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July 30, 2023

Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success

Today, organizations are becoming more agile and digital, so it's critical to apply same principles to your content. Enterprises need content management and collaboration technologies that enable content to be delivered to customers, employees, and partners anytime, anywhere. Transforming these solutions into a cloud service model can help accelerate innovation.

In November 2019, OpenText commissioned Forrester Consulting to explore cloud-based content storage, management, and collaboration. Forrester conducted an online survey of 208 respondents who influence enterprise content management (ECM) solutions in enterprise companies in North America and EMEA region to explore this topic. We have found that updating cloud content is no longer a must for companies looking to stay competitive and relevant to their customers. However, while companies are beginning to understand inherent benefits of migrating content and operations data to cloud, they are less confident about how to continue migrating to cloud.

Main findings:

A modern approach to content management is critical to achieving digital transformation goalsMore than three-quarters of organizations say improved content management is important to accelerating their digital business. As need for collaboration grows and content becomes digitized, ability to provide internal and external stakeholders with easy, secure, and seamless access to content is critical to business success.

A modern content strategy must include cloudCloud content services make it easier for customers and business partners to access, create and process content, making it easier for all stakeholders to interact with content. Cloud delivery models may include vendor-managed services, software as a service, and deployment on public public cloud infrastructures. Cloud-based companies see significantly greater improvements in customer experience (72% vs. 25%), security (70% vs. 16%), and availability (64% vs. 16%) than on-premises businesses.

Migration, cost, complexity, and security concerns hinder cloud adoptionAlthough cloud is starting to dominate content creation, collaboration, and management, companies with significant on-premises investments are still striving to implementation of cloud technologies. Ensuring that its obligations to regulate, manage and protect data can be met. Many of them are in a state of migratory paralysis, leaving them behind their peers. Although concerns of many organizations about implementation (for example, security, costetc.) are actually areas where cloud users see benefits of migration, they don't.

Organizations are moving to a hybrid approachCompanies can access benefits of content management and collaboration in cloud by choosing a phased migration approach. The burden of migration no longer causes a business to lag behind competitors.

Agile is future of digital content

Meaningful, trusted, and easily accessible content drives customer engagement, which is critical to improving employee experience. The content management market is undergoing a critical transition as technology shifts to cloud computing and hybrid architectures and companies invest in modern flexible platforms. After interviewing 208 ECM executives, we found that:

Content is becoming more digital and more collaborative both internally and externally

While our research has shown that traditional content types such as email and web pages are still most common way to deliver content to customers, this is rapidly changing. As companies transition to a digital way of working, content will also move to a more collaborative model. Key external stakeholders such as organization's customers and business partners have become more active participants in process of co-creating, reviewing and approving content. This trend is reflected in our survey: respondents predict that fastest growing content delivery formats in next two years will be digital documents and chatbots.

Improving content management is key to digital transformation and business success

As customers and partners become content creators, it becomes critical to provide flexibility, collaboration, and enhanced content sharing for these key external stakeholders to drive digital innovation and achieve business goals. In fact, 76% of respondents believe that improving their content management and collaboration will go a long way in accelerating their digital business. Today's organizations that can provide seamless access to content across their entire ecosystem, including customers and partners, see huge benefits for their business. Improved content management and collaboration can lead to significant enterprise-wide improvements. Our respondents described countless benefits they have experienced from better content management, from increased reach and brand awareness to lower costs and improved compliance (see Figure 1).

Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success

Companies want their content tools to be flexible and easy to use to meet their rapidly changing content needs

When asked what features are most important to improve content management, our respondents gave a clear answer: They want quick and easy-to-use tools that make external collaboration easier< /strong> (see below). Fig. 2). As organizations become more agile, they need their content to become more agile as well. They don't want to be held back by clunky, outdated content tools. With these improvements, ECM decision makers expect better collaboration, more innovation, higher productivity, and improved security (see Figure 3).

Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success
Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success

Many companies still host most of their content locally

For companies looking to innovate, adoption of cloud platforms and integrated tools is a big step in right direction. Cloud content platforms provide flexibility, support business agility and faster scalability, and remove burden of infrastructure upgrades and investments. However, we found that most content today (57%) is still stored locally, limiting ability of organizations to achieve agility goals. Those who now use cloud technologies are getting more benefits than those who use only online services (see Fig. 4)

Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success
Cloud migrations are hampered by security and complexity

Migration to cloud content platforms is difficult for two main reasons: difficulty of moving large volumes of content and fear of losing control of sensitive sensitive information. Our research shows that:

An organization's efforts to migrate its current systems to cloud

The benefits of an agile cloud environment are obvious, but there's no denying that migrating large amounts of content (especially content containing personal data) to cloud is a simple process. ECM leaders believe that process of migrating existing systems to cloud is biggest hurdle to adopting a cloud-based approach to content processing. Many organizations prefer to stay put rather than face prospect of moving their entire content management suite to cloud. Today, almost half (49%) of non-cloud respondents say that because they don't believe their organization will be 100% cloud, it doesn't make sense for them to even start migrating.

Concerned about security issues and loss of control over transfer of content from local systems

Organizations have long believed that moving to cloud will expose their data to vulnerability, and saving environment prior to deployment may be a safer and more habitual option. After issues encountered during migration, next three biggest migration barriers listed by our respondents were security, lack of trust in cloud, and concerns about provider access to data (see Figure 5). But they are concerned about potential loss of control that immigration brings. As we'll see shortly, these security concerns in cloud are largely unfounded.

Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success

Companies caught in migration paralysis are left behind. Almost two-thirds (64%) of respondents say their content management strategy puts them at a disadvantage compared to competitors, and 51% say they find it difficult to meet customer expectations for information self-service.

Hybrid architecture provides a phased approach to content in cloud

Companies may push for a full rollout because they don't understand possibility of a phased and flexible migration strategy. Hybrid cloud options allow organizations to move content and collaboration applications to cloud at their own pace and stay in control while retaining agility benefits of moving to cloud. For example, new content collaboration applications can be quickly deployed to users on a cloud content platform, but integrations or connectors still allow users to access content that is still stored locally. We found that organizations that adopted a hybrid approach demonstrated greater agility, faster sales and service cycles, better collaboration, and customer satisfaction without compromising security, compliance, or availability (see Figure 6).

Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success

In fact, many organizations that are currently registered only on Internet are already beginning to understand benefits of a hybrid cloud approach. Despite concerns about losing control in cloud, 75% actually expect their security to improve with a hybrid approach to content (see Figure 7). They also expect to see improvements in customer satisfaction, productivity, and collaboration—benefits that mirror those reported by organizations using hybrid cloud today.

Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success
find a supplier

Finding right vendor is an important step in modernizing your content management strategy. Organizations looking to adopt a hybrid approach need a cloud service provider that can meet their needs. Our research has shown that hybrid cloud content management with current application integration and migration tools and services are most important support features they expect from cloud service providers (see Figure 8). Companies investing in their own enterprise applications need a content platform provider that can co-exist with this hybrid environment and keep their processes running smoothly no matter where they deploy their underlying systems. In addition to supporting migration, organizations need a provider that can meet their agile content needs. The features most expected by hybrid cloud users are ease of use, easy sharing, and quick access to content (see Figure 9). It was very important to find a vendor that could make cloud migration process as smooth as possible while still providing agility and agility required by today's organizations.

Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success
Improve content storage, management, and collaboration for digital transformation and business success
assumption

Tools for content creation and communications have largely moved to cloud platforms. The repositories and management tools used to build applications and make them available to employees and trusted external stakeholders are also moving into cloud computing, and pace is gaining momentum every year. Clients in early stages of this transition should:

Assessing current value of apps with local content

Repositories of local materials can hold important digital records for many years. Application integration and core business processes can rely on these persistent record systems. Migrating these repositories may have short-term business value, but it's not worth time investment. Resources can be better distributed to newer, modern content platforms for entirely new use cases. The transitional hybrid model is probably best use of upgrade budget.

Use a content-on-demand approach

Migration doesn't have to be drastic for an organization to benefit from a new modern content platform. Assess architectures that enable integration for existing on-premises applications and seamlessly discover and push relevant current content to new cloud platforms as user needs arise. Content can move or stay in its original place depending on needs of user. Alternatively, you can apply policies to ensure that content is managed in correct repository and that legal or regulatory requirements are met.

Searching for new use cases for cloud content platforms

The cloud delivery model allows organizations to stay on top of their current innovation platform and provides greater flexibility and agility when an organization needs to scale. Applications deployed on cloud content platforms can more easily include key external stakeholders of extended enterprise, such as customers, partners, or vendors.

Prepare to live in a hybrid world for foreseeable future

The number of businesses that describe themselves as having fully deployed a content management system has decreased over time, but cloud adoption patterns have changed. While cloud-native SaaS applications are gaining popularity, organizations are also describing their cloud computing paths as hosted and hybrid. Content is an important part of many leading applications, and integration with on-premises and cloud applications will be essential on journey to cloud.

Balance employee and customer engagement goals with governance and compliance needs

Modern cloud platforms typically provide a seamless user experience through integration with mobile devices, web, and applications. But organizations, especially those in highly regulated industries, must balance user experience with need to secure, preserve, and protect content. In jurisdictions with data protection and privacy regulations, moving to cloud may not be appropriate for certain types of sensitive content. Analyze your content and match it to appropriate repository.

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