Content Services: Strategies for 2021
By: Virginia Backaitis
Tags: Digital Transformation, Ecm, Content Strategy, Information Management, Content Services Platform

It’s no secret that the global pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and the race to the cloud. Not only that, but as workers moved their desks from their offices to kitchen tables, and other flat surfaces in their homes, access to content in the cloud has become more and more of a given. So it’s no surprise that analyst Gartner, in its Magic Quadrant for Content Services 2020, writes that they have “seen increased demand from clients to provide cloud-based solutions that integrate into other ‘New Work Nucleus’” technologies.

“New Work Nucleus,” for anyone who hasn’t heard the term before, is a label coined by Gartner which they define as “a collection of ever-changing, multivendor, SaaS-based personal and team productivity applications that replace decades-old on-premises applications centered around Microsoft Office.” Gartner now argues that the former Microsoft Office is replaced by Microsoft 365, including Teams, and G Suite to focus on employee enablement, collaboration, mobility, analytics, agility and more.

Gartner analysts Lane Severson, Marko Sillanpaa,and Michael Woodbridge believe that Content Services Platforms need to “integrate line-of-business applications and coexist as foundation platforms.”

OpenText’s digital strategy for enterprises

Stephen Ludlow, senior vice president of product management, parroted their their conclusion. “That includes integration with applications such as Microsoft’s productivity suite, Microsoft Teams (which now has 115 million active users), as well as with Docusign, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, SAP Concur, SAP Success Factors, ServiceNow, and Workday, among others.”

John Newton, co-founder of Documentum and the company formerly known as Alfresco, argues that organizations need to “build a digital business, not digital change.”

What exactly does that mean? Embracing the “New Work Nucleus,” for sure. But not just that, they need to work with line of business applications, cloud-based or not, as well.

The Gartner analysts further believe that “content intelligence and AI will become prominent.” Content intelligence includes “the classification of content,” security intelligence where content is protected as a given; and productivity intelligence where frequently used and potentially relevant content is surfaced automatically.

That said, we asked select content services vendors how they plan to differentiate strategies going in 2021.

Fred Sass Senior Director of Product Marketing, OpenText

“Digital business processes have moved outside the office– but work still needs to get done. OpenText is focused on connecting content to the digital business and eliminating silos. Increasingly, this involves content that is created collaboratively in Microsoft 365 and is needed in downstream processes involving ERP, CRM and HRM systems. With OpenText, organizations benefit from intelligent automation to identify, classify and report on the lifecycle of their information and boost user efficiency. The future of content services is in the cloud. OpenText will continue to deliver cloud-based, containerized and developer-friendly content services — simplifying deployments and upgrades, while improving organization agility. Organizations have long realized that seamlessly accessing and distributing siloed information is key to process efficiency and task productivity. The events of 2020 have only intensified these priorities.”

Stéphan Donzé, CEO at AODocs:

“If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that agility can make the difference between success and failure, even for very large organizations. We believe the new business world is agile and low code, and that business users should not have to depend on IT experts to create their business applications and should not have to split their time between information silos in the name of compliance. When business users can have all their mission critical content available in their favorite collaboration environment and can configure and deploy business-critical processes in weeks instead of months, company performance improves, compliance requirements become easier to meet, and information silos are eliminated. AODocs strives to be the most agile cloud-native content services platform, featuring a real time collaborative experience and low code capabilities and that also provides easy access to cloud AI modules. This will continue to be our clear differentiator in 2021.”

Jose María Estébanez, VP corporate marketing, Kyocera Document Solutions America

Since its founding in 1959, Kyocera has overcome the many complex challenges it has faced. These challenges have served as a platform for us to adapt and reinvent.

We have thrived and grown during periods of huge disruption by staying true to what drives us: our customers.

In 2021, Kyocera will launch the tools necessary for organizations to embrace and optimize hybrid working, intelligent hardware that anticipates and enhances employee productivity, while ensuring maximum data security.

By understanding the changing needs and behaviors of our customers, we will continue to be proactive, delivering solutions that help create more robust and mobile organizations.

We will continue to deliver unbeatable reliability while empowering Kyocera users to elevate their quality and efficiency to new heights.

During times of uncertainty, you need a partner you can trust.

Kyocera is once again ready to lead the way.

So, as we prepare to welcome 2021, it’s worth considering all of the aforementioned, what’s relevant to your organization and how you can gain competitive advantage in the digital world.