Blogs

Much time and effort has been spent over the years improving the quality of the information we use to get our work done: we’ve invested in the deskewing and despeckling of images, subjected documents to version control, and striven to reconcile metatags to improve findability. But at the end of the day, none of this matters a whit if people have to work overly hard to gain access to that information.

There is little doubt in my mind that there is much pent up desire for this sort of ready access, a conviction that is only supported by the AIIM research finding that “30% [of respondents] are seeing increasing use of unofficial cloud content management and file shares.” Since the association also finds that “only 5% have an “official” cloud-based option [and] 19% prevent access to non-approved sites,” what choice do users have if they want to get at what they need, whenever they need it, from wherever they are?

This wasn't an issue in the "old" days because the only way you could log onto a system was from a terminal hardwired to a mainframe or a PC plugged into a network cable. Today, of course, the proliferation of personal smart devices, and their growing use on the job (BYOD), is turning this model to dust, and we are now growing so used to hopping on the Internet any time we want to look something up that we are coming to expect the same universal accessibility from our companies.

As a result, I can see the outlines of an emerging shift in focus from making information better to making it more convenient, and it says here that the result will be a pendulum swing from content toward collaboration. You see, "getting at stuff" is just the first step – the real value lies in doing something with that stuff, and "doing something" usually means doing it with somebody else. Today's cloud storage services are great workarounds to the many current restrictions on sharing corporate information, and it is clear that something will soon have to give if organizations really want to bring that rogue content back into the fold.

Want to talk more about this? You can always leave a comment or e-mail me, but – better still – join tomorrow's infochat on "Enabling Content Access Wherever You Are.” 11am EST on an internet near you! (follow hashtag #infochat)