Searching for data and analyzing results is an intrinsic part of most finance roles. Yet the tasks are often highly manual and time-consuming, limiting the ability to engage in high value work that advances business goals.

Common workflows among finance teams include gathering insights and data to prepare board of director presentations, synthesize prospectuses and quarterly reports, and for budgeting and reconciliation purposes. These workflows require teams to thoroughly read and understand content, summarize key details for stakeholders, and repurpose material to effectively communicate the findings to executives, customers, and partners. The breadth and variability of documents and supporting materials means it often takes hours to manually search for the right data and transform it into knowledge that supports more informed decisions and targeted actions.

In fact, finding the right data to anchor data analysis is a major bottleneck to productive workflows across all areas of the business. According to a widely reported finding from Gartner, over 80% of business data is unstructured and rarely analyzed because it’s hidden away in documents that are not widely available or easily accessible. Those resources, and the data points buried inside, are often key to monitoring, controlling, and reporting on financial assets and results with accurate and informed insights. There are also more than 3 trillion PDF files in active circulation worldwide, many flush with data useful for financial reporting.