Companies frequently speak to us about modernizing their content management systems and automating their business processes. They often want to know how they can efficiently manage ever-expanding amounts of data. In other words, they could use a highly-integrated content services solution. After all, the average company’s data will double every two to four years.
Research shows that unstructured content accounts for anywhere from 70-90% of an average company’s data. This unstructured content is the fastest-growing type of content. Companies can manage their growing number of repositories—and the content within those repositories—with federation technology.
Discovery and Diagnostics
If you look at most companies and their published strategic initiatives, you will see some common goals:
- Modernize IT infrastructure
- Automate processes
- Improve the customer’s digital experience
- Retire legacy applications
Zia Consulting identified six major components for companies to consider while building their digital transformation roadmaps. We build strategies specific to applications and business processes during the diagnostic step (which immediately follows the discovery). In the diagnostic step, we determine which systems will be retired, replaced, rehosted, rewrapped, or redone. Leveraging federation technology is a cornerstone tool for designing the future state while transitioning the current state.
Streamlining the Worker’s Experience with Federation
A whopping 61% of knowledge workers access four or more systems, and 13% of knowledge workers access 11 or more systems in order to do their job (The Knowledge Quotient: Unlocking the Hidden Value of Information Using Search and Content Analytics). Companies waste an estimated $5.7 million annually on every 1,000 knowledge workers who have to spend time searching for information.
The amount of monitors and paperwork on a knowledge worker’s desk are great indicators of their daily experience. Workers using multiple monitors often flip from system to system to address content. We’ve seen good technology streamline the worker’s experience and save up to 40% of their time.
Federation technology uses pre-built and custom-built connectors to various system APIs to tie content repositories and line of business applications together. Therefore, the worker accesses the federated content through their core content management system with one unified search tool. After that, the worker easily pinpoints where customer and records reside. As a result, they take action on the identified content and it does not have to be pulled into the core content management system.
This ability is called “manage in-place.” Above all, by streamlining these content processes, you’ll see a drastic increase in worker productivity and employee engagement.
A Host of Opportunities from Federation
In addition to the single pane of glass for employees, federation and “manage in-place” provide a host of opportunities for the companies they transform:
- Unified retention and automated governance policies
- Ability to look at the entire lifecycle of documents
- Automated security and governance that applies across internal and external sharing of content
By leveraging ediscovery and capture technology, organizations analyze paper and share drive content to determine which content is in need of retention and unalterable storage. Federation enables migrating archives, be it on-premise or in the cloud, without the need for reprocessing the content.
If you are in the process of digitally transforming, let’s discuss in more detail the benefits and capabilities of federation as it specifically relates to your company. Contact us today!