Let’s talk intelligent document processing
Hyland Intelligent Document Processing software uses AI to power document onboarding capabilities and drive new levels of automation, efficiency and accuracy.
Growing into the future with agile, intelligent information management
In times of rapid change and uncertainty, some organizations feel inclined to take a defensive business stance. After all, in the face of uncertainty, a wait-and-see approach is tempting. But leading organizations do the opposite. Embracing change, and thinking innovatively about it, can help organizations reap the rewards in the future.
Strategic information management is one of the most fundamental and important areas to focus on in today’s business climate. Let’s explore how smart organizations look to information management to help manage change, contain risk and drive business value — and how cloud-native content services platforms answer the call.
There are many pieces at play that contribute to the need for strategically managed enterprise information.
Let’s look at the six V’s: Six traits that describe the changing scope of your enterprise content, and thus, six traits that may indicate you need to shift your information strategy approach.
According to IDC, the amount of global data and content will double between 2022 and 2026.
Modern content is more than just scanned documents and Microsoft Office documents. It includes videos, images, SMS messages, conversations, web code and much more.
The speed at which information is generated is growing, but so is the desire for always-on, anytime, anywhere access to information.
Organizations need to manage a combination of new and old information and apply it against constantly evolving compliance challenges and requirements.
Content is a core component in various business processes, so the efficient capture, data extraction and routing of data and content is vital.
As organizations grow, so does the amount of information silos and content management systems being managed. An elegant solution is required to find and manage information across these myriad tools.
The traditional tool used to manage information within the corporate world is the enterprise content management (ECM) system, nowadays called a content services platform. However, many antiquated legacy ECM platforms struggle to adapt and provide solutions to real-world business challenges.
> Read more | Hierarchy of information needs
ECMs first found a footing decades ago, and while they proved proficient in content management at the time, things have changed. Legacy ECMs weren’t built for today’s diverse content or distributed workforces.
There are several factors to consider when considering replacing your ECM with a modern content and information management.
Many traditional ECM platforms still have the same dated, monolithic framework they were launched with. This leads to limited functionality, challenges integrating with more modern solutions, and expensive development and maintenance cycles for add-ons.
Ensuring the content management strategy and tools within an organization are cloud-ready and fully functional in the cloud is a core requirement for today’s pace of business.
The focus on re-architecting for modern infrastructures can lead to a drop in innovation and new features for certain legacy vendors. Users of these older platforms miss out on new core capabilities such as artificial intelligence, process automation, integration with collaboration and business applications, and modern, simplified management and user interfaces.
The deployment of most ECM systems requires careful planning, a lot of configuration and significant user training. Combined, this results in high implementation costs — especially when compared with the flexible, monthly pricing models and extensive customization options available in modern platforms. Look for information management solutions that drive down operational costs, not add to them.
Despite years of claims that one system would store all the content within an organization, vendors failed to deliver on this promise, resulting in the deployment of multiple, disconnected information systems — none of which were ever designed to work together. The result is a collection of aging platforms, abandoned collaboration sites and isolated departmental solutions. Modern solutions to this conundrum bring enterprise content together though intelligent technology like federated search and seamless integrations with core applications.
According to Gartner, the term “enterprise content management” no longer fits the dynamics of the market and should be replaced by “content services” driven by a “content services platform.” Content services platforms are the next evolution of ECM — and an opportunity to address the challenges faced by aging, outdated ECM platforms. Content services takes a wider view of the business.
Let’s focus on four business areas that can be reimagined using a strategic content services approach:
As we have seen, the need for information management is greater now than ever before. With a CSP, organizations can go beyond simple information management to achieve true digital transformation — with flexible pricing via consumption, subscription and perpetual licensing models.
Are you ready for the journey?
Organizations need to have access to information from any device, at any time, from any location. For information managers, this means having remote and mobile tools to access content, as well as interact with several content-driven areas of the business, including:
The concept of gaining access to content in context is increasingly important.
For knowledge workers, this can take the form of seamless access to all content from any business system, whether that is their email tool, content creation tools, ERP or CRM business systems or the native content services interface. Customers are increasingly investing in self-service portals, allowing users to add documents and data to corporate systems and to drive their own workflows for activities such as product selection, loan applications and account management.
An empowered customer is a happy one. From a content services perspective, this means providing a cascading series of cloud-powered options — from simple mobile apps to the ultimate content services platform offerings built entirely on cloud-native architectures.
Key solution: Information architecture
To deliver the content services vision defined by Gartner, a cloud-powered information architecture is a massive help. A content services platform that can take advantage of public cloud infrastructures — such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and others — offers many business benefits:
The purchase of any corporate IT solution is inevitably followed by business-specific customization. However, many legacy ECM systems lack the quality of the tools required to develop meaningful solutions on top of the platform.
Key solution: Low-code capabilities
Low-code development tools are not new — they have been used in areas such as software development for many years. Those of us who grew up building apps using Visual Basic are familiar with GUI-based development tools. Similarly, within information management, workflow design tools offer a visual way to create and manage business processes. But in a modern content services platform, low-code tools are much more capable and offer the business a wide range of benefits. Some of their key characteristics:
A word of caution: While low-code development tools allow rapid prototyping by a wider, less developer-focused team, there are situations in which organizations need to create low-level code. Having a low-code environment does not replace the need for a custom-coding environment, open standards or an open and accessible application programming interface. Modern content services platforms need to provide capabilities and tools from low code to full code and everything in between.
Ever since the first document management system, businesses have been sold on the potential of business process automation. Automation promises to replace manual tasks, remove human errors and increase the ability of staff to focus on less mundane, higher-value tasks.
While ECM addressed simple automation for paper-based, document-centric processes, modern organizations are looking for much more. Business content is no longer just documents and scanned images. Knowledge workers are being asked to work with more diverse and ad-hoc processes — and with incoming information in a wide variety of formats, such as images, audio and video. In an ideal world, automation would enable businesses to:
For many reasons, automation has struggled to deliver these requests, not moving from promise to reality. But modern content services platforms don’t just have automation — they have automation powered by robotic process automation (RPA) and AI.
Key solution: Intelligent automation
Automation in a modern content services platform makes use of multiple technologies to achieve its goals — from traditional OCR to more modern tech such as RPA and AI. Intelligent automation focuses on using computing power to deliver human-like understanding, judgment and decision-making, with the added benefits of reduced error rates and blinding speeds. Rather than discuss how each technology works, let’s focus on the benefits modern automation adds to the business:
The potential provided by modern, intelligent automation is limitless.
Content services platforms allow organizations to make the most of automation in areas such as data capture, process optimization and more — using system-specific tools and those available as cloud-based microservices from other vendors.
Hyland Intelligent Document Processing software uses AI to power document onboarding capabilities and drive new levels of automation, efficiency and accuracy.
As we become more digitally enabled as a society and as a business community, the types of content we use are changing — and expanding. As individuals, we create images, audio and video content using our mobile phones to share on social media. Rich media usage has lagged slightly in the business world, but it’s catching up rapidly.
Most ECM tools can store various photo, video, audio and graphic design formats (such as TIFF, JPG, PNG, AI, EPS, etc.), but they are not specifically designed to do so. Equally, while traditional data extraction tools and OCR engines were more than capable of extracting text from a document, it’s a lot more complicated and nuanced process to interpret and understand what an image or video is showing. Put simply, legacy ECM tools lack the functionality needed to effectively manage rich media content in a modern enterprise.
Modern business requires a content solution that:
In addition to enabling businesses to take advantage of rich media to support traditional business workflows, digital asset management (DAM) tools are available to creative firms, marketing departments and product design teams within organizations who wish to work with rich media tools. For many, this adds another information silo into the mix, making it even more difficult to work efficiently.
Key solution: Digital asset management (DAM)
A DAM capability within your content services platform properly services the growing need for rich media management. Look for a DAM solution like Hyland’s Nuxeo Platform for DAM, that includes:
All areas of the business are increasingly encountering rich media. From dashcam footage usage in insurance claims to video transcripts for compliance purposes, rich media is here to stay. Modern content services tools offer significant benefits to organizations that need to work with rich media as part of their wider information management activities.
Hyland’s Nuxeo Platform for DAM was named a Leader in the DAM space in this 2023 report was named a Leader in the DAM space in this 2023 report. Our solution achieves the maximum score for advanced capabilities and solution breadth, and Omdia places our market momentum as above average for the field.
Content services platforms offer distinct new opportunities for enterprise information managers. Cloud-powered solutions provide employees, partners and customers instant and ubiquitous access to their key information anytime, anywhere and on any device.
1: Think big. The technology is ready for you.
For too long, organizations have been forced to constrain their expectations of business software. Modern content services platforms remove those constraints and allow enterprise information management leaders to think in terms of how they can help the business as they fuel their digital transformation journey.
Build a wish list of solutions, projects and features that help your staff, your partners and your customers. Dare to dream big, and the results could be spectacular.
2: Make sure your vendor meets modern requirements.
Once an organization has identified its business requirements, identifying the core content services functionality that is needed to address those requirements should be straightforward. Refer to the four main areas addressed above:
Every vendor and content services platform will have strengths in different areas. Identify those that match your specific functional needs before moving forward.
3: Get input from peers and analyst experts
Enterprises have been information management tools like content services platforms for some time, and many are happy to share their views and experiences — both good and bad. Peer review sites and analyst reports like the Gartner Market Guide for Content Services Platforms are excellent resources when identifying potential platforms.
4: Try it out
Modern CSP vendors make frequent references to agility and the speed at which new solutions can be created. So put them to the test! Before committing to any new platform, organizations should look to try it out — whether by performing a proof of concept or running a small pilot project with clearly defined goals and success criteria.
Discover Hyland’s content services platforms:
Hyland, a leader in content services, provides modern technology platforms, process automation tools and intelligent solutions that securely integrate content and data into the business systems and processes you use every day.
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