Many of the insights and decisions that drive corporate activity are stored in electronic files and documents – from product roadmaps and engineering specifications to marketing plans, sales agreements and financial projections.

For the billions of information workers worldwide, it’s critical that they can access this information as easily and efficiently as possible in order for the organisations they work for to progress and be profitable.

Today, this information is forcing companies to deal with a deluge of content that is becoming a big data problem.

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IDC predicts there will be a mind-boggling 50 times growth in digital content from 2010 to 2020, 90% of which is expected to be unstructured information like emails, documents, and video.

All this unstructured information is making the organisations content management challenge a lot bigger and much more complex.

In addition, delivering the work-anywhere, anytime, on any device mode of getting business done, which is expected by so many employees, isn’t a walk in the park considering today’s employees want to find and share business documents just as easily as they can browse for books or reserve a hotel room online

These demands mean the complexity of managing corporate content has never been greater and the pressure is on for IT teams to support this new class of connected employees.

Tackling content

The combination of unstructured content and more connected employees prompts the need for a document or content management system that not only meets the compliance requirements of the business but which employees will embrace and don’t try to circumvent.

However, more frequently it is the case that the overwhelming majority of content is tied to a business process – and business processes are tied to content.

With employees always looking for the easiest way to do business, having just a content management system or business process management (BPM) on their own to tackle these challenges isn’t going to make the way they work any easier or more efficient.

Rather than a standalone solution, real results come when organisations integrate the two solutions. In recognition of this, 451 Group have coined the term ‘process and collaboration management’ (PCM), a new area of technology solutions which combines content management with BPM so that organisations can better manage content complexities and employee’s work anywhere desires.

PCM for the future

With workplaces evolving at such a rapid rate, PCM has the potential to help businesses run better through simplified processes, enhanced collaboration, and easier ways to exploit content and media.

Employees can spend less time doing administrative, repetitive, time-consuming tasks and instead dedicate more time on productive, business-led outputs.

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Documents can be automatically processed, filed and stored where they should be and with easy access to the right people, either inside or outside of the business.

Because every piece of content is tied to a business process and vice versa, this integrated content management and business process approach lends delivers a single solution to simplify the workflow, improve delivery and customer service, and streamline approval flows and relevant content to meet compliance requirements.

If the structure is right, when new media types and devices enter the workplace PCM will become much more feasible for integration into the organisations. In turn, organisations will be able to evolve and adapt more efficiently to meet new business challenges.

Sourced from John Newton, CTO and founder, Alfresco