Choosing AI Document Processing Software: A Buyer's Guide
How to evaluate AI document processing solutions for your business. Key features, questions to ask vendors, and what actually matters for Singapore SMEs.
TL;DR: Look for visual grounding (shows where data came from), flexibility with document formats, and clear pricing. Run a pilot with your actual documents before committing. Ignore features you won’t use.
The market for AI document processing is crowded. Every vendor claims “95%+ accuracy” and “enterprise-ready” solutions. Here’s how to actually evaluate them.
What You’re Really Buying
Document processing software does three things: ingests documents (PDFs, scans, emails), extracts data (vendor names, amounts, dates), and outputs structured data to your systems. Everything else is secondary. Don’t get distracted by features you won’t use.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the global intelligent document processing market was valued at $7.89 billion in 2024, projected to reach $66.68 billion by 2032. With that much competition, vendors differentiate on features—but not all features matter for SMEs.
The Questions That Actually Matter
First, ask “Can I see where the data came from?” When the AI extracts a total amount, can you click on that field and see exactly where in the document it found that number? This visual grounding is critical for quickly verifying extractions, catching errors before they cause problems, and maintaining audit trails.
Second, ask “How does it handle documents it hasn’t seen?” Your suppliers change invoice formats. You get documents from new vendors. Good answers include “Our AI understands document structure, not just templates” and “Here’s how it performed on a format it hadn’t seen before.” Bad answers involve setting up templates for each vendor.
Third, ask “What’s the accuracy on my documents?” Don’t accept demo data results. Ask for a pilot with your actual documents. According to industry research, modern IDP systems can achieve 99% accuracy on structured documents—but that’s under ideal conditions. Test with your messy scans and complex tables.
What to Prioritize
Must-haves: visual grounding on extractions, works with your document types, structured output to your systems, clear pricing you can model.
Nice-to-haves: multi-language support (if you need it), comparison and validation capabilities, batch processing, custom field definitions.
Usually unnecessary for SMEs: enterprise security certifications (unless required by your industry), complex workflow automation, advanced analytics dashboards.
Red Flags to Watch
“We can process any document type” is probably true, but quality varies. Test with your specific documents.
Avoiding pilot requests is a warning sign. If they won’t let you test with real documents, ask why.
Pricing only available “upon request” usually means expensive and negotiable.
The Evaluation Process
Shortlist 2-3 options based on relevant case studies, pricing transparency, and local support. Give each vendor the same set of 20-30 test documents—a mix of easy and challenging examples, including edge cases you know are problematic. Measure the same metrics for each.
Beyond licensing costs, calculate implementation, training, integration development, and time to value. Talk to actual customers: What’s the real accuracy in production? How responsive is support? Would they choose the same vendor again?
Related
- What is Intelligent Document Processing? — The technology explained
- SmartDoc vs Manual Processing — Detailed comparison table
- SmartDoc vs ChatGPT — When purpose-built tools beat general AI