If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that the only thing we can certainly predict for 2022 is uncertainty. Businesses are still recovering from the effects of the pandemic and learning to adapt to this work-from-anywhere world. As business leaders recognize that preparing for continuous change can no longer take a backseat, responsiveness and resilience will be a top priority to continue to respond to the evolving workplace landscape.
As we enter 2022, companies are strengthening and modernizing IT workflows to enable them to pivot when the next disruption happens. To make the business nimbler, organizations are turning to information management solutions to adapt to changing business needs, strengthen collaboration, and deliver better customer experiences and a higher-quality work product, while improving profitability and decreasing risk. With that in mind, here are the information management trends we can expect to see this year:
Information Management Will Adapt to Emerging Trends to Increase User Adoption
When it comes to user adoption of information management solutions, we can expect to see solutions adapt to emerging trends, such as the consumerization of B2B software and more personalized user experiences. The user experience of most B2B software solutions lags behind what employees experience with personal B2C software solutions. Today, employees expect the same experience at work, and vendors will need to start evolving their solutions to meet those expectations. The second is the expectation for more personalized user experiences that meet the needs of employees based on the role and the work they are doing. AI and similar technologies will enable solutions to become better at providing a customized experience, as those technologies provide insight into how employees complete certain tasks on a daily basis.
AI Will Enable a Better Search Experience
AI in information management has been very focused on understanding content and user actions – and using that information to properly classify documents and extract information from them. The natural evolution of this is to start using that information to anticipate a user’s needs and serve up relevant content. Searching for content will change from just finding documents that have a specific text string, to a “Google-like” set of results and answers based on an understanding of what you are looking for. Vendors will also be able to start providing better and more relevant content recommendations based on who you are and the task you’re trying to accomplish.
Zero Trust Security Will Become the Norm in Document Management
Zero trust security models will become the norm. So, where historically you’d see a focus on things like physical network security, authentication, and domain-level access controls, you’ll start to see a shift to a greater emphasis on application and content-level controls, and policies for all types of data and content. Sensitive data needs to be identified and governed. Event logging and audit trails need to be robust. Customers need to have knowledge of and the ability to control how information is accessed and moved through its lifecycle. Vendors will need to adapt to more stringent security requirements in a way that doesn’t affect productivity.
As these trends come to fruition, information management solutions will prepare organizations for resilience, ensuring stability and responsiveness so that enterprises can adapt and scale in the face of disruption.