Users Need Content Research Tools, Not Basic Search Tools

AIIM – Users Need Content Research Tools, Not Basic Search Tools.

Silver Spring, MD – March 29, 2010 – According to a recent survey report by content management association AIIM, organizations could derive much higher business value from content analytics tools than from simple search-engines. Sophisticated content reporting across text documents and rich media file-types has created the opportunity to report and research across unstructured content, bringing the same capabilities of strategic insight and improved decision-making as Business Intelligence (BI) reporting brings to structured content.

Over 70% of respondents in AIIM’s survey would find advanced content analysis functions “Extremely useful” or “Very useful.” They rate their current ability to “research” content for business insight, or to monitor desirable or undesirable activity as 3 to 6 times less than their ability to simply “search” across different content types. Relatively new as a recognized toolset, content analytics tools provide trend analysis, content assessment, pattern recognition and exception detection. Applications include fraud detection in claims or loan applications, pattern detection in inspection reports, detecting unauthorized use of copyright material, analysis of healthcare records against other citizen databases, automatic redaction (blanking out) of sensitive information, and sentiment analysis in customer correspondence or social media sites.

According to Doug Miles, Director of AIIM research activities, “In much the same way that BI tools opened up structured corporate data in finance and ERP systems to give managers true insight into business operations, content analytics can leverage the investments in content management systems to measure subtle trends and sentiments in assessment reports, correspondence, emails, and social media sites. Meanwhile, analysis tools for rich media file types, such as video and audio, are providing much better management of these valuable assets, as well as improving the ability to detect fraud and crime.”

One particularly useful application of analytics is that of measuring the relevance and likely duplication of stored documents and records, with a view to reducing the size of content stores in order to save storage space, particularly during system migration or company merger activities. Only 15% of respondents had any automated tools for this kind of content assessment.

The AIIM report projects a considerable increase in spend on content analytics technologies over the next two years, as well as increases for Digital Asset Management (DAM) and enterprise search applications.

Based on over 500 responses, the AIIM research report is entitled “Content Analytics – research tools for unstructured content and rich media.” Part of the AIIM Industry Watch series, the full report is free todownload from the AIIM website. It is underwritten by Allyis, IBM and Media Beacon.

http://www.aiim.org