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How AI Is Unlocking the Power of Unstructured Data for Businesses

By Rich Ellinger, Partner & CTO, Cota Capital

“Data is the new oil.” That’s the cliché. But it’s not the whole story. The man who coined the phrase back in 2006, British mathematician Clive Humby, actually said this: “Data is the new oil. Like oil, data is valuable, but if unrefined, it cannot really be used.”

Data is indeed a valuable resource, but businesses have struggled to effectively utilize the vast majority of data they have. They can get it out of the ground, so to speak, but then they don’t know what to do with it.

The problem is that most data is in unstructured formats. In fact, according to IDC, 90% of the world’s data is unstructured. Unstructured data is information that doesn’t have a fixed form and doesn’t fit neatly into a data table. It includes everything from online videos and text messages to PowerPoint presentations and Word documents.

In the past, businesses could do a lot of interesting things with their structured data—highly organized information that exists in neat columns and rows within a database. They could use it to perform predictive analysis, enhance workflows, automate processes, and generally increase productivity. But, when it came to their unstructured data, they were largely stuck.

Until now. New AI technologies enable businesses to process, analyze, and extract valuable insights from unstructured data, allowing them to leverage this data to its full potential. This means that, instead of utilizing just 10% of available data, businesses can now access and optimize much more of it.

Today, we’re drilling and refining massive data reserves that were previously untapped. Innovative firms are increasingly providing the tools to make this possible.

Making unstructured data easy to use

With recent algorithmic advances in AI and more powerful computing capabilities, it is now possible to efficiently transform unstructured data into structured data. AI enables businesses to ingest, normalize and augment unstructured data, converting it into a structured and standardized format. This structured data can then be applied to entirely new workflows and problem spaces that businesses have not been able to tackle in the past.

One of the innovators driving this transformation is Inorsa, a Cota Capital portfolio company. Inorsa’s AI platform helps companies operating critical infrastructure, such as cell phone towers and alternative energy sources, build, modify, and acquire assets much more efficiently.  It can analyze project documents for errors, validate data, generate near-complete drawings and analyses, and implement standardization across all documents for easy access and organization. Designed for engineers and drafters, Inorsa eliminates human error. It cuts out all that unwanted manual work and delivers quicker project completion at a lower cost.

The platform can ingest all the unstructured documents that would previously have been read by a human, who would then create a drawing by hand. Inorsa then automates approximately 95% of the drawing-generation process directly from the raw unstructured documents, saving substantial time and money.

But that’s just the start. By ingesting and normalizing their clients’ unstructured data, Inorsa has created the foundation for automating other core business workflows. That’s the true power of tools like Inorsa.

Simplifying regulatory compliance

Many industries have access to a vast amount of data that can be leveraged to better automate business processes and workflows—and just to keep up in our fast-moving world. Consider regulatory compliance, for example. New regulations are constantly being introduced, and they usually go straight into government databases in document form.

If I’m operating, say, a financial services business, how do I know when a regulation changes? And how do I know if the change matters to me? To keep up, I have to be able to identify and understand all existing documents and monitor all new documents. That requires resources and manpower I probably don’t have at my disposal.

But what if I had an AI-powered platform that could both read and understand those unstructured regulatory documents as well as understand the nuances of my business? That would save my compliance team a tremendous amount of time and effort. They would instantly be able to identify regulatory changes that apply to the business instead of using teams of people to monitor relevant databases and read through regulations to determine when a rule changes and if it matters.

That’s exactly what Cota portfolio company Compliance.ai, which Archer acquired, does. The company understood early that its AI technology could augment human lawyers and help them do their work faster, with greater efficiency and accuracy. How? Compliance.ai provides a regulatory compliance and risk management solution that applies AI and ML models to automatically monitor the regulatory environment for relevant changes and map them to internal policies, procedures, and controls. It helps ensure that companies can track, react to, and report on impactful regulations and requirements on a timely basis.

What’s exceptional about Compliance.ai is how fast it can add new sources of content to its system and how well its technology can learn from that new content. In essence, the technology reads through thousands of documents from multiple jurisdictions and digests all the new rules. It then advises its financial services customers on how to proceed. The technology functions like a sort of super lawyer, able to redline documents and highlight critical sections for consideration.

Doing more—with more

Rather than eliminate jobs, AI is more likely to complement and enhance workers’ roles. And, as it does, it will improve the quality of jobs. Essentially, AI is less of a threat to most jobs than a catalyst for their evolution. By taking on mundane and repetitive tasks, AI frees human workers to concentrate on more complex, creative, and strategic endeavors, ultimately boosting workers’ job satisfaction and enabling them to make more significant contributions.

Similarly, the true value of AI for data lies not in its ability to generate reports and analyses but in its potential to automate and optimize core business processes and workflows. Data is most useful when it’s coupled with a strong understanding of key business processes and leveraged by AI to automate those processes.

At Cota Capital, we seek innovative companies that can structure and normalize massive volumes of data to create a foundation for automation rather than simply run analytics and provide reports. Companies that can do more—with more.

When businesses shift their perspective on data from a mere resource for reports to a means of process optimization, they can unlock their data’s true potential and drive real improvements in efficiency and productivity.

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By Rich Ellinger, Partner & CTO, Cota Capital

“Data is the new oil.” That’s the cliché. But it’s not the whole story. The man who coined the phrase back in 2006, British mathematician Clive Humby, actually said this: “Data is the new oil. Like oil, data is valuable, but if unrefined, it cannot really be used.”

Data is indeed a valuable resource, but businesses have struggled to effectively utilize the vast majority of data they have. They can get it out of the ground, so to speak, but then they don’t know what to do with it.

The problem is that most data is in unstructured formats. In fact, according to IDC, 90% of the world’s data is unstructured. Unstructured data is information that doesn’t have a fixed form and doesn’t fit neatly into a data table. It includes everything from online videos and text messages to PowerPoint presentations and Word documents.

In the past, businesses could do a lot of interesting things with their structured data—highly organized information that exists in neat columns and rows within a database. They could use it to perform predictive analysis, enhance workflows, automate processes, and generally increase productivity. But, when it came to their unstructured data, they were largely stuck.

Until now. New AI technologies enable businesses to process, analyze, and extract valuable insights from unstructured data, allowing them to leverage this data to its full potential. This means that, instead of utilizing just 10% of available data, businesses can now access and optimize much more of it.

Today, we’re drilling and refining massive data reserves that were previously untapped. Innovative firms are increasingly providing the tools to make this possible.

Making unstructured data easy to use

With recent algorithmic advances in AI and more powerful computing capabilities, it is now possible to efficiently transform unstructured data into structured data. AI enables businesses to ingest, normalize and augment unstructured data, converting it into a structured and standardized format. This structured data can then be applied to entirely new workflows and problem spaces that businesses have not been able to tackle in the past.

One of the innovators driving this transformation is Inorsa, a Cota Capital portfolio company. Inorsa’s AI platform helps companies operating critical infrastructure, such as cell phone towers and alternative energy sources, build, modify, and acquire assets much more efficiently.  It can analyze project documents for errors, validate data, generate near-complete drawings and analyses, and implement standardization across all documents for easy access and organization. Designed for engineers and drafters, Inorsa eliminates human error. It cuts out all that unwanted manual work and delivers quicker project completion at a lower cost.

The platform can ingest all the unstructured documents that would previously have been read by a human, who would then create a drawing by hand. Inorsa then automates approximately 95% of the drawing-generation process directly from the raw unstructured documents, saving substantial time and money.

But that’s just the start. By ingesting and normalizing their clients’ unstructured data, Inorsa has created the foundation for automating other core business workflows. That’s the true power of tools like Inorsa.

Simplifying regulatory compliance

Many industries have access to a vast amount of data that can be leveraged to better automate business processes and workflows—and just to keep up in our fast-moving world. Consider regulatory compliance, for example. New regulations are constantly being introduced, and they usually go straight into government databases in document form.

If I’m operating, say, a financial services business, how do I know when a regulation changes? And how do I know if the change matters to me? To keep up, I have to be able to identify and understand all existing documents and monitor all new documents. That requires resources and manpower I probably don’t have at my disposal.

But what if I had an AI-powered platform that could both read and understand those unstructured regulatory documents as well as understand the nuances of my business? That would save my compliance team a tremendous amount of time and effort. They would instantly be able to identify regulatory changes that apply to the business instead of using teams of people to monitor relevant databases and read through regulations to determine when a rule changes and if it matters.

That’s exactly what Cota portfolio company Compliance.ai, which Archer acquired, does. The company understood early that its AI technology could augment human lawyers and help them do their work faster, with greater efficiency and accuracy. How? Compliance.ai provides a regulatory compliance and risk management solution that applies AI and ML models to automatically monitor the regulatory environment for relevant changes and map them to internal policies, procedures, and controls. It helps ensure that companies can track, react to, and report on impactful regulations and requirements on a timely basis.

What’s exceptional about Compliance.ai is how fast it can add new sources of content to its system and how well its technology can learn from that new content. In essence, the technology reads through thousands of documents from multiple jurisdictions and digests all the new rules. It then advises its financial services customers on how to proceed. The technology functions like a sort of super lawyer, able to redline documents and highlight critical sections for consideration.

Doing more—with more

Rather than eliminate jobs, AI is more likely to complement and enhance workers’ roles. And, as it does, it will improve the quality of jobs. Essentially, AI is less of a threat to most jobs than a catalyst for their evolution. By taking on mundane and repetitive tasks, AI frees human workers to concentrate on more complex, creative, and strategic endeavors, ultimately boosting workers’ job satisfaction and enabling them to make more significant contributions.

Similarly, the true value of AI for data lies not in its ability to generate reports and analyses but in its potential to automate and optimize core business processes and workflows. Data is most useful when it’s coupled with a strong understanding of key business processes and leveraged by AI to automate those processes.

At Cota Capital, we seek innovative companies that can structure and normalize massive volumes of data to create a foundation for automation rather than simply run analytics and provide reports. Companies that can do more—with more.

When businesses shift their perspective on data from a mere resource for reports to a means of process optimization, they can unlock their data’s true potential and drive real improvements in efficiency and productivity.

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