Two years ago, Microsoft released SharePoint Syntex, which uses AI to automate data capture and classification from documents — based on SharePoint’s existing services. Today marks the expansion of the Microsoft Syntex platform to a suite of new products and capabilities, including file annotation and data extraction. Syntex reads, tags, and documents content — whether digital or physical — that’s searchable and available in Microsoft 365 apps, and helps manage the content lifecycle with security and retention settings.
According to Chris McNulty, director of Microsoft Syntax, driving the best is customers’ increasing desire to “do more with less,” especially with the recession looming. In the year A 2021 survey by Dimensional Research found that more than two-thirds of companies are missing out on valuable data, largely due to problems with the pipeline to access that data.
“As business intelligence transforms the way companies use data to drive business decisions, Microsoft Syntex unlocks the value of the vast amount of content that resides in an enterprise,” McNulty told TechCrunch in an email interview. We see the greatest alignment with industries that are highly technically dense and regulated – financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, life sciences and retail.
Syntex provides tools for document backup, archiving, analysis and management, as well as a viewer for annotations and updates on files. Containers allow developers to store content in a managed sandbox, while “scenario accelerators” provide workflows for use cases like contract management, accounts payable, and so on.
“Whether it’s a transaction, an alert, a workflow, or just putting your content in the right libraries and folders, the Syntex Content Processor lets you build simple rules to trigger the next step,” McNulty explained. “[Meanwhile,] Advanced Viewer adds an annotation and inking layer to any content that can be viewed in Microsoft 365. Annotations can be safely made with a different license than the underlying content and also without changing the original content.
McNulty said customers such as TaylorMade are looking for ways to use Syntex for contract management and meetings by standardizing contracts with common clauses around financial terms. The company is piloting the service to process orders, invoices and other transactional documents for accounts payable and finance teams. Organize and maintain emails, attachments and other documents for intellectual property and patent documents.
“One of the fastest-growing content transactions is e-signatures,” McNulty said. “[With Syntex, you] We can send electronic signature requests to Syntex, Adobe Acrobat Sign, DocuSign or any of our e-signature partner solutions and your content will remain reviewed and signed by Microsoft 365.
Intelligent Document Management Syntax works as a solution to the challenges of file management and orchestration. According to one source, 15% of the company’s revenue is spent on creating, managing and distributing documents. Documentation isn’t just expensive—it’s time-consuming and error-prone. In the year More than nine in 10 employees who responded to an ABBY survey in 2021 said they waste up to eight hours per week looking at documents to find information, and that creating a new document using traditional methods takes an average of three hours and results in six punctuation errors. Spelling, omissions or printing.
Many startups offer products to address this, including Hypathos, which applies deep learning to automate back-office operations aimed at industries with extensive financial document processing needs. Flatfile automatically learns how to structure and clean data imported from files, while another vendor, Clarity, aims to replace humans for tasks that require large-scale document review, including accounting forms, purchase orders and contracts.
It’s clear that many of its services, as announced today, Microsoft, bet scale for its own use.
“Syntex leverages AI and automation technologies from across Microsoft, including summarization, translation and visual behavior recognition,” said McNulty. “Many of these services are being developed in a new pay-as-you-business model without additional pre-licensing for Microsoft 365 business accounts.”
Syntex began rolling out today and will continue to roll out into early 2023. Microsoft says it will have more details on service pricing and packaging published on the Microsoft 365 message center and licensing documents in the coming months.
