Intelligent Business Document Processing Using AI- and NLP-Based Techniques: A Systematic Literature Review
TL;DR
The findings show that AI- and NLP-based methods have significantly improved the automation, retrieval, interpretation, and structuring of business documents, and large language models (LLMs), particularly when combined with prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge graphs, and agent-based architectures, offer promising opportunities to address these gaps.
Abstract
This systematic literature review examines the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques in intelligent business document processing. The study systematically analyses 46 peer-reviewed articles published between 2014 and 2025 and indexed in the Scopus database. The reviewed literature was grouped into six core NLP-based analytical tasks: semantic search, question answering, summarisation, text data integration and matching, event extraction, and business process management. The findings show that AI- and NLP-based methods have significantly improved the automation, retrieval, interpretation, and structuring of business documents. Semantic search methods enhance information retrieval by moving beyond keyword matching, while question-answering systems and summarisation techniques support automated knowledge discovery and content reduction. Deep learning and transformer-based models have also improved entity matching, event extraction, and predictive business process monitoring. However, the review identifies several persistent limitations, including the continued dominance of extractive approaches, limited adoption of abstractive summarisation, insufficient integration of knowledge graphs, fragmented system development, limited enterprise-scale validation, and a lack of reusable code and shared resources. The findings further indicate that large language models (LLMs), particularly when combined with prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge graphs, and agent-based architectures, offer promising opportunities to address these gaps. Overall, this review highlights both the progress and remaining challenges in developing scalable, explainable, and domain-adaptable AI-driven systems for intelligent business document processing.