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In this opinion piece, Brian DeWyer, CTO and Co-Founder of Reveille Software, a provider of management and monitoring solutions for Intelligent Process Automation-based applications, delves into the topic of Intelligent Information Management and shares five best practices that organizations can adopt for a successful digital transformation.
Intelligent Information Management, or IIM, is defined by AIIM as a practice that integrates people, processes, information, and technology to achieve digital transformation. Businesses need to handle and work on huge volumes of data, and IIM provides a systematic approach to managing and organizing this data. It uses advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing to enhance the efficiency, accuracy, and value of data assets.
The key components involved are information governance, content management, search and discovery and automation workflow. You can look at this concept from three angles:
- Business (analyzing your current state and measuring that against where you want to be with IIM).
- Governance (policies and processes that maintain information organization, search, and retrieval).
- Technology (utilizing software that solves your data management problems).
IIM & ECM: What’s the Difference?
IIM is an extension of Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Both strategies aim to solve the same problem – making content management easy. The main difference lies in the usage of technology. For example, IIM often uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to retrieve information quickly. IIM emphasizes the use of analytics and insights derived from data to support decision-making and drive business outcomes. For example, it leverages AI and ML algorithms for data analysis and predictive modeling. While ECM systems may offer reporting and analytics capabilities, they primarily focus on managing content-related processes and ensuring compliance rather than providing advanced decision support. ECM systems prioritize the efficient management and retrieval of content, ensuring that users can find and access documents and information as needed. But, unlike IIM, they may not always prioritize user experience enhancements or personalized features.
Intelligent Information Management offers many advantages to businesses looking for enhanced content management. Here are the seven key benefits.
- Improved decision-making: Access to real-time data and analytics enables organizations to make data-driven decisions.
- Enhanced efficiency: Automation of repetitive tasks such as data entry and document processing reduces manual effort and speeds up workflows. For instance, an insurance company can automate claims processing, resulting in faster claim approvals and improved customer satisfaction.
- Cost reduction: Streamlining processes and reducing manual intervention helps lower operational costs. For example, a manufacturing company can implement IIM solutions to automate supply chain management, reducing overhead costs associated with inventory management and procurement.
- Increased innovation: Analyzing customer data and market trends can uncover new opportunities for innovation.
- Better customer experiences: Personalizing interactions based on customer data leads to improved satisfaction and loyalty. For example, businesses can use customer purchase history to recommend personalized product recommendations, enhancing the shopping experience.
- Risk mitigation: Implementing robust information governance measures helps mitigate data breaches and regulatory non-compliance. For instance, a financial services firm can enforce access controls and encryption protocols to protect sensitive customer data and comply with regulations like GDPR.
- Strategic insights: Analyzing data across various sources can uncover valuable insights that drive strategic initiatives. For instance, a healthcare provider can analyze patient data to identify trends in disease prevalence and allocate resources more effectively to address public health needs.
- Business continuity: Ensuring data availability and integrity safeguards against disruptions and disasters. For example, a cloud-based backup solution can protect critical business data and applications, enabling seamless recovery in the event of system failures or cyberattacks.
IIM can only work if you follow a set strategy or best practices. Here are five such practices you can adopt:
1. Creating, Capturing, & Sharing Information
Creating and capturing information is the first step in the intelligent information management lifecycle. It sets the stage for everything that follows. Organizations implement information management systems to support creating, capturing, and sharing information and ensuring its usefulness. ECM management and monitoring systems help you monitor and manage your service levels, performance, and operating metrics for core ECM components. These include capture, document management, migration, hybrid, and more.
2. Digitalizing Information-Intensive Processes
IIM calls for a fundamental rethinking of how we approach key business outcomes. It requires that information be digitized, and work processes be developed or reworked, focusing on digital-first and automation wherever possible. It also requires that organizations adopt a posture of agility and responsiveness rather than one of passivity and reactivity.
3. Automating Governance and Compliance
To be effective, organizations have to embrace the approach of “streamline and automate. Governance and compliance tasks must be as simple and automated as possible. Users should not even know that processes like information security and records management are happening. ECM management and monitoring systems provide clear answers to some of the toughest audit questions. They produce detailed reports on user behavior, application performance, and more to ensure compliance and content security. They help protect your most valuable digital assets by showing how internal and external users are accessing content. You can schedule tests to run at specific periods to discover errors/breaches earlier and proactively resolve them before they get too large to manage.
4. Extracting Intelligence from Information
This is the gateway for leveraging and exploiting information in support of the organization’s goals and objectives. Information needs context and needs to be presented in a way that doesn’t burden users but supports them. The tools and processes that serve business needs and outcomes can offer significant benefits in understanding information in new ways and leveraging that intelligence to drive innovation and the customer experience. Organizations can streamline and automate notifications for any enterprise content applications that an ECM management and monitoring system is actively observing with integration into IT Operations Management (ITOM) toolsets and incident management systems.
5. Implementing an Information Management Strategy
Digital transformation is about doing things differently – and doing different things – in support of the key strategic objectives facing every organization in the age of digital disruption. In other words, digital transformation is not about incremental process improvement. Digital transformation is about using information in brand-new ways. Organizations need to focus on monetizing their information assets, directly or indirectly, to move the organization forward. Information management must become a business enabler to support Cloud migration and digital transformation. Implementing the right information management strategy will allow this to progress. ECM management and monitoring systems keep you updated by providing baselines for users, transactions, and resource consumption in on-premises and cloud environments. This helps you manage and plan growth impact, communicate solution value, and minimize support resources.
Intelligent Information Management is a transformative approach. IIM empowers organizations to harness the full potential of their data assets. By integrating advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation, IIM enables businesses to make informed decisions, enhance efficiency, reduce costs, drive innovation, and ultimately achieve competitive advantage. As businesses continue to navigate the complexities of data overload, embracing IIM will be necessary for sustainable growth and success in the dynamic marketplace.
About the Author
Brian DeWyer is CTO and Co-Founder of Reveille Software. With more than 25 years of experience in technology, Brian DeWyer provides product strategy and technical leadership in his role as Reveille CTO and board member. Brian leverages his extensive knowledge from his tenure as a senior IT leader at Wachovia and previous role as a process consulting practice leader for IBM Global Services delivering on-premises and cloud-based solution implementations for Fortune 1000 commercial and government clients. He has led process change efforts within large organizations, building on content-driven solutions for high-volume transaction processing applications. He is a past board member of the Association of Image and Information Management (AIIM) industry association. Brian graduated from Virginia Tech with a BSME and holds an MBA from Wake Forest University.
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