2021 has been a tipping point year for Content and Workflow solutions in the UK.
All of the RFIs and RFPs that have hit our inbox this year have one thing in common. They want their content stored in the cloud, and they want it as a service.
There is no doubt Covid has exacerbated this trend. Businesses are rushing to shut down in-house data centres and server rooms. More of our existing ‘on-premise’ customers are also approaching us to discuss cloud migration.
So what should you be considering when moving your content to the Cloud?
Your “legacy”
This is seen as a key inhibitor. What to do about all the content swilling around in your business?
Content and their associated Workflow platforms tend to be the laggards in the race to the cloud. Cloud-based CRMs and ERPs are now the norm, but the unstructured stuff tends to get put on the ‘too-hard pile’ by IT Departments.
If you have never invested in a Content Management system, then you have a different set of challenges around content clean-up and how to organise your content.
If you do have a legacy Enterprise Content Management system, then your issues tend to be about the scale of the problem, its criticality and the disruption to your business of changing your ECM environment.
Content migration tools to enable you to ‘federate’ your content to the cloud whilst running old and new worlds in parallel are the gateway to a content cloud migration.
Cost
The older the ECM platform, the more likely you’re paying for expensive support offering little to no business benefit.
Modern-day Content platforms have had to respond to the changing marketplace largely in part to Microsoft Sharepoint encroaching into the space. (Whether you think Sharepoint is an ECM platform is a different debate for a different time – but nevertheless, the impact of Sharepoint has been real).
Business Risk
Your content is in an Enterprise Content Management platform because it is important to you. The older the platform, the more the chance of failure and the greater the likelihood that you’ll be stuck on a platform in a roadmap cul de sac with no enhancements that can improve its value.
Opportunity
No business can stand still and not take opportunities to transform their business. Refreshing your content platform will allow you to take advantage of licensing models that support content sharing without penalising you and, more importantly, open the door to wider transformation tools.
A Business Automation Platform to modernise the way you do Business
Content environments are evolving to become foundation pillars of Business Automation suites. They are all available in modern containerised environments to support continuous delivery and scalability. It’s now more possible than ever to infuse AI into your content – to surround it with multiple forms of workflow, embellish it with AI-powered document processing, and much more.
Where to start?
Insight 2 Value is offering a no-obligation free-of-charge business automation planning workshop. We’ll sit down with you to understand your current cost models and work through the potential to eliminate your sunk ECM costs and build a Return on Investment model to accelerate your move to a consumption-based cloud platform. We’ll also help you navigate the technical steps you’ll need to take to minimise business disruption.
