Intelligent document processing powered by agentic AI: The enterprise advantage

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Explore the transformative power of intelligent document processing (IDP) and agentic AI.

Sandeep Singh

Director, Head of IDP and AI Product Management

April 22, 20257 mins

While intelligent document processing (IDP) has offered significant advancements in automation and data extraction, a new wave of innovation is poised to redefine what’s possible: agentic AI.

Imagine IDP systems that go beyond simple extraction to autonomously understand context, continuously learn and adapt, and make intelligent decisions based on your business needs. This isn’t just about incremental improvements; it’s a fundamental shift in how we interact with and leverage unstructured information.

In a recent webinar with GigaOm, we explored this new era of IDP and discussed how enterprises can find success.

The power of agentic AI in IDP

Agentic AI has the potential to elevate IDP from a tactical tool to a strategic driver of business value. It can enable faster processing, improved accuracy, and ultimately, smarter, context-aware decision-making. What makes agentic AI different?

Agentic AI explained

At its core, agentic AI refers to autonomous systems—sometimes called AI agents—that possess the ability to perceive their environment (in this case, documents and related data), understand contextual implications, and make decisions to achieve specific goals. Agentic AI goes beyond surface-level data extraction to understand the context surrounding the information. This deeper understanding allows businesses to leverage document insights for more informed and strategic decision-making across various functions. Unlike traditional IDP, which often relies on pre-defined rules and templates, agentic AI empowers IDP to:

Understand documents: By leveraging advanced natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, agentic AI can comprehend the meaning and relationships within complex documents, even those with variations in layout and language. It can identify key entities, understand the intent behind the text, and extract nuanced information that traditional methods might miss.
Make autonomous decisions: Agentic systems can make decisions based on extracted data, such as automatically routing documents to the appropriate departments or individuals based on an understanding of the content and context.
Proactively solve problems: Agentic IDP systems can handle issues like missing information by seeking it from memory, external databases, or generating summaries.
Continuously improve: Agentic systems are designed to learn from every document they process and every decision they make. This continuous learning loop allows them to improve their accuracy, efficiency, and ability to handle new and complex document types over time, without constant retraining.

AI is going to transform IDP from simply a data extraction tool to an intelligent decision-making partner.

Sandeep SinghDirector, Head of IDP and AI Product Management at Iron Mountain

Related link: AI agents and the need for AI-ready data

Data management in the age of advanced IDP and agentic AI

The power of advanced IDP and agentic AI hinges on the data they process. In an era of exploding unstructured data, the ability to effectively manage and prepare this information for AI is paramount.

Unlike structured data that fits neatly into databases, unstructured data presents unique challenges for AI. Consider this: approximately 80% of business data is unstructured. This means that it’s locked away in various formats, from documents and emails to images and handwritten notes. Extracting value from this deluge of information presents significant challenges, including:

Efficiently extracting meaningful information
Ensuring data accuracy and reliability
Maintaining regulatory compliance
Seamlessly integrating data into business workflows

Agentic AI-powered IDP plays a crucial role in overcoming these challenges by acting as a bridge, transforming complex unstructured data into a structured, actionable, and AI-ready format. This allows businesses to use their data effectively across the organization.

And while agentic AI and advanced IDP offer tremendous potential for efficiency and insight, these benefits can only be realized within a well-defined and consistently enforced data governance framework. This is particularly important in regulated industries like healthcare and finance, where compliance, security, and data privacy are paramount. Key aspects of data governance include:

Establishing clear data ownership
Defining data quality standards
Implementing security measures to protect sensitive information
Ensuring compliance with relevant regional regulations (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR)

As you embark on your journey with agentic AI-powered IDP, partnering with a trusted expert who possesses deep knowledge in both these cutting-edge technologies and the critical aspects of compliance and data governance is essential to mitigate risks and maximize the value of your information.

IDP for the future

Wouldn’t it be powerful if your document processing system could not only extract data but also understand the context, make intelligent decisions based on that information, and continuously learn and improve over time?

This is the promise of modern, agentic AI-powered IDP: It’s about moving beyond simple data retrieval to making your unstructured data AI-ready so it can fuel smarter business processes and provide deeper insights.

The evolution of IDP, particularly with the integration of agentic AI, presents a significant opportunity for enterprises to transform how they work with information. By understanding this progression from basic data capture to intelligent, autonomous processing, you can begin to envision the possibilities for your own organization. The key takeaway is that modern IDP is no longer just a cost center; it’s becoming a strategic asset that can drive agility, efficiency, and innovation. As you explore solutions, remember to look for platforms that not only offer advanced AI capabilities but also provide a clear path to making your data AI-ready and integrating seamlessly into your unique business landscape.

Recognized by industry analysts for our commitment and progress in AI technologies, including our placement as a Fast Mover in the GigaOm IDP Radar Report and a Tech Top 50 winner by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, Iron Mountain is empowering you to:

Unlock deeper insights to understand the true meaning and relationships within your documents
Automate intelligently and reduce manual intervention
Continuously improve and leverage AI to make your document processing more accurate and faster over time.
Build a future-ready foundation with a unified platform that integrates seamlessly with your existing systems and provides the governance and security you need

Ready to unlock the power of agentic AI and intelligent document processing for your organization?

Iron Mountain InSight® Intelligent Document Processing is part of the Iron Mountain InSight^® Digital Experience Platform (DXP), our scalable end-to-end software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. This modular platform allows you to incorporate digital and physical Content Management and Information Governance capabilities to transform your information experience.

Transform your information into insights.

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