Stéphan Donzé is the founder and CEO of AODocs, a cloud-native doc administration platform that transforms enterprise content material into actionable intelligence. In contrast to legacy techniques restricted to fundamental storage, AODocs combines strong doc management with workflow automation, enabling companies to streamline complicated processes throughout industries.
From gross sales proposals and claims administration to engineering and manufacturing, AODocs makes use of generative AI to extract structured information from unstructured paperwork—at scale.
What impressed you to start out AODocs in 2012? Was there a particular drawback you noticed in doc administration that wasn’t being addressed on the time?
It got here from the idea of bringing Enterprise-to-Client (B2C) applied sciences, pioneered by Google, to the enterprise. This included cloud-based, serverless, and mechanically scaling applied sciences that have been absent in enterprise software program on the time.
On the time, Google was advocating for purposes to adapt to the cloud by transferring away from thick purchasers and embracing browser-based and serverless architectures. In contrast to Microsoft and Amazon on the time, Google’s stance was that cloud purposes ought to undertake a really completely different structure than on premise software program. I noticed a chance to create one thing new by combining previous and new approaches.
Early adopters of cloud applied sciences in enterprises, who had adopted Gmail and Google Drive, wished to increase these advantages past e-mail and collaboration to business-critical paperwork. There was a scarcity of options out there to satisfy this want, as conventional doc administration techniques have been on-premise with previous software program and architectures. This hole offered a chance to construct one thing new from scratch on the proper cloud structure, working with these early adopters.
Many enterprise SaaS corporations battle with buyer adoption. How did you persuade main enterprises like Google or Veolia to belief AODocs early on?
Permitting clients to maintain paperwork of their personal cloud storage was a big think about convincing enterprises. AODocs manages paperwork, together with sharing permissions and enterprise processes, however the paperwork stay throughout the buyer’s setting (initially Google Drive, later Azure, Google Cloud Storage, and Amazon S3). This elementary attribute lowered the perceived danger for patrons, and made them extra snug working with a small and younger firm.
One other key motive was shut buyer relationships. We co-built and co-developed with clients, particularly within the early levels. This proximity and reactivity in fixing issues and making enhancements constructed belief and additional lowered the notion of danger.
This was finally what satisfied corporations like Google, Veolia, Ascension, Pinnacol Assurance and others to undertake us.
Trying again at your 13+ years main AODocs, what have been a number of the most important choices that led to the corporate’s success?
The choice to maintain buyer paperwork in their very own cloud storage is an enormous think about our success and stays a key differentiating issue.
Growing the product by staying very near clients was additionally crucial. Every little thing we construct is impressed by or validated via buyer wants. We keep away from constructing options with no clear buyer use case.
Our skill to kind via buyer requests to establish widespread and replicable wants that profit the complete buyer base, versus very particular particular person requests higher addressed by skilled companies, is one thing we have been good at.
AODocs was born within the cloud and has now developed into an AI-powered answer. What have been a number of the largest challenges in making that transition?
It isn’t a lot a transition however a continuity. Being born within the cloud inherently made AODocs simple to combine with new, cloud-based applied sciences, together with AI.
AI fashions like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are cloud-based, making it pure for AODocs to interface with them and add AI capabilities to our doc processing platform.
We view AODocs as a “backbone” or an “meeting line” for doc processes, the place AI is solely a brand new “limb” or “module” that may be plugged in to boost the platform. We didn’t foresee the particular emergence of AI in 2022, however our cloud-native structure was designed for extensibility and integration, making the adoption of AI a pure step.
How does AODocs stability automation with human oversight, making certain compliance and accuracy with out eradicating human validation?
We offer the instruments to clients to make use of AI at numerous steps of their doc processes. The choice of how a lot autonomy to offer AI is finally made by the shoppers on a case-by-case foundation.
Clients can configure their processes for full automation, full human evaluate, or a mixture of each at any AI step. We suggest figuring out simple circumstances appropriate for full AI automation (e.g., detecting lacking paperwork in a request), whereas for complicated circumstances, AI can be utilized to hurry up the human evaluate, sometimes by producing summaries of complicated paperwork.
Basically, we give clients 100% management over the extent of human oversight of their processes by offering the configuration instruments.
AODocs is shifting its platform to give attention to AI brokers for doc processing. What drove this determination, and the way do AI brokers enhance upon conventional doc administration techniques?
AI brokers are a brand new functionality that may be built-in into our present “meeting line” for paperwork.
The first driver for our pleasure about AI brokers is their potential to carry vital velocity to particular duties. For easy duties like rejecting incomplete paperwork or mechanically accepting low worth, easy claims, AI can allow full automation.
For complicated duties, AI brokers can dramatically speed up processing by summarizing lengthy paperwork, permitting people to evaluate key data a lot quicker. AI excels at ingesting giant quantities of data and offering concise summaries, saving human reviewers vital time. This elevated velocity and effectivity improve the worth of the AODocs platform.
Enterprise search stays a serious problem, with corporations struggling to retrieve related paperwork. How does AODocs’ AI-powered answer deal with discoverability points higher than present enterprise search instruments?
AI chatbots characterize a serious enchancment over conventional enterprise search by permitting customers to ask questions in pure language and obtain easy solutions. Nonetheless, they’ve a big flaw: they can not distinguish between legitimate, up-to-date paperwork and drafts, incomplete, or out of date recordsdata.
We deal with this problem by making certain AI brokers use solely the proper data to offer solutions. Conventional search presents customers with a listing of potential matches, permitting them to establish essentially the most related doc (comparable to distinguishing between a signed contract and a draft).
In distinction, AI chatbots provide assured solutions however cover the underlying search course of. This creates an elevated danger of utilizing outdated or incorrect data, as customers don’t have any visibility into which paperwork the chatbot used to formulate its response.
Our position is to curate and assure that each one paperwork within the information base have been correctly validated and are up-to-date. This makes them protected for AI brokers to make use of as data sources. By making certain AI-powered search depends solely on trusted and managed data, we considerably cut back the chance of inaccurate responses.
With generative AI changing into a key a part of doc processing, what particular AI applied sciences or fashions does AODocs leverage to enhance accuracy and cut back guide work?
LLM fashions excel at reworking present content material, comparable to summarizing complicated paperwork, translating textual content, and categorizing recordsdata. These duties have a really low danger of hallucinations, which is why our AI utilization strategically focuses on these actions.
AODocs primarily leverages AI for rephrasing, repurposing, and remodeling present textual content quite than creating new content material. When working with the proper materials, producing summaries, translating paperwork, and categorizing content material all keep a low chance of error. Equally, our information extraction capabilities—figuring out due dates or key data from paperwork—stay grounded in present content material to attenuate inaccuracies or “hallucinations.”
By accelerating data ingestion and supporting human reviewers, these AI capabilities usually enhance effectivity by a big issue. This creates tangible worth whereas fastidiously avoiding the dangers related to AI-generated content material created from scratch.
There’s a further benefit. AODocs integrates seamlessly with any LLM, giving our clients freedom to decide on their most well-liked supplier. This versatile structure additionally ensures we will shortly incorporate future fashions as they turn into obtainable, positioning our clients to learn from the inevitable AI improvements rising within the months and years forward.
One of many largest AI challenges in doc processing is hallucinations or inaccurate responses. How does AODocs be certain that AI-generated insights are reliable and dependable?
The important thing to making sure trustworthiness and reliability is grounding. We be certain that AI is used to rephrase or remodel data from trusted sources.
In doc processing, AI is requested to summarize or translate present paperwork, minimizing the prospect of hallucination. In AI chatbots or brokers, the system is supplied with extracts of managed paperwork and is instructed to generate solutions solely from these extracts—the LLM should at all times quote the sources from which it generated its reply—with out utilizing basic world information or exterior data. This prevents AI from inventing or offering data not explicitly current within the validated paperwork.
With AI reworking enterprise software program, the place do you see AODocs within the subsequent 5 years? What position will AI brokers play in the way forward for doc administration?
Our core enterprise as a doc administration platform is not going to change. Our mission stays to make sure the trustworthiness, forex, correct enterprise course of adherence, and traceability of managed data.
AI is each a brand new want for managed data (to feed reliable information to AI chatbots) and an accelerator of enterprise processes involving paperwork. AI can velocity up duties like summarizing, translating, and categorizing paperwork, making human customers extra productive.
Within the subsequent 5 years, we purpose to offer the instruments for corporations to simply apply AI the place it is sensible to boost their enterprise processes. AI brokers will play a vital position by amplifying and accelerating our core missions: offering reliable data, making certain using the proper doc variations, serving to keep away from human errors, and facilitating entry to enterprise processes. We wish to assist corporations use AI successfully and strategically to spice up productiveness.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to AODocs.
