A new solution lets companies process and integrate PDF documents automatically with 100% accuracy using any system. 

Montréal, Canada – Electronic data interchange (EDI) lets businesses connect without workflow barriers, but what happens when the interface isn’t a digital data handoff, but a PDF document? While the document can easily be delivered electronically, the data it carries is another story. Business systems have no way of “viewing” and extracting the information on the documents.

To bring PDFs into digital workflow, companies incur added costs of manual processing, as well as risk of errors and processing delays. “The problem doesn’t involve just a few occurrences a month, but hundreds or thousands of invoices, certifications, applications, claims and other business transaction documents,” said Didier Gombert, CEO of Objectif Lune. “The manual effort and cost to keep up with the flood of documents would be impossible to sustain.”

Forcing Systems to Depend on Human Help

“PDF documents are perfect for people to read, but become extremely difficult for automated machine programs to interpret and pull out the necessary information without human intervention,” explained Jan Sundelin, CEO of TIE Kinetix.

“OCR has been around for a long time and still can’t provide 100% accuracy. The moment you need people to re-enter or adjust documents manually, you introduce additional expense, time and possibility for errors,” he added.

Going the Last Mile in Business Information Exchange

So how do companies overcome this obstacle? A newly announced partnership between Objectif Lune and TIE Kinetix holds the answer. “By adding PlanetPress solutions to the TIE Kinetix SaaS platform, companies can process, translate and integrate PDF documents automatically with 100% accuracy with any business or ERP system,” said Sundelin.

“Our combined technology fully automates integration processes based on PDF documents or legacy print streams,” said Gombert. “Customers can integrate any kind of business document with their smaller trading partners who can’t exchange information electronically directly from their business system.”

“PDF to EDI” Workflow

“It’s an elegant solution, because there’s no need for businesses to change the way you work day to day,” Gombert remarked. “We simply remove the manual labor and re-keying. Businesses continue using EDI as they did before, but adding PDF as an input. It’s something like ‘PDF to EDI.’

“Too often companies must adapt to systems, not the way around,” he said. “The Objectif Lune philosophy is about open, flexible and even enjoyable software that frees customers from inflexible IT infrastructure.” PlanetPress does this by working with existing systems and integrating seamlessly into complex environments.

Seamless, automated processes eliminate friction between suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, partners and their customers. Enterprises are free to engage with smaller firms that may provide specialized services or cover a particular geography. “Electronic back office communication offers great potential to accelerate cycle times, minimize manual effort, and free up more time and resources to spend on core business performance. Now significant barriers to participation – and better relationships – have been eliminated,” noted Gombert.

To learn more about the partnership and solutions, contact Bertrand Guignat.