PRINT
IT
RESELLER.UK
43
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
...continued
Milliken says that in the future this
will be done automatically, using analytics
and emerging technologies like natural
language processing and machine learning.
He describes this as the Holy Grail and
says that with tools like IBMWatson and
Alchemy from HP systems it is now within
reach.
Repository neutral
M-Files is not alone in this thinking.
Analysts like Gartner and Forrester
also recognise that changing customer
requirements and advances in technology
have created the need for a more dynamic,
flexible content management platform
offering:
1
Access to content wherever it
might reside:
A system will have its own
repository but must also be repository-
neutral and able to connect to external
repositories via connectors.
2
On premises, cloud and hybrid
deployment:
In the past, a system tended
to be either on premise or cloud-based. As
the popularity of the cloud increases, users
should be able to switch between the two.
“When you’re archiving content, you could
move from a cloud-based implementation
to an on premise one where storage might
be less expensive. Or, a highly regulated
business that's very concerned about its
compliance might want to retain data on
premise but share and collaborate with
partners and vendors via a cloud-based
repository,” explained Milliken.
3
Intelligent metadata layer and
federated access across multiple
sources:
“This,” explained Milliken, “is the
idea of getting access to content based on
context rather than just what repository it
resides in. When we talk about repositories
we don’t just mean content repositories
but other business systems like CRM and
ERP as well. If I’m in the CRM and I'm
working on a given customer, it’s obviously
important to find documents and other
information related to that customer. That’s
where you begin to see the opportunity
to span outside of one system. It won’t be
where content is stored that’s important
but how it's contextually relevant to you.”
4
Automatic tagging and content
analysis:
Advances in analytics,
machine learning and natural language
processing mean that tagging and content
classification can be done automatically
rather than manually or semi-automatically
through barcodes and OCR. Milliken
points out that with natural language
processing, things can be inferred about
a document that may not be directly
stated in the content. For example, certain
characteristics might associate it with a
particular project, even if the relationship is
never stated. Machine learning might also
lead to improved results. It might decide
‘Everybody else on the sales team is using
this document, maybe you’d be interested
in it too’ or ‘If you’re searching for these
kinds of things with the term agreement,
maybe we should tag this with agreement
too, rather than just contract’.
A visionary
Gartner predicts that by 2020, 20% of
ECM vendors will be morphing their
systems to provide these capabilities.
M-Files, the only visionary in Gartner’s
2016 Magic Quadrant for ECM
(Enterprise
Content Management) is already well
down this road.
“Where we think we’ve got a big head
start is that we have done this metadata
thing from the outset and have been
honing it through thousands of customer
deployments. For us, it’s always been a
question not of where but what. In the
past, we were thinking more about data
within M-Files, but now we are extending
that to connectors so that we can be
repository-neutral. It’s a very natural
extension. Now it’s not just unstructured
content – documents, contracts, proposals,
presentations, invoices, whatever it might
be – it’s the structured data too, the
customers in the CRM and the vendors and
projects in the ERP.
“Unifying these two environments
will lead to better user adoption because
people can find what they need right when
they’re in the CRM. We call it a 360-degree
view. It really doesn't matter where you
start, you will find what you need. If you’re
looking at a document and you see it’s
related to a certain customer and then you
look at that customer and you see that
that customer’s now related to a bunch
of other documents, that leads you to
information that you might not have found
with a search. You’re creating a unified,
really intelligent environment in which
information finds you almost as much as
you find it.”
M-files’ new solution, when it is
launched later this year, will take this to
another level.
“All we had to do was generalise
our metadata-driven approach to be
repository-neutral, open up the architecture
to plug in the analytics and boom,” said
Milliken.
“Imagine you have a fileshare with a
ton of files. You now automatically start
scanning this fileshare with intelligent
analytics, something like IBMWatson,
and suddenly you infer the customer
relationships for those documents and you
tag all those documents with a customer.
You’re not just putting a text string in,
you're literally linking it to the object in
the CRM. At that point, just by adding that
context you’ve dramatically changed the
relevance of that information and that is
absolutely within reach,” he said.
Over the last few years, M-Files has grown consistently at
more than 50% per annum. Today, it has 7,000 customers and
400,000 users worldwide and close to 500 partners who are
responsible for almost two thirds of the company’s revenue.
Following investment of 6 million euros in 2013 and a further
33 million in 2015, M-files is now significantly expanding its
sales and marketing capability, including the recruitment of new
partners. To find out more, please visit
.
Partner recruitment
When we
talk about
repositories
we don’t
just mean
content
repositories
but other
business
systems like
CRM and ERP
as well
