Guest Post by Tom Rieger, AIIM Board member

“80% of the world’s data is unstructured – stuck inside files”.  The content management world has been saying this for decades, for me starting when I joined FileNet in 2003.   This is why “everyone needs a content management system” is still alive and well.  Although ECM messaging has morphed and changed over the years (AI dominating the current talk tracks), what was true back then is true today: the core need is the ability to extract structured data from the unstructured content is the most important act.  Corporations want to extract meaningful data and map that data into operation systems.  

My opinions are a combination of what I have seen working with clients, and reading what other smart people are saying as well.

Topic #1:  Capturing of Content will Evolve

How inbound documents are ‘OCRed’ and applicable metadata is extracted is evolving with A.I.  The days of traditional form-capture with traditional capture software still might have a place, but the next-generation use cases will do this in a new way.  This allows for better extracting and higher accuracy for handwriting, image analysis, voice-to-text, and even video-to-text.

Topic #2:  Cloud 

Cloud platforming will continue to be a destination – This may be moving to a cloud-first solution, implementing a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, or just lifting-and-shifting on-prem into a Cloud Service Provider (CSP), this is happening.  WHY?

• The cost – Moving from cap-ex to op-ex and paying for what is used is the new normal. IT organizations are being asked to do 3x more work for 3x less money.
• The pain – “Manage”, “upgrade”, “secure”, and “scale” are just some of the reasons.  Maintaining supported versions of the ECM software, OS, database, application server, etc. gets in the way of innovation.
• The time – Time-to-value is now measured with a stopwatch.  Running on old software, on old hardware, with developers talking in months to make changes is not acceptable.
• The administration – The administration of a large and complex environment is not easy.  This is not just keeping something running, but running correctly.   

However, be aware that not all cloud solutions are equal. Lifting-and-shifting a server-based ECM solution to the cloud – whether your private cloud or a Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution, does not equate to a cloud-first solution. These server-focused solutions still require servers in the cloud and do not take advantage of the scalability, cost savings, and technology advantages of a true cloud-first solution. Docuvela has a very informative blog post that outlines cloud-first advantages.

Topic #3:  A.I. will be Infused into Everything

AI will permeate into content capture, workflows, searching, and governance. With content containing so much knowledge, this is the place for it to happen.  Most modern A.I. is very ‘language’ centric – natural language processing and computational linguistics have existed for decades but only now with large-language models (LLM) do we democratize the effort and give us generative output.  We have moved beyond simple sentiment, summarization, and entity extraction.

Topic #4:  Automation and Integration Evolves

Integrated Platforms as a Service (iPaaS) have been around ~10 years to automate repeatable actions into a heterogeneous set of systems.  But once you put iPaaS and AI together, this takes on a whole new opportunity to drive additional automations.  ‘Straight through processing’ has been the dream of any content-involved workflow and the ability to have the technology reach outside the environment to open a Salesforce record, enter an order into Workday, or check a ticket in ServiceNow with no human intervention is a big next step. 

Topic #5:  Buzzword for 2025 – Intelligent Data Processing (IDP)

Everybody is talking about it like it is a new concept.  Gartner defines it as

“specialized data integration tools enabling automated extraction of data from multiple formats and varying layouts of document content”. 

What I appreciate is the added research and development in a ‘capture’ space that has been withering as Gartner is tracking 76 firms in this space.  But as Alan Pelz-Sharp stated in his predictions,

“IDP consolidation will accelerate as every business application vendor realizes it needs a steadily flowing pipeline of unstructured data”.

Topic #6: Everyone Needs Access to Content

As I have seen in more traditional transaction systems or the next-generation analytical use cases, the number of potential users accessing content will explode.  But with that, the following is now more important than ever:

• Ease of Integration is Paramount – Traditionally ECM systems have integrated with other applications through custom-built connectors, or a purchased solution from a vendor. Custom connectors are expensive and purchased integrations can often be limiting and not provide the full range of required features. If ECM vendors fully invest in cloud-first storage and allow content and metadata to be directly accessed in Azure Blob Storage, these integrations become infinitesimally easier. This is what Veladocs has done, democratizing access to content and metadata by removing the layers of proprietary databases and APIs.
• Flexible and attractive user experiences – Traditional ECM systems are generally dated, confusing and do not offer what the modern consumer expects.  This also requires mobile-friendly, enterprise application friendly, consumer portal friendly and something my young-adult children would think is ‘modern’.  
• A.I. Enabled – Also maps back into the A.I. enablement of said content and using a more ‘ChatGPT’ centric chatbot experience with a generative output.  
• More people = More governance/records management – All the new ‘openness’ has CISOs losing sleep.  This means it is paramount to address the governance and security concerns of both new and existing applications. Security and Governance fear/uncertainty/doubt (FUD) is the reason a lot of projects never come to life.

Organize to Optimize

Historically, content management for most organizations is underfunded and needs to be given a chance to bring real, measurable ROI.  With all the focus on A.I. and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, organizations need to first take a step back and ensure that the unstructured 80% of information in their systems is properly stored, maintained, and managed in modern repositories that can support their future goals.

As a board member of AIIM, the opportunity to be part of a broader ecosystem of vendors, peers, and industry experts around content management is the charter.  Please consider joining AIIM today at www.aiim.org to learn more.