10 Document Types You Can Process with Astera

Your docs are a lot like your family—not in the corporate jargony “we are a family” way, but more in the “can’t live with them, can’t live without them” way.

Yes, these docs are crucial in more ways than one, but teams that regularly work with them know that the time they spend searching for, cleansing, and prepping their docs can be better utilized elsewhere.

While there has been some progress, the need to incorporate efficient and accurate document processing is still there.

Welcome to the Future of Document Processing

Whether you work in Accounting, Logistics, or any of the other document-intensive functions, your docs should be the supporting cast, not the big bad villain you have to defeat to get some work done.

Let’s suppose your team handles hundreds, if not thousands, of documents with unique layouts from various sources on the daily. You have to sort these documents by file type and layout and extract the data you need. This is followed by cleaning and prepping the data for analysis and integrating it with your existing systems. Glass half-full or half-empty; all of this takes hours, if not days, of work until it’s time to rinse and repeat as more documents come pouring in.

Tell us you’re seeing this vicious circle, too, right?

But what if there was a better way? There is, and it’s called, you guessed it, Astera, aka the future of document processing.

Astera intelligently detects the file format and source of your incoming documents and maps them to where they need to go. By consolidating all your data into one flow, Astera simplifies and automates your document processing, so you can save the hours spent preparing and processing your docs.

One more thing…Astera also intelligently and accurately extracts data for analysis so that you can go from unprocessed docs to ready-for-analysis data in just a few clicks.

Now, we know you’re giddy with excitement and wondering if Astera can process the type of documents you work with.

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is yes; the list of document types that Astera can process is endless. But as an example, here are 10 document types you can process with Astera!

Astera and your documents should partner up!

Astera's AI-powered document processing is the solution to all your document woes. Leverage it to do hours of doc processing in seconds.

Book a free demo to see how.

Ten document types you can process with Astera

1. Invoices (Make financial workflows efficient again)

Whether in retail or financial services, invoices carry a wealth of data that is crucial for several strategic reasons. Apart from helping with inventory and cash flow management, invoices are crucial for business intelligence as well. Still, the big challenge with processing invoices is that they can exist in a variety of formats, such as scanned docs, digital PDFs, and even phone-captured images! Plus, the varying layouts add another layer of complication.

None of these are problems for Astera, though, as it can tackle variety in formats, changing layouts, and disparity of sources without missing a beat. You can automate invoice data capture to ensure all relevant data is captured and extracted effortlessly, making financial workflows efficient while improving your company’s bottom line.

Case in point: A US government department leveraged Astera to automate invoice data extraction, reducing processing time from a couple of hours to just under a minute.

2. Purchase Orders (Make procurement/sales fulfillment effortless)

Procurement professionals have long observed the lack of automation as the biggest challenge in procurement. Since purchase order processing involves several compliance checkpoints and approval stages to initiate an order and ensure accurate order processing, automating it can help your company save resources and gain a competitive edge by processing sales or purchases quickly.

Need more convincing that Astera and your PO PDFs should be BFFs? Read up on how Astera can automate your purchase order processing.

Case in point: Ciena Corporation, a global networking systems and software company, was able to automate data extraction from its purchase orders, making document processing 15 times faster!

3. Claims (Process claims in seconds)

An average insurance claim goes through more than 20 checkpoints before it’s approved. While these checkpoints are necessary for evaluating, validating, and settling claims, manual claims processing is slow and resource-intensive.

Enter Astera. By automating claims processing using AI, Astera helps you boost speed and improve accuracy while complying with the necessary regulations.

Case in point: With Astera’s help, Aclaimant, a risk reduction platform that helps businesses streamline claims processing, minimized time and resource utilization by 50% by automating claims processing!

4. Contracts (Stay on top of compliance)

From HR data management for MNCs to vendor management in pharmaceuticals, automating contract data extraction has applications wherever there are, well, contracts. When it comes to manual contract processing, not only is there a spacious room for error, but it also takes up thousands of hours of manual work.

On the other hand, automated contract processing offers your company compliance and risk mitigation benefits and helps with streamlining communication, resource optimization, and cost savings.

Case in point: A Finland-based manufacturing giant needs to process thousands of PDF contracts to see who opted for after-sales service and who didn’t and service their customers accordingly. Manually reviewing each contract was too time-consuming (for reference, each contract is over 250 pages). Using Astera, they were able to automate contract data extraction, processing 40,000 contracts in just four days!

5. Forms (Data collection, simplified)

Whether it’s customer feedback, patient forms, or lead generation, one way or the other, data collection through forms is an essential activity for your business. However, deciding between manually processing these forms or automating them can make or break your competitive advantage.

Think about it. Automating your form processing means you can quickly turn data into actionable insights for your product/service development or customer support teams. Similarly, if you recently conducted an event and got hundreds of signups (read: potential leads), timely follow-up could be key to successful conversion while your business is still fresh in the memory.

While we’re on the topic, check out this exclusive whitepaper on how you can enhance customer experience by automating feedback form data extraction.

6. Reports (Data analysis, made easier than ever)

Just like forms are integral to most business activities these days, reports are crucial for timely data analysis and decision-making. Still, much like most items on this list, reports also come in varying formats and file types. If you’re spending hours manually extracting and prepping data from these reports, you’ll end up behind the eight ball.

By automating your report processing using Astera, your data will be analysis-ready in minutes instead of days. So, instead of poring over hundreds of pages of thousands of reports to find the relevant info, all you have to do is tell Astera Intelligence what you need, and we’ll handle the rest. Yes, it really is that easy.

Case in point: Treasure Health, a non-profit serving thousands of patients in California, were able to streamline their report generation process to minutes of work instead of hours.

7. Tax Documents (Making tax season a summer breeze)

We get it. Nobody loves tax documents (accountants don’t count) but what if you could process all your tax documents in just a few clicks using Astera? Dislike them or despise them, the fact of the matter is that tax form data extraction, especially from documents like W-2, 1099, and 1098, is crucial for individuals, businesses, tax professionals, lenders, and financial institutions alike.

But by automating tax form processing with Astera, you save time, resources, and your sanity and ensure accurate and compliant tax filing every single time. How? Astera not only accurately extracts all the data but also integrates all your tax documents into a single workflow, no matter the number of sources or their formats.

Case in point: An accounting firm specializing in return filing needed to extract data from diverse income tax return forms. Expectedly, the manual approach was time-consuming and error-prone. With Astera, the firm reduced their data extraction time by 80%, decreased errors by 10%, and tripled the speed of their turnaround times for tax return filing. Talk about a win-win-win!

8. Shipping Documents (Optimize your logistics)

Anyone who works with shipping docs knows that some of them are outdated (we’re looking at you, bill of lading). In fact, a single shipment can require as many as 50 sheets of paper to be physically exchanged between 30 stakeholders! Shipping document processing is ripe for automation, and whoever moves first stands to gain a significant competitive advantage.

Automating shipping document processing not only optimizes your logistics operation but also saves resources and time, improving your supply chain efficiency.

9. Medical Records (Delivering the best possible care)

Medical record processing is unique in that it requires highly accurate data extraction as well as strict compliance with the regulations. However, automating medical record processing using Astera can enhance accuracy and help with data compliance and security.

Case in point: Cherry Health serves thousands of patients across Michigan through its 26 locations. Using Astera, they not only simplified their complex recordkeeping process in which data was coming in from a variety of sources in different formats such as text, reports, PDFs, spreadsheets, and log files. By eliminating manual handling of patient forms, they saved considerable time and resources and enabled users to create readable PDF versions of patient charts.

10. Legal Documents (Close the case on excessive paperwork)

Law firms and legal departments know that court is only half the battle. Manually processing and managing thousands of legal documents is the other half. The diverse nature of legal documents equates to disparate sources, varying formats, and different file types.

However, automating legal document processing helps lawyers significantly reduce research, discovery, and document preparation time. Plus, by optimizing lawyer performance, document processing automation offers your firm a host of benefits in terms of efficiency, cost savings, and profitability.

Step into the Future of Document Processing with Astera

To review, Astera’s document processing capabilities know no bounds. However, these ten document types should give you some idea of the possibilities of automating your documents. Whether you’re looking to make your document processing more efficient, cut down costs, improve data accuracy or compliance, or broaden your document processing horizons, Astera can offer all of that and more.

Book a customized demo to see why Astera and your docs should partner up.