Drop your supplier brochures. Your AI reads them.
Upload PDF brochures, spec sheets, and price lists to IBIOS. OCR and AI extraction converts pages of PDF content into structured Knowledge Base articles your AI Receptionist (coming soon) can use to answer caller questions — no manual re-typing required.
Same AI OCR pipeline used for quote processing. Handles scanned and text PDFs. Document type auto-classification. Confidence scoring per extraction.
All those supplier documents. None of it in the AI.
Many businesses — bathroom showrooms and tile retailers especially — have built up a pile of supplier brochures, specification sheets, and price lists. Staff know these documents exist and know where to find them — but the AI Receptionist (coming soon) has never read a single page of them.
When a customer calls asking about the dimensions of a specific bath, the lead time for a made-to-order product, or whether a shower tray is WRAS approved, the AI either gives a vague response or says it doesn’t know. Both outcomes damage the caller’s confidence. PDF bulk upload gives the AI the same reference material your staff use every day.
Which document types can IBIOS process?
Supplier product brochures
Full product specs, dimensions, finishes, weights, and installation requirements become structured product knowledge articles. The AI can answer detailed product questions accurately.
Printed price lists
SKU, description, trade price, and RRP columns are detected automatically. Pricing knowledge is extracted and marked as internal-only before reaching the staging queue.
Specification sheets
Technical dimensions, compatibility notes, weight limits, and installation clearances. The AI can give accurate technical answers without staff looking up the spec sheet manually.
Policy and warranty documents
Service terms, returns policies, warranty periods, and aftercare instructions. Policy knowledge from PDF becomes available for the AI to quote accurately on calls.
Installation guides
Fitting requirements, tool lists, substrate compatibility, and maintenance instructions. Trade buyers asking technical fitting questions get accurate answers from the source document.
Supplier compliance documents
Manufacturers’ WRAS approvals, BREEAM documentation and similar product documents, uploaded as reference material about the products you sell. IBIOS does not issue certificates.
How does a PDF become live AI knowledge?
Upload your PDFs
Drag and drop one or more PDFs into the upload interface. Add an optional note describing the document (supplier name, document type) to help with review.
OCR and document classification
IBIOS runs AI vision OCR on each page. The document is classified by type: brochure, price list, spec sheet, policy, or installation guide.
AI structured extraction
The AI engine extracts knowledge appropriate to the document type. A price list becomes structured pricing data. A brochure becomes product description articles.
Review and approve
Proposed articles appear in the staging queue with the source document name and page number shown. Staff approve, edit, or reject each item before it goes live.
The same OCR that processes your supplier quotes
IBIOS already uses AI vision OCR to extract line items from supplier quote documents — that pipeline already handles scanned PDFs, image-heavy brochures, and tables with inconsistent formatting.
PDF bulk upload extends the same pipeline to knowledge ingestion. The OCR, the confidence scoring, and the structured extraction are the same ones already used on real trade business documents.
OCR processes image-based pages. No need to have editable PDFs — scanned catalogues work.
OCR quality varies by page. Confidence is scored per chunk so low-quality pages are flagged individually.
Price list tables and specification grids are detected and extracted as structured data, not flat text.
Questions about PDF bulk upload
What types of PDF work best with IBIOS bulk upload?
Supplier product brochures, manufacturer specification sheets, printed price lists, installation guides, compliance certificates (WRAS, BREEAM), service terms and warranty documents all produce high-quality KB articles. Brochures typically yield product knowledge articles covering dimensions, finishes, and compatibility. Price lists yield pricing and lead time articles. Installation guides yield technical specification articles that the AI can use to answer questions about fitting requirements.
Can IBIOS handle scanned PDFs as well as text-based ones?
Yes. IBIOS uses the same AI vision model already used for quote document OCR. Scanned PDFs (image-based pages) are processed page by page using OCR, and the extracted text is then passed through the AI knowledge extraction step. Text-based PDFs (where the text is embedded as selectable text, not images) are processed directly. Both types go through the same AI extraction and confidence scoring pipeline before reaching the staging queue.
How does IBIOS decide what category a PDF belongs to?
After OCR, IBIOS classifies each document by type — brochure, price list, specification sheet, policy document, or installation guide — based on the document structure, header text, and content patterns. The document type classification determines how the AI extracts knowledge: a price list is treated as structured data (SKU, description, trade price, RRP) while a brochure is treated as narrative product knowledge. The classification is shown in the upload interface and can be overridden before processing begins.
Can I upload multiple PDFs at once?
Yes. The bulk upload interface accepts multiple files in a single upload. Each file is processed independently through the OCR and extraction pipeline, and all proposed articles appear in the staging queue filterable by document name. If you upload several supplier brochures at once, you will see KB candidates from all of them in the queue, labelled by their source document.
Are supplier catalogue PDFs kept confidential?
Yes. Documents uploaded to IBIOS are flagged as internal-only by default. Trade pricing, supplier discount terms, and cost price information extracted from PDFs is visible only to users with the appropriate role permissions — it is not surfaced publicly through the AI Receptionist (coming soon). The raw PDF files are stored encrypted. The Knowledge Base articles generated from them remain in your KB until manually removed.
Which IBIOS product line includes PDF bulk upload?
PDF bulk upload is part of the IBIOS AI Brain product line. It is built for bathroom retailers and wholesale and trade suppliers. See also: importing a PDF catalogue.
IBIOS (Integrated Business Intelligence & Operations System) is made by IBIOS Limited (NI743167), Northern Ireland. Access is by waiting list; there is no free trial.
Your supplier brochures. Your AI’s reference library.
Upload once. IBIOS OCRs, classifies, extracts, and stages every document for review. Scanned PDFs handled automatically.