. The complexity of existing systems requires specialized personnel, which is increasingly difficult to find.

These challenges highlight that a rethink is imperative to meet the demands of the modern business world. Intelligent, flexible, and easily integrable solutions offer the potential to overcome existing weaknesses and sustainably optimize EDI processes.

Future-Proof Data Exchange: Why IDI is the New Standard

With Intelligent Data Interchange, or IDI, a new era of data exchange begins. The integration of AI and machine learning (ML) elevates the process to a new level: data is not only transmitted but also analyzed, enriched, and contextualized simultaneously. This creates a dynamic, self-learning solution that enhances data quality and efficiency equally, laying the foundation for future-proof business processes.

IDI-based technologies offer numerous advantages that help companies make their processes more efficient. A central aspect is automatic data validation, where incorrect or incomplete data sets are automatically detected and corrected. This reduces errors and significantly increases data quality.

Additionally, IDI-based technologies are characterized by continuous adaptability: they respond flexibly to new requirements and self-optimize to consistently meet current conditions. This results in increased scalability, allowing companies to easily expand their systems and thus manage growing business demands. Ultimately, Intelligent Data Interchange also contributes to resource savings by reducing manual processes. This allows for savings in both costs and time.

Intelligent, Flexible, Cost-Saving: IDI-Based Cloud Solutions

Companies that want to remain competitive in the long term must redefine their data exchange strategies. A sustainable IDI solution goes beyond short-term improvements and offers a platform for continuous growth. Especially in document exchange—a central element of trade relationships—intelligent systems represent an indispensable resource.

Automated document exchange between ERP systems is enabled by cloud solutions like Dara using Intelligent Data Interchange. This allows both data from unstructured formats, like PDF, and data from structured formats, such as XML, to be processed automatically.

Data exchange

Legal questions in the use of data rooms

This is How IDI Helps With Automated Document Exchange

The extraction of relevant information from documents is initially carried out using AI-based data classification. This not only identifies the required information but also creates a structure for further processing. After the necessary contextualization, the data is then optimized using patented data enrichment.

For example, missing item numbers or address data are supplemented, homogenized, and corrected. This includes the incorporation of external data sources. Using these patented methods, corresponding cloud solutions can close data gaps, increase process efficiency, and reduce process costs. As a result of the higher data quality, fewer manual interventions are necessary, and employee feedback is only proactively and interactively requested by the system in specific cases.

Through the given feedback, the system learns and can further increase the degree of automation. This means that based on the feedback, the queried decisions can be made independently in the future, and corresponding cloud solutions take on the role of intelligent virtual assistants. Subsequently, the transformation of the data into the target format is carried out based on the specified target ontology and provided for the target ERP system.

The holistic approach of Dara covers all process steps, for example. It minimizes the need for human intervention and allows easy adaptation to individual requirements regarding data correction, source and target formats, and layout. This enables an automation level of up to 99 percent for unstructured documents through Intelligent Data Interchange, while simultaneously reducing costs by 70 percent.

The Future Belongs to Intelligent Value Creation

The use of artificial intelligence through Intelligent Data Interchange at the interface between ERP systems and external partners opens up new perspectives for the digital transformation of companies. In contrast to traditional approaches, which were often limited to isolated processes, IDI enables holistic, intelligent data exchange between companies. Comprehensive automation and integration are far more than a technological advancement—they represent a strategic investment in the future security and competitiveness of modern companies.