WorkFusion's ‘Automation Notification' Boosts Data Extraction Options

Currently, the WorkFusion platform leverages a combination of crowd computing and machine learning to enable computers to automate data extraction processes, such as extracting important data from company filings and dividend announcements.

In the case of dividend announcements, the platform consumes announcements and press releases published via newswires, public sources and datafeeds via APIs. Initially, the platform enables human beings to tag key information in the dividend announcements such as company name, dates and dividend amounts, but by applying and testing various algorithms over a customizable period of time, the platform then learns from these patterns until the process can be automated.

"In recent testing, it took 200 extractions by human beings for the software to understand how to do it," says Adam Devine, vice, president of product marketing and strategic partnerships at WorkFusion. "After that, a typical extract from a dividend that used to take between four and five minutes now takes seconds. Over time, the software can exceed the quality of the human worker, freeing them up to do more important decision-based work."

In the past four weeks, the vendor has introduced new functionality to the platform to automatically inform users when data extraction can be automated. At this point, the majority of data extraction processes can be performed by a computer, and any cases where the software cannot extract the relevant data can be sent to human analysts for review.

"We know our customers want to automate these processes, but they also want control, so we are adding the ‘automation recommendation' function to let them know when they should automate a task. At that point, we are giving them the option and the technical ability to automate the process as opposed to mandating that they do it," Devine says.

The platform is currently used by financial institutions such as banks, as well as data vendors seeking to reduce the time taken to extract key information from data sources and relay that data to the market, Devine says. "One data vendor transformed its data extraction from six minutes to five seconds using our software, which gives them faster time to market," he adds.

Compared to traditional data-scraping technologies, which are often limited to web data, the WorkFusion software can extract data from PDFs and images. In addition, the platform leverages human intelligence and machine intelligence to "elevate the humans to higher work and automate the humdrum work," Devine says.