Will using your enterprise resource planning technology soon be as simple as starting a Zoom call?

We sat down with our CEO, Jason Cassidy, and our Principal Evangelist, Jed Cawthorne, to get their predictions for the state of business content management and enterprise technology in 2023.

Jason Cassidy: Technology purchases are the result of the following sentiment: Our people can’t keep up, so I guess we have to buy technology. Over the past couple of years, companies experienced peak economic performance while also grappling with the death of staff loyalty. In 2023, we will have fatigue from not having enough people to do things – buying technology is going to become a very routine exercise.

Prediction 2: Enterprise tech will start to go through iterations that make it more consumer friendly and eventually turnkey

Jason Cassidy: If you talk to people in your network, no one says, “Oh, I was so excited to do a finance ERP implementation.” Even if the technology is a nightmare to implement there’s an understanding that this thing is needed. That same person in your network is saying, “The finance team was completely underwater on everything, and we’re getting sued so we have to bring this thing in and we’re paying consultants $80 million to get it installed. You don’t get the same joy as when you buy your iPhone and have Angry Birds installed on it. Instead, there’s a feeling that any enterprise tech is necessary, but that it’s going to bring low trust and low performance. 

Jason Cassidy (continued): Ask yourself, “What just works when it comes to enterprise software?” We eventually have to get to the point where enterprise software is as simple as starting a Zoom meeting or as exciting as buying a PS5. Back in the nineties, we had videoconferencing and yes that was cool, but it cost maybe $50,000 to set up per room. Setting it up called for proprietary knowledge, dedicated ISDN networks, and all this extra stuff to make the magic happen. Now, you get a free Zoom account or Teams account and you can share and play video games and all kinds of stuff. This is an example of technology going mainstream. Soon, we are going to have enough iterations on implementing enterprise technology that people are going to know what they are doing and it won’t just be consultants figuring it out as they go. Enterprise technology will become mainstream, and that means the magic bullet won’t be whether it’s in the cloud or on-premises or anything like that. Those are technologies or approaches that help you answer one simple question: Do I still need a significant number of humans to achieve this business outcome? 

Prediction 3: We will get closer to simplification in unstructured data management

Jason Cassidy: There is all kinds of valuable information sitting within documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, audio files, and more, but at the moment, unstructured data management is viewed from a risk management and compliance perspective rather than from a business value perspective. Plus, the responsibility for creating and managing unstructured content is diffuse. Soon, there’ll be a normalization of the technology around content management, where it’ll be standard for companies to have this capability to pull valuable information out of their files. Think about how you used to have a milk delivery person and a paper delivery person and a mail order company for books and a mail order company for clothes. Today, all of that falls under “Amazon delivery person.” What will that look like for unstructured data management and content management? We are trending towards standardization rather than specialization. 

Jed Cawthorne: Plus, the evolution from records management to information management will continue. With worldwide data expected to hit 175 zettabytes by 2025, there’ll need to be a more dynamic, all-encompassing approach to managing it, finding it, and using it.  

Prediction 4: Remote work will continue to drive the growth of unstructured content

Jed Cawthrone: Remote, hybrid, and flexible work arrangements are becoming non-negotiables for today’s workers. One U.S. survey found that 61 percent of people working from home were doing so by choice, even though their office was open. And this move towards remote work will fuel the interest in no-code, low-code applications as employees proactively develop the tools they need to get their work done. These types of applications will rely on greater accessibility to unstructured data. 

Prediction 5: Knowledge graphs and intelligent document processing will become increasingly important to organizations

Jed Cawthorne: Knowledge graphs are going to play an important role in that content management singularity. Graph database technology is one of the fastest growing sectors in the IT industry and by 2026, analysts expect it to surpass $5 billion. As more unstructured data is created, we’re going to need the technology to draw relationships between different pieces of information, so people can ask a question and get an answer in real time. 

Jed Cawthrone (continued): Intelligent document processing will play an important role as well. Converting unstructured data and semi-structured data into structured data, where possible, will be an important way that organizations start to find gold within their files, documents, media, and records. By 2027, that market’s expected to hit $5.2 billion.

Ready to get a handle on your unstructured data? The first step is to understand what you have, where it is, and how much of it there is. Start by developing an inventory of your content that you can use to enable Enterprise Search, pull business insights, improve the employee experience, eliminate ROT and more. Shinydocs Content Landscape Assessment can help you get started. 

Learn more by booking a call with one of our Shinydocs experts today.