Customer Stories / Software & Internet
/D360P_BGL_logo%402x.3166ebe4c20719deca7ae5a997bcdfe178c3025c.png "BGL")
BGL Employs Artificial Intelligence to Help Customers Save Over 130,000 Hours in Document Processing Time Using AWS
More than 130,000 man-hours
Time saved cumulatively for document processing since 2020
Up to 75%
Quicker turnaround time for document processing
80%
Volume of document processing work automated
6x
Increase in the volume of files processed
Overview
Financial investment data processing is time-consuming yet critical. Paper documents such as bank statements, invoices, receipts, and other documents contain data relevant to the compliance process. Today, much of this data is manually extracted from documents, interpreted, and then collated for regulatory filing.
Identifying the challenge customers faced, Australia-based software company BGL developed software solutions to remove the manual process and improve turnaround time. In 2020, BGL built BGL SmartDocs, a cloud-based software solution. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the software automates the process of data extraction, categorization, and interpretation as part of the financial investment reporting procedures. Using BGL SmartDocs, accountants and advisors can automate over 80 percent of their document processing work, significantly reducing manual data entry and improving data accuracy.
BGL serves over 9,500 businesses across 15 countries including Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore. With BGL SmartDocs fully deployed on AWS, the company can confidently scale its applications to accommodate high traffic volumes and client workloads without disruptions or downtime.
Opportunity | Automating Manual Processes and Mitigating Data Privacy Risks
Before BGL SmartDocs was developed, BGL's customers relied on manual data entry to extract and categorize documents for their financial investment reporting. In 2022, close to 26 million pages of documents were processed. This manual work incurred an estimated cost of US$1.75 per page. It was complex to manage and took an average of 3 business days per client to complete.
BGL recognized an automated and secure document processing solution would remove the need for manual data entry and better handle Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in documents. This would significantly reduce the risk of a privacy breach.
Given the volume of data handled, BGL also required a robust and scalable way to deploy its solution in the cloud, as well as to support its users across multiple geographies.
With AWS, we now have the scalability we need to address customer demands and grow our business to new markets, all in a secure, cost-effective package. Amazon SageMaker in particular, has been instrumental in the development of BGL SmartDocs 360 – Developer, which will create a brand-new revenue stream for us.”
Tramontana
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), BGL
Solution | Delivering Faster, Smarter and More Cost-Effective Document Processing Using AWS
BGL SmartDocs revolutionizes document processing, reducing costs by over 80 percent. The average processing time has also been reduced from 2 hours to 30 minutes – a 75 percent improvement.
By leveraging Amazon Textract, an advanced machine learning (ML) service that automatically extracts printed text, handwriting, and data from any document, BGL SmartDocs now automates about 80 percent of processing work from scanned documents. This automated process has helped BGL customers save over 130,000 man-hours since the cloud-based software solution was released in 2020. The volume of processed files has also increased six-fold from 685,000 files in 2021 to 4,300,000 files in 2022.
BGL SmartDocs’ backend uses Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), a managed Kubernetes service, to deploy its containerized applications without needing to install, operate, and maintain its own Kubernetes environment. The company also leverages AWS Lambda, a serverless, event-driven compute service, to execute code and automate response requests at scale. Since AWS Lambda is also a fully managed service, BGL does not have to provision or manage the infrastructure to scale. Instead, its IT team can focus on maintaining the availability and compatibility of BGL SmartDocs across the various markets it serves.
In 2022, BGL enhanced its capabilities with Amazon SageMaker, an ML service, to create a developer edition of BGL SmartDocs 360. Amazon SageMaker builds, trains, and deploys ML models for any use case. BGL SmartDocs 360 – Developer, allows developers to build customized document extraction and classification solutions to meet their business needs by training their own AI models with just a few mouse clicks
Outcome | Innovating with Cloud-based Solutions to Drive Growth and Expansion
BGL SmartDocs is a cost-effective and efficient document processing solution that has spurred customer growth. From 93,000 entities in 2022, the software has grown to support nearly 200,000 in 2023 - a 109 percent increase. BGL plans to provide this service beyond Australia to a worldwide audience.
BGL is also set to unveil a BGL SmartDocs 360 – Retail in October 2023, targeting users across the general accounting market.
“With AWS, we now have the scalability we need to address customer demands and grow our business in new markets all in a secure, cost-effective package. Amazon SageMaker in particular, has been instrumental in the creation of BGL SmartDocs 360 – Developer, which will create a brand-new revenue stream for us,” said Daniel Tramontana, Chief Executive Officer of BGL.
About BGL
With over 30 years of experience in the software industry, BGL Corporate Solutions (BGL) delivers innovative, multi-award winning company compliance management, self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) and investment solutions to over 9,500 businesses in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and 15 other countries around the world. BGL clients include all major accounting firms, law firms, many listed and private company groups, accountants, financial planners, and many individual SMSF trusts.
AWS Services Used
Amazon Textract
Amazon Textract is a machine learning (ML) service that automatically extracts text, handwriting, layout elements, and data from scanned documents.
Amazon SageMaker
Amazon SageMaker is built on Amazon’s two decades of experience developing real-world ML applications, including product recommendations, personalization, intelligent shopping, robotics, and voice-assisted devices.
Amazon EKS
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service to run Kubernetes in the AWS cloud and on-premises data centers.
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda is a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets you run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers.
Get Started
Organizations of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses and delivering on their missions every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS journey today.