5 ways to make your digital content work harder
Companies run on data. Most organizations work very hard to collect information, only to have most of it disappear into a black hole. An estimated 80 to 85 percent1 of aggregated information in content management systems is hidden, unsearchable dark data.
How can you not only manage all that data, but also leverage it to grow your business? And, if you already have a document management system, how do you use next-generation technology to make it more useful?
Here is a look at the not-too-distant future of document management:
Robots help you do your job
Robots are coming for your job … and that’s a GOOD thing! Robotic process automation (RPA) is a hot, new buzzword in document management that uses specialized computer programs to automate and standardize repeatable business processes. Sound futuristic? All it means is that the application tracks and learns how to perform tasks by watching how humans work and improving over time.
Get artificially intelligent (AI)
Fifty-seven percent of companies plan to invest in artificial intelligence, content analytics and semantics in the next 18 to 25 months.2 Large corporations employ data scientists, data miners and business intelligence architects to design efficient ways to extract information. New AI tools are being built into document management systems, allowing even smaller businesses
to get similar results.
You can take it with you
Employees increasingly work from home and on the go, making mobile document management more important than ever. Cloud-based technologies allow employees to access documents and connect with others from any location in real time. Left unchecked, the volumes of data can become expensive and unmanageable.
Most vendors today offer a low-cost cloud infrastructure, allowing organizations to realize the benefits of moving to the cloud. When you combine the cloud with a browser-based interface, you get document management software that consistently offers not only tremendous cost advantages, but virtually unlimited processing power to crunch numbers and turn that data into useful business intelligence.
Index it all — without really trying
A major challenge for organizations is to simply know what’s in their databases. Too much information is stored, but never processed, indexed or given metadata to help researchers find what they’re looking for.
When uploading a document in the past, data entry teams manually indexed information by keying in data for different fields. Modern automatic indexing makes it easy to store and archive documents as they’re captured, and intelligent indexing technology uses machine learning to identify the most relevant entries based on a user’s previous actions. For example, IBM recently announced that its Watson AI software can index unstructured documents stored in cloud backup services like Box.com. That means all those random documents with no metadata or organization can suddenly become useful again.
Talk to your database
Many people are accustomed to talking to Alexa and Google in their homes. Increasingly, they’ll expect the same services at work. With the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP), a user can simply ask mobile applications a question in plain English and receive answers from even complex datasets.
Voice-activated research is more efficient and helps organizations better serve disabled customers and comply with regulations such as the Americans with Disability Act (ADA).
Contrary to popular opinion, document management systems are not dull. In fact, because they can capture data faster, learn how to automate tasks and even turn your document stores into usable information, they make your life easier and more exciting. And, when companies adopt a cloud solution or use AI to make document stores more useful, it can make them suddenly more cost effective, efficient and profitable.
On the Web
317 percent
Amount by which the average organization expects the volume of its information and data to grow in the next two years
75 percent
Organizations that see information chaos as a major problem2
47 percent
Tasks and job functions that will become automated3
10 percent
Worldwide boost AI could bring to employment by 2020
60 percent
Businesses moving to the cloud2
87 percent
Accessing content on their mobile devices2
~60 percent
Organizations that are still stuck with mostly manual data management2
~50 percent
Nearly half of American adults use voice-activated digital assistants to get information; projections show 7.5 billion such devices will exist by 20214
1 Anant Jhingran of IBM Research | 2 AIIM Industry Watch: Automating Compliance and Governance, 2018
3 singularityhub.com/2019/01/01/ai-will-create-millions-more-jobs-than-it-will-destroy-heres-how
4 ovum.informa.com/resources/product-content/virtual-digital-assistants-to-overtake-world-population-by-2021
