The Evolution of Real Estate: How Intelligent Document Processing is Driving Change

Dealing with a flood of documents is an everyday part of the real estate industry. Data capture and extraction is a costly and time-consuming process. Especially when it is done manually. Yet the fast and accurate availability of information from the multitude of documents is absolutely crucial for success for you as a real estate service provider, developer, administrator or Co.

Fortunately, document automation solutions such as Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) are finally driving the long-awaited transformation of the real estate industry.

Below, we explore these points:

• The document processing challenges for the Real Estate industry,
• the significant benefits of Intelligent Document Processing,
• practical use cases of Intelligent Document Processing for real estate companies, and
• future possibilities of Intelligent Document Processing in the real estate sector.

The challenges of document processing in the real estate industry

Among the biggest challenges of all for you as a company in the real estate sector may be inefficiencies around document processing. These stem largely from an immense volume of documents that your teams must process on a daily basis for numerous use cases. This hinders and slows down business-critical processes.

However, the problems are not only due to the overall high volume of complex documents such as leases, agreements, property deeds and financial statements. In addition to the obvious challenges triggered by the volume and complexity, there are other significant problems:

• Document classification: Countless documents from different sources and in different formats are the norm. Classifying these documents in a timely and accurate manner is a major challenge.

• Compliance: As a real estate company, you are subject to various regulations and must adhere to different requirements. Ensuring that all documents comply with these regulations is a complex task, and failure to do so can result in legal penalties.
  
• Document review and approval: Your teams must review and approve documents such as contracts and agreements. This process can be very time consuming, especially when documents need to be reviewed by multiple parties.
  
• Data security: Handling sensitive customer information and financial data is part of your day-to-day business as a real estate company. The security of this data and its protection from unauthorized access is paramount.
  
• Data accuracy: Complex documents with unstructured data are pretty much the norm. Data accuracy is critical to making informed decisions and providing quality service to your customers.
  
• Maintaining short turnaround times: It is not uncommon for real estate transactions to have tight deadlines. Meeting these deadlines requires fast and accurate document processing, which is challenging without the right tools and processes in place.

Benefits of Intelligent Document Processing for the real estate sector

In order to overcome the document processing challenges previously mentioned for your real estate company, it is worth taking a closer look at an automation solution. There are several ways to do this. However, the most effective way to do this is to implement Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). There are multiple reasons for this:

1. IDP combines powerful technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Computer Vision (CV) in one system and on one platform.
   
2. The powerful combination on one platform eliminates the need for individual additional automation solutions for data capture and data extraction. You easily integrate the IDP platform with your existing software landscape and workflow, CRM, DMS, ERP and RPA solutions. This allows you to gradually replace niche solutions for dedicated use cases, minimizing complexity and operating costs.
   
3. Furthermore, a forward-looking IDP solution can handle unstructured data and complex documents and is not based on templates and rules. As a company in the real estate industry, this is a particularly valuable factor for you since you mostly have to deal with unstructured data.
   
4. Thanks to the industry’s unique Document Swarm Learning approach, Parashift’s Intelligent Document Processing solution maximizes continuous AI-based learning across all use cases and customers. All this while running and, of course, in a fully GDPR compliant manner.

An advanced IDP solution like Parashift’s offers clear advantages that benefit you as a real estate service provider, including:

• Document classification: IDP has the capacity to automatically classify all possible types of documents. This helps to manage documents efficiently and route them to the right workflows.
  
• Extraction of key data: With IDP, automatic extraction of relevant data from important documents such as contracts and lease directories becomes a reality for you. By automating these processes, you reduce time-consuming and error-prone manual data entry.
  
• Real-time insights: With IDP, real-time insights into document processing workflows become a reality. Not only do you make data-driven decisions, but you identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies early. Similar value applies to errors or fraud: IDP can identify discrepancies in documents and flag them for your teams. In addition, IDP helps automate the document review and approval process by identifying key areas in documents and highlighting them for further review.
  
• Automation of document processing workflows: IDP automates and streamlines document processing. This also reduces the workload for your employees.
  
• Reduce costs: By automating data extraction and document processing, your employees can free themselves from manual tasks. As a result, you significantly reduce the associated costs.
  
• Customer needs can be met: IDP helps you meet your customers’ needs and expectations for a digital and frictionless experience. Thanks to IDP, you offer your customers faster turnaround times and more accurate and efficient service. This leads to higher customer satisfaction.

Practical use cases of Intelligent Document Processing for real estate companies

The largest real estate service providers, administrators, asset managers and real estate developers use the Parashift IDP platform to automate and optimize their document processes. Use cases with Intelligent Document Processing include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Incoming invoices: Incoming invoice processing represents an important use case for your real estate business. With Parashift, you don’t need long setup and training times for new customers: Thanks to the out-of-the-box solution for incoming invoices, which are already pre-trained, you read invoices automatically from day one, regardless of layout or language.
  
• Incoming mail processing: Your inbox is non-stop flooded with countless documents: contracts, forms, damage reports, protocols, leases, complaints, inquiries, information, permits and other correspondence are just a few. With the digital mailroom, you create a virtual hub for business mail. The integration of the IDP solution automates the entire inbox for your real estate company. Hundreds of document types are automatically classified and all relevant data is extracted from them. The data is passed on in a structured way to downstream systems, thus enabling the automation of processes.
  
• Reports: Whether assessing a property prior to purchase or sale, or reviewing financial statements and tax documents, you need to ensure that the data in the reports is captured correctly and forwarded to the appropriate people or authorities. With Intelligent Document Processing, you automatically extract all of this necessary data.
  
• Property management: IDP automates the tracking of maintenance requests and the management of tenant communications. This allows you, as a commercial real estate company, to better serve your tenants and ensure that their properties are optimally maintained.
  
• Investment analysis: Intelligent Document Processing helps automate investment analysis tasks. This includes, for example, reviewing property valuations, market reports and financial projections. This allows you to make better decisions and manage your portfolios more effectively.

Future possibilities with IDP for the real estate sector

Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning will continue to drive Intelligent Document Processing capabilities. In the real estate sector, this could at times mean enabling and automating increasingly complex as well as predictive document analytics.

In addition, the combination of Large Language Models (LLMs) with Intelligent Document Processing is all the buzz. This also brings new and better use cases for businesses, including the real estate sector. Parashift has also recently announced a number of new features that will be gradually integrated over the next few months. Among them are also fully EU GDPR compliant LLMs. These models leverage the previously mentioned Document Swarm Learning and offer a unique blend of radical innovation, privacy and security. Generative AI can solve a variety of new use cases at the IDP level, benefiting you: For example, your employees can request the summary of the document in question with one click. At the same time, an interpretation of the context can also be output with one click. This means that not only the tone of the document (e.g. formal), but also the document type (e.g. correspondence) itself is automatically recognized.

For a detailed overview of Parashift’s new features, read the blog article by founder and CEO, Alain Veuve.

Try Intelligent Document Processing for your real estate organization today, automate and streamline your workflows, and set yourself apart from your competition.