In the "bygone era," invoices were traditionally dispatched in paper format and painstakingly transcribed into the recipient's ERP system facilitating subsequent data processing. As indicated by Brendan Foley, among others, a significant proportion—around 80 to 90 percent—of data from documents like invoices and emails continues to be manually extracted (2019). However, there has been a notable shift in recent years towards the exclusively digital transmission of documents such as business invoices, accompanied by automated data extraction processes.
Why should a company (or its managers) embrace this shift? The rationale is clear: to conserve resources (e.g., reducing paper usage) and streamline workflow efficiency (e.g., eliminating manual data entry).