Digital Transformation: The Role of Intelligent Information Management

In my previous post I stated that digital transformation is a significant issue for many businesses. I mentioned a recent report by AIIM, which finds that the vast majority of enterprises surveyed believe digital transformation is “important” or “very important” to their organization.¹ Yet even with this number so high, the same study finds that “less than 1 in 5 organizations report being near their goals of digital transformation by 2020.” With this in mind, I’d like to highlight some answers to the question, “What is needed to help with your digital transformation journey?”

This is where Intelligent Information Management (IIM) plays a role. IIM is not a technology, but a set of practices combined with technologies that form building blocks for establishing and growing a solid information ecosystem that supports the digital transformation journey. Looking at digital transformation from the perspective of being a result of actions taken to understand, anticipate and redefine the customer experience—whether internal or external—the question becomes, “What actions are needed to achieve digital transformation, and how do you describe them?”

Fundamentally, IIM focuses on people and business processes with the goal of enhancing the overall customer experience. This includes providing the right information to the right people, at the right time, on the device of their choice, securely and efficiently. In order for this to happen, and the digital journey to be successful, consumers need a much broader and more consumable information infrastructure that aligns with the business vision, enables new ways-of-working and supports operational governance and compliance requirements.

There are four key elements or practices of IIM to follow. These include:

· Rationalizing and modernizing the information infrastructure—assessing the current state, developing a set of business requirements, and implementing changes to connect and consolidate repositories, extend information and process accessibility and increase operational flexibility.

· Digitalizing core organizational processes—reducing and/or eliminating paper-based information and manual activities from core business processes like AP/AR, procurement, loan origination, HR recruitment, etc.

· Automating compliance & governance—applying business rules and technology to carry out business activities like identifying and organizing information, applying access controls and searching for specific information.

· Leveraging analytics & machine learning—using in-bound capture as an example, this includes analyzing information and understanding the context for its application as well as extracting data for use as metadata in organizing the information.

In my next post I’ll take a closer look at the first bullet point above, “rationalizing and modernizing the information infrastructure.” In the meantime, feel free to visit the Business Process Outsourcing page of our website. There you will find additional insights on industry trends and best practices including case histories, whitepapers and more.

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1. AIIM Industry Watch. “State of Intelligent Information Management: Getting Ahead of the Digital Transformation Curve”