Automation has evolved far beyond simple data capture. Businesses are no longer satisfied with systems that extract information from documents. They want intelligent workflows that can understand, validate, and act on that data instantly.
Two technologies often come up in this discussion: Document Intelligence and Customized Workflows. While both improve efficiency, they serve different roles and work best together.
What Is Document Intelligence?
Document Intelligence (DI) is the technology layer that understands documents. It reads a document, identifies what type it is (invoice, contract, employment verification), extracts key information (vendor name, invoice amount, due date), and validates that the data makes sense.
DI systems use machine learning and large language models to understand document structure, context, and meaning. Unlike template-based systems that break when documents change format, DI systems adapt to variations and learn from examples.
Document Intelligence Examples:
- Read an invoice and extract vendor, amount, date, line items, and payment terms
- Read a contract and extract critical dates, renewal clauses, and payment obligations
- Read employment verification and confirm job title, salary, and tenure
- Read a bank statement and validate account ownership and balances
Key Capability: Understanding what information matters and why.
What Are Configurable Workflows?
Configurable workflows are the process layer that decides what to do with the information DI extracts. They orchestrate the flow of documents through your business process, making decisions at each step.
Workflow Examples:
- "If invoice amount exceeds $10,000, route to AP Manager for approval"
- "If contract includes auto-renewal, flag for legal review"
- "If employment verification salary is below threshold, request additional income documentation"
- "If bank statement shows unusual activity, escalate to compliance"
Key Capability: Orchestrating what happens next based on extracted data and business rules.
Why Both Matter (They're Not Interchangeable)
Here's where many organizations get confused: Document Intelligence and Configurable Workflows solve different problems.
Document Intelligence Alone (Without Workflows)
You extract data perfectly from 10,000 invoices. Now what?
- You need someone to review the extractions and validate they're correct
- You need to decide which invoices go to AP, which go to department heads, which go to procurement
- You need to check if amounts exceed approval thresholds
- You need to route exceptions somewhere
- You need to format data for your accounting system
Without workflows, you've just replaced manual data entry with manual decision-making. You've moved the bottleneck, not eliminated it.
Configurable Workflows Alone (Without Intelligence)
You build a beautiful workflow: "If invoice > $10,000, route to manager approval." But to power this workflow, you need to know the invoice amount.
Without Document Intelligence, you have two options:
- Manual extraction: Someone reads the invoice and enters the amount. You've automated the routing but not the extraction. Still manual.
- Template-based extraction: You define fixed positions where the amount appears. This works until a vendor changes their invoice layout. Then the workflow breaks.
Without intelligence, your workflow is brittle and still depends on human involvement.
Why They Work Together
Document Intelligence solves the "what" problem: What does this document say?
Configurable Workflows solve the "what next" problem: What should we do based on what we learned?
Together, they create end-to-end automation:
- Intelligence Layer: Document comes in → AI understands it → Extracts key data with confidence scores
- Validation Layer: Rules check that data is reasonable (amount is positive, date is not in future, required fields are present)
- Workflow Layer: Based on extracted data and validation results, the system automatically routes:
- High-confidence, valid invoices → Auto-post to accounting system
- Low-confidence extractions → Route to AP staff for 30-second review
- Validation failures (missing required fields) → Route back to vendor for correction
- Amount-based routing (over $10K) → Route to manager for approval
- Risk flags (unusual vendor, new vendor) → Route to compliance
- Integration Layer: Approved invoices flow directly to QuickBooks, Netsuite, or your accounting system. Rejections trigger email notifications with context.
The result: 10,000 invoices. 9,500 process straight-through without human involvement. 500 route to appropriate humans with all context they need. Zero manual data entry. Zero re-entry of data.
The Business Impact
A financial services company receives 5,000 invoices monthly:
Before (Manual Processing):
- AP staff manually enters 5-7 fields per invoice
- Supervisor spot-checks 10% for errors
- Processing time: 15-20 days after invoice receipt
- 3-4 FTEs required
- Error rate: 2-4%
- Cost: $200K-$300K annually in labor
With Document Intelligence Only (No Workflow):
- AI extracts data with 94% accuracy
- Someone still needs to validate extractions and route invoices
- Processing time: 10-15 days
- 2-3 FTEs required (improvement, but still significant)
- Cost: $150K-$200K annually in labor + $5K/month software
With Both (Intelligence + Workflows):
- AI extracts data with 94% accuracy
- Validation rules catch missing/invalid data
- Intelligent routing sends valid invoices straight to accounting, flags exceptions
- Processing time: Same-day (automated invoices) + 1-2 hours for exceptions
- 0.5 FTE required (exception handling only)
- Cost: $5K-$10K annually in labor + $5K-$15K/month software
Year-One ROI: $180K-$290K in labor savings. Payback in 1-3 months.
A Word on "Configurable"
Not all workflow solutions are equally configurable.
Low Configurability: Pre-built workflows for specific use cases (invoices, receipts). You fit your process to the tool.
Medium Configurability: Visual workflow builders where you drag-and-drop steps. You define the logic, but you're constrained by what the builder allows.
High Configurability: Visual builders that let you define any logic you need: conditional routing based on multiple data fields, dynamic escalation paths, integration with external systems, approval hierarchies.
For financial services, medium to high configurability is essential. Your processes are complex. A tool that only handles standard invoice processing won't scale to contracts, compliance documents, or loan applications.
Choosing Between Document Intelligence and Workflows
You need both. The question is whether to buy them separately or as an integrated platform.
Option 1: Best-of-Breed Components
Approach: Use a specialized Document Intelligence provider (Google Document AI, AWS Textract, or Floowed) and connect it to a separate workflow orchestration platform (Make, Power Automate, Zapier).
Pros:
- Maximum flexibility; choose the best tool for each layer
- Each tool focuses on what it does best
- Easier to replace one component if needed
Cons:
- More complex integration required
- Data must be passed between systems
- If something breaks, is it the intelligence layer or the workflow layer?
- Implementation takes longer (8-12 weeks vs. 2-4 weeks)
Option 2: Integrated Platform
Approach: Use a platform that combines Document Intelligence and Configurable Workflows (like Floowed).
Pros:
- Single system, single vendor, single support contract
- Intelligence and workflows are built to work together
- Faster implementation (2-4 weeks)
- Easier troubleshooting and support
- Lower total cost of ownership
Cons:
- Less flexibility to swap out individual components
- You're committed to one vendor's approach
The Bottom Line
Document Intelligence without workflows is incomplete automation. Workflows without document intelligence are manual processes disguised as automation.
The organizations winning in financial services are those deploying both: intelligent document understanding feeding intelligent business workflows. This combination eliminates manual bottlenecks, scales to high volumes, and adapts as your business changes.
Ready to see how Document Intelligence and Configurable Workflows solve your specific challenges? Book a demo with our team and we'll walk through your documents and processes, showing you exactly where intelligence and workflows intersect to drive ROI.
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