Next generation information management underpins modern work

In a lit­tle over 12 months, the way we work has changed beyond all recog­ni­tion. Up until ear­ly-2020, the tran­si­tion to a more mobile, dis­trib­uted work­force mod­el was mov­ing slow­ly but steadi­ly with peo­ple veer­ing towards the odd day work­ing from home or work­ing more irreg­u­lar hours. The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, accel­er­at­ed the move at a rate nobody could have fore­seen. Sud­den­ly, the future of both pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor enter­pris­es relied on enabling employ­ees to work pro­duc­tive­ly from home.

Though peo­ple will return to offices, indeed some already have, those spaces are being reimag­ined as just one part of a hybrid mod­el in which remote work­ing will con­tin­ue to fea­ture heav­i­ly. The last 12 months have shown organ­i­sa­tions with a robust infor­ma­tion man­age­ment strat­e­gy adapt more eas­i­ly and advance faster, and that tal­ent is now every­where. Amid the war for dig­i­tal skills, organ­i­sa­tions can no longer afford to be restrict­ed to one or a few loca­tions if they want to attract the great­est tal­ent.

There are also chal­lenges in this new world of work, how­ev­er. “Prox­im­i­ty is impor­tant when you inno­vate,” says Mark Bar­renechea, chief exec­u­tive and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer of Open­Text. “We still want clus­ters where we can learn from each oth­er and share expe­ri­ences. As lead­ers, we must also be hon­est and authen­tic, and embed equi­ty, diver­si­ty and inclu­sion in our com­pa­ny cul­ture.

“Mean­while, mod­ern work is being met by three oth­er forces – mod­ern expe­ri­ences, such as omnichan­nel and con­tact­less pay­ments; sup­ply chain region­al­i­sa­tion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and con­nec­tiv­i­ty; and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and resilience – that are all accel­er­at­ing the pace of change. We have nev­er worked this fast and we will nev­er work this slow again.”

In this new age of mod­ern work, every­one needs the abil­i­ty to spin up a shared work­space and col­lab­o­rate on a doc­u­ment, whether they work in the same organ­i­sa­tion or not. Enabling col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in the four walls and fire­wall of the enter­prise is not enough though as mod­ern work is pow­ered by an extend­ed, dis­trib­uted work­force that needs to be able to share and retract infor­ma­tion with cus­tomers, part­ners and sup­ply chains when­ev­er need­ed, and out­side fire­wall lim­i­ta­tions.

Infor­ma­tion car­ries great val­ue but also great risk, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it’s so dis­persed. This cre­ates chal­lenges for the IT depart­ment when it comes to apply­ing gov­er­nance for issues like pri­va­cy and records man­age­ment. IT teams no longer have a choice; mod­ern work is trans­form­ing rapid­ly and resist­ing the shift will only mag­ni­fy the per­ils of shad­ow IT, where staff cir­cum­vent pol­i­cy by email­ing data home or copy­ing to dri­ves, ulti­mate­ly cre­at­ing more secu­ri­ty issues.

With the right tech­nol­o­gy, how­ev­er, organ­i­sa­tions can still keep con­trol over infor­ma­tion. Just like peo­ple are mov­ing from the office to work­ing in the cloud, tech­nol­o­gy is doing the same. Tra­di­tion­al on-premise enter­prise con­tent man­age­ment, or ECM, is evolv­ing to cloud-native con­tent ser­vices tech­nol­o­gy. Con­tent ser­vices appli­ca­tions allow any­body to access the infor­ma­tion they need wher­ev­er they are, and in a way which ensures data is secure, pro­tect­ed and can be audit­ed in the appro­pri­ate ways.

“With con­tent ser­vices, it becomes much eas­i­er to give peo­ple access to infor­ma­tion, to roll it out and to con­fig­ure it glob­al­ly for a whole com­pa­ny,” says George Harot, prod­uct mar­ket­ing direc­tor at Open­Text. “The mod­ern way of pro­vid­ing con­tent ser­vices goes beyond just man­ag­ing infor­ma­tion to being more about flex­i­bil­i­ty and extract­ing val­ue from your con­tent. You extend capa­bil­i­ties as you need them in a mod­u­lar way.

“Our new con­tent ser­vices tech­nol­o­gy intel­li­gent­ly utilis­es automa­tion so you can analyse your whole file sys­tem and iden­ti­fy what’s impor­tant or risky. You can iden­ti­fy per­son­al cus­tomer infor­ma­tion and redact it if need­ed, or high­light it for dele­tion or fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion. Con­tent life cycles are man­aged auto­mat­i­cal­ly. Most peo­ple work­ing remote­ly from home aren’t focused on secu­ri­ty. They don’t want to do enter­prise con­tent man­age­ment. They want it to hap­pen mag­i­cal­ly in the back­ground. That’s what we do.”

Cru­cial­ly, con­tent ser­vices tech­nol­o­gy under­pins wider dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion efforts. Open­Text Con­tent Ser­vices plat­forms and appli­ca­tions inte­grate with lead­ing busi­ness appli­ca­tions, includ­ing SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, help­ing to facil­i­tate, for instance, human resources process­es such as recruit­ment and onboard­ing in a mod­ern work envi­ron­ment. HR pro­fes­sion­als review­ing CVs don’t want to have to save them some­where sep­a­rate­ly and have to man­u­al­ly put a six-month reten­tion peri­od on them so they delete after a cer­tain time. They want that to auto­mat­i­cal­ly hap­pen in the back­ground.

With inte­gra­tion enabled by Open­Text Con­tent Ser­vices, the doc­u­ments they need on any giv­en day are pre­sent­ed seam­less­ly in their Suc­cess­Fac­tors appli­ca­tion. If they look at an employee’s file, all rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion comes up along with what’s out­stand­ing. Are health and safe­ty cer­tifi­cates up to date? Is a salary review immi­nent? Open­Text Con­tent Ser­vices tech­nol­o­gy is enabling this expe­ri­ence by work­ing in the back­ground to iden­ti­fy and aggre­gate rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. The user nev­er has to leave Suc­cess­Fac­tors.

“They just log in to their sys­tem as they do every day,” says Harot. “And gov­er­nance is trans­par­ent and easy. Humans are rub­bish at doing records. It’s not their day job and with con­tent ser­vices they nev­er have to do it again.”

Beyond the spe­cial­ist HR role, a seam­less expe­ri­ence for oth­er employ­ees is just as impor­tant. The abil­i­ty to per­form self-ser­vice by secure­ly access­ing their own infor­ma­tion and request­ing or upload­ing rel­e­vant doc­u­ments enhances the employ­ee expe­ri­ence, while also enabling the HR depart­ment to spend less time on process­es that can be auto­mat­ed by Open­Text Con­tent Ser­vices and more time solv­ing key busi­ness chal­lenges.

“You’ve got to have opti­mal con­trol of your con­tent inter­nal­ly to be able to trans­form exter­nal­ly,” says Harot. “If your inter­nal con­tent is in a mess, you can’t pro­vide the great ser­vice cus­tomers expect out­side; you can’t suc­cess­ful­ly deliv­er dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

“In the mod­ern, dig­i­tal enter­prise, with ever-increas­ing sources and vol­umes of data, these goals are only pos­si­ble through the smart appli­ca­tion of con­tent ser­vices tech­nol­o­gy. You’ve got to get your own house in order before you can pro­vide a bet­ter dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence exter­nal­ly. Once you’ve got that foun­da­tion, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion becomes much eas­i­er. And when more dis­rup­tion or reg­u­la­tions arrive, you can respond and adapt much faster.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it opentext.com

Pro­mot­ed by Open­Text