A recent AIIM survey shows a significant growth in the amount of content tools used by organizations, but an accompanying increase in data chaos. FileCloud’s powerful integration capabilities help connect those information silos that can be incapacitating for enterprises. The Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) recently released its report, AIIM 2023 State of the […]
A recent AIIM survey shows a significant growth in the amount of content tools used by organizations, but an accompanying increase in data chaos. FileCloud's powerful integration capabilities help connect those information silos that can be incapacitating for enterprises.
The Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) recently released its report, AIIM 2023 State of the Intelligent Information Management Industry. Information Management (IM) is an ever-changing arena. Undoubtedly, the original founding members of AIIM, who set up the organization in the 1940s as the National Microfilm Association, would fail to recognize the daily work practices of today's IM professionals.
Here we examine the implications of the AIIM survey results for those professionals trying to forge a path forward in an information environment where the velocity of digital transformation and increase in data volumes is unprecedented. We also look at technologies, such as FileCloud, that are designed to cut through the Gordian Knots associated with digital transformation, cybersecurity, compliance, and other areas related to managing the life cycle of daunting volumes of information across enterprises today.
The AIIM survey participants were both members and non-members of AIIM working in general areas related to IM across the public sector, and some areas of the private sector (such as finance and IT). Around three-quarters of participants were from the US, with the rest mainly from Europe and the UK. With this cross-section of respondents, the results are likely to be an accurate representation of how challenges in the area of IM are perceived by those working on the front line of the current digital landscape.
IM is a broad term, encompassing governance and compliance, as well as documentation life cycles across multiple sectors. Participants found that these areas are still creating some professional bottlenecks, and expressed the view that organizations are currently below par in relation to the execution of IM generally. Despite this, the survey also shows that compliance is still a huge priority at all organizational levels.
The survey also reveals that, in the last decade or so, the average number of content management tools in organizations has grown significantly from 3.14 to 4.95. The number of organizations with 7-10 systems has increased from 3.6% to 14% in the same period. However, only 26% of content, document, or records management systems are integrated with other lines-of-business (LOB) systems that are central to operational efficiency.
This means that information often exists in silos across organizations, which invariably creates problems with the ability to truly fulfill the business value of many information assets. It also creates blockers in relation to various areas of regulatory compliance.
The hugely significant increase in the number of information systems, coupled with the lack of systems integration, illustrates that without adequate planning, the purchase of software systems sometimes compounds the problems it is attempting to resolve. This information quagmire becomes deeper, less ordered, and more difficult to escape, and internal data transparency suffers even more.
On the positive side, new developments in AI and ML are likely to be a game-changer for IM, with the potential to transform information ecosystems for the better. Pattern recognition to sort data into classes and the identification of anomalous file activity are examples of the capabilities that IMs will increasingly be able to leverage to improve organizational efficiencies around the flow of information and the need for compliance with global privacy regulations.
Before falling further down the rabbit hole of expensive software purchases in an attempt to control information assets, it's a good idea to research extremely carefully which solution best suits your particular enterprise and sectoral needs. There are various file-sharing solutions on the market, each with its own particular set of characteristics that may be suited to some environments, but not others.
FileCloud can, however, potentially address some of the areas of frustration that have emerged in the AIIM survey. For example, it can integrate easily with many core LOB, cloud-based software solutions to provide a fully branded file-sharing microservice. For further information on this, you can check out our white paper: Powerful Unstructured Data Management for SaaS Applications.
Additionally, FileCloud can comprehensively and flexibly address requirements and common areas of concern in the IM sphere, including:
At FileCloud, we think it ultimately saves organizations time, not to mention expense, to put some effort into researching the IM solution that suits your requirements and unique infrastructure. That's why we enable you to schedule free, no-strings product demos, as well as free trials with all features included. You can sign up for a 15-day trial of FileCloud Online. If you want a solution to deploy on your own infrastructure, you can sign up for a 30-day trial of FileCloud Server.
All statistics are from the AIIM publication, AIIM 2023 State of the Intelligent Information Management Industry: Pivotal Moment in Information Management. © AIIM 2023, www.aiim.org.
Written by Deirdre Clancy, Technical Content and Communication Manager
