Reading time minutes

5 key trends shaping the content services market in 2023

Forrester analyst Cheryl McKinnon shared five trends in content services that she expects to see in 2023.

Empty road extends toward mountain.

This is a summary of the Hyland-sponsored webinar Content Fuels Your Anywhere-Work Strategy: Top Trends Shaping the Content Services Market, featuring guest speaker Cheryl McKinnon, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research.

As the apex of the pandemic continues to wane, it is clearer and clearer that many of the reactionary work-from-anywhere strategies we implemented in response to 2020 are here to stay.

Further, content has become one of the foundational expectations we have in our “anywhere work,” which depends entirely on the flow of content and communication.

Cheryl McKinnon, a principal analyst with Forrester, studies the evolution of content services.

She shared in our October 2022 webinar that it’s important to reflect on the changes that organizations have undergone and the challenges they’ve overcome. Then we can identify which strategies are enabling organizations to become more innovative, adaptive and resilient — and how those strategies must continue to evolve to fit our changing business processes.

So what does Cheryl see coming in 2023?

Forrester’s 5 trends for content services in 2023

1. Line-of-business leaders will become transformation drivers

McKinnon see signs of business leaders stepping up to use their influence and their understanding of technology to solve specific pain points.

Senior IT roles used to own content management, but now we’re seeing a lot more line-of-business leaders who recognize that content services and related technologies can help their teams solve specific challenges.

McKinnon suspects leaders will increasingly take advantage of case-specific implementations offerings in 2023.

2. Intelligent content services will become standard

Pretrained intelligent content services models will serve tangible, practical use cases.

Intelligent content services (artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics capabilities within a content services platform) will soon be adopted more regularly enterprise-wide, and specifically, organizations will bring on pretrained models for common use cases.

3. Microprocesses will strengthen connections

Content microprocesses will connect external stakeholders to essential workflows.

McKinnon predicts content microprocesses (very specific touchpoints within a larger process workflow) will gain traction and help eliminate roadblocks in a workflow. Think of them as pre-identified moments, like contacting external stakeholders when business transactions are virtual, so the workflow can move along smoothly.

4. Privacy requirements will force new approaches

Privacy requirements will rejuvenate interest in and adhesion to policy-driven deletion.

McKinnon predicts the rise of data protection and privacy laws will rejuvenate interest in policy-driven deletion policies and retention rules. These stronger requirements will encourage organizations to take the step and start deleting data that could be risky if lost, breached or disclosed inappropriately.

5. Knowledge management will reign supreme.

Knowledge management will see a resurgence and compel a rethink of content creation.

According to McKinnon, knowledge management has been a rising interest for the past couple of years. To support this era of anywhere work, organizations must get more proactive and more thoughtful about sharing our knowledge. Additionally, McKinnon speaks in the webinar about a coming revolution in how organizations think of content.

Related articles

Get more depth from Cheryl McKinnon

Watch the on-demand webinar, Content Fuels Your Anywhere-Work Strategy: Top Trends Shaping the Content Services Market.

View the webinar to get more depth from McKinnon on the five content trends she predicts, as well as fascinating statistics, expert insights and recommendations on how best to use them to inform your future-fit strategies, priorities and business imperatives.