EOS Deutscher Inkasso-Dienst, a spe­cia­list in receiv­a­bles manage­ment, processes around 2.5 million incoming documents every year – supported by AI solutions from Insiders. The flexible adap­ta­bi­lity and con­ti­nuous impro­ve­ment of the solutions are a clear advantage in the constant change and growth of the debt coll­ec­tion service provider. With the new Inte­gra­tion Layer for OCR (ILFO), EOS can now handle even par­ti­cu­larly complex documents and further advance dark pro­ces­sing.

The EOS Group, a company of the Otto Group, is a leading tech­no­logy-based investor in research port­fo­lios and an expert in the pro­ces­sing of out­stan­ding receiv­a­bles. With more than 6,000 employees in over 20 countries, EOS has been sup­porting companies in a wide range of indus­tries in receiv­a­bles manage­ment for more than 50 years, enabling them to get paid for the goods and services they provide and focus on their core business. In Germany, EOS Deutscher Inkasso-Dienst processes millions of documents of all kinds—from struc­tured invoices to freely for­mu­lated emails to hand­written documents.

Special attention is required when iden­ti­fying data pro­tec­tion requests in which a customer requests infor­ma­tion about or deletion of their data in accordance with the EU GDPR. Such requests must be distin­gu­ished from general infor­ma­tion on data pro­tec­tion, for example in email signa­tures. Since data pro­tec­tion requests are subject to response deadlines, a high degree of precision is required here.

In the past, the pro­ces­sing of hand­written documents or hand­written notes on documents, poorly pho­to­gra­phed receipts, or scanned incoming mail with imprecise grayscale tones often had to be done manually—with the cor­re­spon­ding personnel costs and pro­ces­sing times. The promised impro­ve­ments offered by new OCR tech­no­logy were therefore more than welcome.

VARIOUS OCR COM­PON­ENTS FOR GREATER EFFI­CI­ENCY AND AN INCREASE IN THE DARK PRO­CES­SING RATE

With the aim of incre­asing the effi­ci­ency of incoming mail pro­ces­sing through more dark pro­ces­sing, EOS Deutscher Inkasso-Dienst decided to expand Insiders‘ existing OmnIA (formerly smart FIX) solution with the Inte­gra­tion Layer for OCR (ILFO).

ILFO and Microsoft OCR were rolled out for indi­vi­dual clients within a few weeks and imple­mented inde­pendently by the company.
ILFO allows different OCR tech­no­lo­gies to be flexibly combined, seam­lessly inte­grated into existing systems, and ulti­m­ately used for specific use cases. Depending on the appli­ca­tion, EOS can now use spe­cia­lized OCR com­pon­ents and achieve signi­fi­cantly better reco­gni­tion quality.

EOS Deutscher Inkasso-Dienst currently processes around 2.5 million documents per year with the new solution. Of these, around 80% of incoming mail can now be clas­si­fied correctly and processed com­ple­tely auto­ma­ti­cally.

EOS Deutscher Inkasso-Dienst currently processes around 2.5 million documents per year with the new solution. Of these, around 80% of incoming mail can now be com­ple­tely automated, correctly clas­si­fied, and fully read for further pro­ces­sing. With Microsoft OCR inte­grated via ILFO, hand­wri­ting reco­gni­tion in par­ti­cular has been signi­fi­cantly improved and the number of documents requiring manual post-pro­ces­sing has been reduced by half.

The pro­ces­sing of scanned or pho­to­gra­phed documents has also been signi­fi­cantly optimized, so that around 75,000 documents per year no longer need to be processed manually.

Since the quality of text reco­gni­tion has also been improved for machine-generated documents, keyword searches for clas­si­fi­ca­tion purposes also deliver signi­fi­cantly better results. Overall, every impro­ve­ment in input manage­ment has a positive effect on the entire process.

FLE­XI­BI­LITY CREATES SECURITY FOR FUTURE REQUI­RE­MENTS

In general, fle­xi­bi­lity is key in use cases such as EOS. New document classes can be easily developed by the team itself, quickly trained, and put into pro­duc­tion. The ability to now also flexibly combine OCR tech­no­lo­gies opens up further potential for the company to meet future requi­re­ments.

OmnIA fits seam­lessly into the system landscape at EOS, which is designed for maximum fle­xi­bi­lity in order to integrate various systems, such as debt coll­ec­tion systems. The ability to control Insiders‘ products via scripts or the Document Manager allows for a flexible response to new requi­re­ments and systems.

PROACTIVE EXCHANGE ENSURES RAPID INNO­VA­TION CYCLES

EOS Deutscher Inkasso-Dienst par­ti­cu­larly values the com­mu­ni­ca­tion on equal terms and the proactive sug­ges­tions made by Insiders for opti­mi­zing processes resulting from the con­ti­nuous deve­lo­p­ment of products.

Looking ahead, there are plans to automate further processes with Insiders solutions and expand their use to inter­na­tional markets. The fle­xi­bi­lity of the solution allows new use cases, such as e‑invoices or the digital pro­ces­sing of receipts from the field coll­ec­tion service, to be imple­mented quickly and repea­tedly. The use of the Insiders Cloud and the new pos­si­bi­li­ties of process auto­ma­tion with LLM is also a strategic goal for the coming years.