Data Extraction from contracts
The old way of capturing essential data attributes from legal documents has been transcended, thanks to technology. It is difficult to achieve very high accuracy from software and consistency from manual methods. Yet we hear about Artificial Intelligence (AI), we hear about Machine Learning software systems and other new technologies for data extraction from contracts. But when we dig into the details, the accuracy is not at the standard for the company to make reliable business decisions. The number of attributes one wants to extract is limited and the systems are not fully flexible. The systems cannot adapt to the variability of documents from which the essential data elements are to be extracted. There may be errors due to OCR – the process to convert image-based documents into text-based documents (a “5” may be converted to an “s”), causing any software to either miss or wrongly extract the data. Furthermore, there may be handwritten attributes.
It is essential to abstract all the critical elements in contracts if you want to be able to reliably search through the required information on a computer. You expect to have all the information, not just some because it’s about accuracy and completeness. You can’t afford to miss even one critical element, as that can be the one that causes trouble – it has to be thorough.
Unfortunately, there is no magic software package that does it all. And there is no existing combination of software packages that together can deliver the high-quality accuracy that is necessary. This means an element of human intervention is needed for stringent quality control to ensure accuracy.
With organizations preferring to stay within their core competency it makes sense to outsource. Businesses are interested in results, outcomes, and having the quality they need to continue, successfully, in business. Outsourcing to a hybrid solution saves time, money, and delivers the best results without dilution of business focus.
The only thing you need to do is; to make a decision, or not to. Buy and install software and use internal people? Or, outsource for a hybrid solution. If you focus on the outcomes – the end-result – then the choice is much easier.
How Brightleaf can help?
Brightleaf Solutions gets Six Sigma (99.999%) accuracy because of the combination of people, processes, and software. By using the strength of the software, all the attributes are identified and extracted. By using people in the process, we quality assure the outputs at every step in the process. And because it is our proprietary process that we manage completely in-house with our own staff the quality and data security are assured. Brightleaf is an outsourcing solution so you only pay for what you want and use.