August 15, 2025
Your organization’s data moves it forward and empowers you to make decisions. You rely on that information being relevant, easily accessed, and actionable. Automated data capture, like IBM Datacap, streamlines document processing while helping your organization access and act on previously hidden or time-intensive data resources. Here’s how IBM Datacap works and what it can do to transform your data into a more valuable asset.
Since its inception decades ago, data capture has evolved from manual data entry and document scanning into a powerful, machine-learning (ML) technological marvel that has become essential for organizations to keep up in the modern digital business landscape. The latest generation of data capture, “cognitive capture,” utilizes artificial intelligence to overcome the two greatest challenges of capturing data—locating the needed data in a document and identifying the type of document.
Seventy-two percent of companies have invested in technology to improve enterprise content and process management. One of those companies, Argentina’s Banco Galicia, can scan and classify 264,000 documents per month using IBM Datacap and FileNet.
Cognitive data capture uses AI technology to process documents similar to the way humans do—by studying the layout for clues about content, analyzing and classifying the document’s content, extracting data, and drawing conclusions from the data. Next, data capture software takes action according to what it has analyzed. Then it builds a knowledge base to enable it to learn from its new experiences and operate with increased accuracy.
As data capture software has evolved and grown more accurate, organizations have increasingly considered it essential because it helps make better decisions faster. Data capture systems make information more easily accessible and accurate, and therefore more flexibly integrated than manual data entry. Specifically, IBM Datacap offers a set of unified components and capabilities that adapt to every organization’s policies and procedures.
Intelligent capture systems do not just scan and store documents. They can reveal previously hidden information and empower executives to leverage it. In the past, most companies simply scanned their documents and stored them in an indexed repository, relying on employees to perform labor-intensive and time-consuming searches for any needed information.
Datacap protects your employees’ valuable time and accelerates your processes by making data actionable, accessible, and consistent. Shifting the time it would take for a staff member to review a 10-page PDF hundreds of times to an ML-trained computer drawing conclusions in seconds boosts morale, saves time, and speeds up repetitive tasks very few want to do.
Machine learning, advanced analytics, AI, and more all come together to improve everything from supply-chain and workforce management to marketing and the customer experience. Digital transformation of automated data capture is a crucial step toward higher employee productivity and delivering an end-to-end customer experience.
Machine Learning powers Datacap’s intelligent capture, automatically classifying and extracting content from a variety of document types. Datacap automates the processing of everything from tax returns and invoices to letters and mortgage application documents that can be difficult or slow to capture with traditional methods.
For example, Datacap can read a document and determine it is a letter by identifying the sender’s address at the top and their signature at the bottom. Using its library of already-processed documents, it will evaluate key phrases like “not what we agreed to” or “our attorney recommends” and conclude that the document is not only a letter but a dispute letter. It can even recommend forwarding the letter to customer service, something template-based data capture systems cannot do.
Enriched mobility empowers users to capture and submit documents easily and accurately using Datacap’s unified user interface (UI) on their iOS or Android smartphone or tablet. Mobile devices are increasingly popular for sharing documents and accelerating business transactions, and Datacap leverages that data so your business won’t miss a single detail.
Datacap offers full integration with essential digital automation tools for workflow, content management, and more.
Multichannel input from scanners, faxes, images, PDFs, and more means Datacap can process critical data, no matter what form it takes. Its simple point-and-click interface offers an adaptable rules-based workflow capture for quick deployment.
Sensitive data particularly benefits from Datacap. Datacap’s role-based redaction feature enables content collaborators to control high-level or confidential data by censoring, masking, or restricting content so users only see what is necessary for them to see. Personal data that requires heightened protection can be flagged and tracked automatically, making compliance with data protection regulations less arduous.
As an award-winning digital transformation solutions company, including DAS being named Imaging Magazine’s “National Imaging Reseller of the Year,” we are committed to partnering with businesses and organizations to help them streamline their document processing. Because these projects can be quite complex, DAS seeks to first understand your unique needs with a simple conversation. Contact us today to find out how DAS can improve your efficiency, increase your security, and increase the value of your data.
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