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 primary storage, AODocs combines sturdy doc management with workflow automation, enabling companies to streamline advanced 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 begin AODocs in 2012? Was there a selected 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 routinely scaling applied sciences that had been absent in enterprise software program on the time.
On the time, Google was advocating for purposes to adapt to the cloud by shifting 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 I noticed a possibility to create one thing new by combining outdated and new approaches.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 an absence of options out there to fulfill this want, as conventional doc administration techniques had been on-premise with outdated software program and architectures. This hole introduced a possibility to construct one thing new from scratch on the correct 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 consider convincing enterprises. AODocs manages paperwork, together with sharing permissions and enterprise processes, however the paperwork stay inside the buyer’s surroundings (initially Google Drive, later Azure, Google Cloud Storage, and Amazon S3). This basic attribute diminished the perceived threat for purchasers, and made them extra snug working with a small and younger firm.
One other key purpose was shut buyer relationships. We co-built and co-developed with clients, particularly within the early phases. This proximity and reactivity in fixing issues and making enhancements constructed belief and additional diminished the notion of threat.
This was in the end what satisfied corporations like Google, Veolia, Ascension, Pinnacol Assurance and others to undertake us.
Trying again at your 13+ years main AODocs, what had been a few of the most crucial choices that led to the corporate’s success?
The choice to maintain buyer paperwork in their very own cloud storage is a giant consider our success and stays a key differentiating issue.
Growing the product by staying very near clients was additionally crucial. The whole lot we construct is impressed by or validated by way of buyer wants. We keep away from constructing options with out a clear buyer use case.
Our potential to type by way of 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 advanced into an AI-powered resolution. What had been a few 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 straightforward 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 just a brand new “limb” or “module” that may be plugged in to reinforce 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 steadiness automation with human oversight, guaranteeing 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 in the end made by the shoppers on a case-by-case foundation.
Clients can configure their processes for full automation, full human overview, or a mixture of each at any AI step. We advocate figuring out straightforward instances appropriate for full AI automation (e.g., detecting lacking paperwork in a request), whereas for advanced instances, AI can be utilized to hurry up the human overview, usually by producing summaries of advanced 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 deal with AI brokers for doc processing. What drove this choice, 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 current “meeting line” for paperwork.
The first driver for our pleasure about AI brokers is their potential to deliver vital velocity to particular duties. For easy duties like rejecting incomplete paperwork or routinely accepting low worth, simple claims, AI can allow full automation.
For advanced duties, AI brokers can dramatically speed up processing by summarizing lengthy paperwork, permitting people to overview key data a lot quicker. AI excels at ingesting giant quantities of knowledge 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 resolution deal with discoverability points higher than current enterprise search instruments?
AI chatbots signify a serious enchancment over conventional enterprise search by permitting customers to ask questions in pure language and obtain simple solutions. Nevertheless, 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 guaranteeing AI brokers use solely the correct data to supply 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 supply assured solutions however disguise the underlying search course of. This creates an elevated threat of utilizing outdated or incorrect data, as customers don’t have any visibility into which paperwork the chatbot used to formulate its response.
Our function 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 guaranteeing AI-powered search depends solely on trusted and managed data, we considerably scale 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 scale back guide work?
LLM fashions excel at remodeling current content material, comparable to summarizing advanced paperwork, translating textual content, and categorizing recordsdata. These duties have a really low threat of hallucinations, which is why our AI utilization strategically focuses on these actions.
AODocs primarily leverages AI for rephrasing, repurposing, and reworking current textual content quite than creating new content material. When working with the correct materials, producing summaries, translating paperwork, and categorizing content material all keep a low likelihood of error. Equally, our information extraction capabilities—figuring out due dates or key data from paperwork—stay grounded in current content material to reduce inaccuracies or “hallucinations.”
By accelerating data ingestion and supporting human reviewers, these AI capabilities typically 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 are able to shortly incorporate future fashions as they develop into accessible, 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 make sure that AI-generated insights are reliable and dependable?
The important thing to making sure trustworthiness and reliability is grounding. We make sure that AI is used to rephrase or rework data from trusted sources.
In doc processing, AI is requested to summarize or translate current 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 all the time 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 remodeling enterprise software program, the place do you see AODocs within the subsequent 5 years? What function 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, foreign money, 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 goal to supply the instruments for corporations to simply apply AI the place it is smart to reinforce their enterprise processes. AI brokers will play a vital function by amplifying and accelerating our core missions: offering reliable data, guaranteeing the usage of the right 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 be taught extra ought to go to AODocs.
