Digital Landfill

Imperative Number 6 of 6 Facing Information Professionals

Mine big content: Find insights and value in massive aggregations of unstructured information and explore what big data will mean for information professionals.

“Big data” is a top issue for CIOs that really reflects a far more fundamental challenge for the business – “How do I help my organization become analytics-driven in order to reduce costs, increase revenues and improve competitiveness? Or more simply, how do I redefine customer experiences by extracting value from all this information I am accumulating?”  

• Many analytical solutions were not possible previously in the world of unstructured information because: 1) they were too costly to implement; 2) they were not capable of handling the large volumes of data involved in a timely manner; or 3) the required data simply did not exist in an electronic form.
• New tools now bring the capabilities of business intelligence and the benefits of optimization, asset management, pattern detection and compliance monitoring to the world of unstructured information.
• The “big content” subset of “big data” includes semantic technologies, the application of analytics to high volume print streams, content and text analytics (both inside the firewall and in social streams), and ultimately managing and personalizing the web experience in which all of this comes together for the customer.    
• The entrance of “big data” issues to our space feels disorienting in the same way that “social content” once felt, and it raises a series of questions for information professionals and for the providers of content management solutions:  
  • What are the implications of the rapid blurring of the lines between structured and unstructured information for the providers of content solutions?
  • How does the accumulation of massive volumes of data and information — increasingly located in public, private, and hybrid clouds -- effect how information professionals need to look at the question of governance and risk?
  • How can organizations turn "big data" and "big content" from being viewed solely as potential liability to a new potential source of business and customer value?
  • How do organizations use all the information they have about customers — information that is currently hidden in digital landfills — to create new value and new ways of delivering that value?

Data points:

• To increase competitiveness, 83% of CIOs have visionary plans that include business intelligence and analytics. [IBM – The Essential CIO]
• 50% would find it of “high” or “very high” commercial value to be able to link a customer/citizen/staff-member search across structured (database) data & unstructured documents & case notes. [AIIM -- Content Analytics: Research Tools for Unstructured Content and Rich Media]
• For 72% of organizations, it’s harder to find information owned by their organization than information not owned by them – i.e., on the Web [AIIM -- Content Analytics: Research Tools for Unstructured Content and Rich Media]
• The average securities and investment firm with more than 1,000 employees has 3,866 terabytes of data; by comparison, the full collection of the Library of Congress is 235 terabytes. [McKinsey]

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The 6 Imperatives...

1. Make everything mobile: Redefine content delivery and process automation to take advantage of mobile devices and mobile workforces. 
2. Digitize processes: Drive paper bottlenecks out of processes and automate process flows.
3. Make the business social: Integrate social technologies into processes rather than create stand-alone social networks. Connect internal and external stakeholders to tap into unexpected sources of knowledge.
4. Use automation to ensure information governance: Acknowledge that the paper-based records paradigm no longer works in the digital workplace – if it ever did -- and use automation to ensure governance and disposition.
5. Commit to the cloud: Break down monolithic "enterprise" solutions into more “app like” solutions that can be deployed quickly independent of platform and in the cloud.
6. Mine big content: Find insights and value in massive aggregations of unstructured information and explore what big data will mean for information professionals.

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 AIIM's Certified Information Professional designation was developed by a team of subject matter experts in conjunction with AIIM, in accordance with ISO 17024 methodologies. The purpose of the certification is to establish a core body of knowledge relevant to the needs of content and information professionals. The certification exams are independently administered by the global Prometric testing centers. Free certification prep kits and sample exam questions are available now from AIIM.

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