Transform Document Processing with AI
Artificial intelligence has revolutionised the way organisations handle document processing. Tasks that once required manual effort and significant time investment—such as document classification, summarisation, and metadata extraction—can now be automated with remarkable accuracy and efficiency.
Common Use Cases
AI-powered document processing excels across a variety of business scenarios:
Data extraction: Automatically capture key information such as names, addresses, dates, and amounts from scanned documents including invoices, purchase orders, and paper forms
Document classification: Intelligently categorise large document collections based on content, enabling better organisation and retrieval
Content summarisation: Generate concise summaries of lengthy documents, saving time and improving information accessibility
Metadata enrichment: Automatically populate document properties to enhance searchability and compliance.
Building a Solution with Microsoft Power Automate
Modern automation platforms like Microsoft Power Automate have dramatically reduced the barriers to implementing intelligent document processing. What previously required months of development time and significant capital investment can now be deployed in days or even hours. The shift to pay-as-you-go pricing models—where you're charged based on tokens processed—has made these solutions accessible to businesses of all sizes.
This rapid deployment capability fundamentally changes how organisations can approach innovation. Businesses can now trial AI solutions with minimal upfront investment, validate their effectiveness in real-world scenarios, and scale up only when proven value is demonstrated. If a particular use case doesn't deliver the expected productivity gains, the system can be decommissioned quickly without ongoing financial commitment.
Practical Implementation
In the accompanying video, I demonstrate a straightforward Power Automate flow that functions as an HTTP endpoint, processing documents and prompts through an AI model. This versatile approach can be adapted to multiple scenarios:
SharePoint integration: Automatically populate metadata fields for documents stored in your SharePoint libraries
Email processing: Monitor Outlook shared mailboxes for client correspondence, extract and save attachments to SharePoint, and capture relevant attributes as searchable metadata
Custom workflows: Build tailored solutions that integrate with your existing business processes
The Innovation Advantage
The most compelling aspect of modern AI document processing is the dramatically reduced cost of experimentation. This accessibility creates opportunities for organisations to explore diverse use cases, test hypotheses quickly, and iterate based on real results. It's in this environment of low-risk experimentation that genuine innovation flourishes.
Whether you're looking to streamline invoice processing, improve document compliance, or simply reduce manual data entry, AI-powered solutions offer a practical path forward that's both cost-effective and scalable.