OCR (optical character recognition) converts images of text into machine-readable characters. It reads what is on the page, but does not understand what the text means; an invoice total and a phone number are both just digit strings to an OCR engine. Intelligent document processing adds classification, contextual extraction, validation, and workflow routing on top of OCR. An IDP system understands that a number in a specific position on a loan document is a loan amount rather than a date or account number, validates it against expected ranges and source logic, and routes the validated data to the right field in the downstream system.
