Nearly two years after the early signs of an emerging pandemic, too many organisations continue to grapple with the challenge of bringing together disparate content, from across the enterprise. The notion of a single source of truth is by no means new but, arguably, this is the first time a significant event has exposed the financial, operational and reputational risks triggered by the failure to underpin access to critical business insight with a clear content services strategy.

Financial services institutions have by no means been immune to this issue, with the UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service reporting that working from home “…had a significant impact on the services that financial firms were able to offer customers”, with organisations “… in some cases having to set up new technology infrastructure almost instantly”.

We all understand the significance of the smooth functioning of day-to-day operations for enterprises to meet their business goals. However, it is in exceptional circumstances that existing weaknesses get amplified. Sometimes, it’s the simplest of processes that could be undermining profitability, but the urgency to reset existing systems during ‘normal’ times is often far down the list of priorities.

Drawing on responses from 400+ global content management decision-makers, across financial services and other key market segments, a recent study by Forrester Consulting has shed further light on the issue. It’s a story of declining confidence in how effectively information and content is being shared. With a year-on-year drop of five percent, only 24% of respondents believe employees did not waste time finding or recreating content, which is set to raise concerns about productivity, compliance and customer experience across a large number of organisations.

This is a telling commentary on how employees spend thousands of man-hours searching for critical data, simply because it lies buried in dispersed systems or in the hands of former employees. As one director of a financial services firm put it, “we could not operate at our full efficiency due to lack of manpower, and that resulted in the disruption of content.”

In the new hybrid model of work, employees have been challenged with systems that are cumbersome, time-consuming and manual, leading to friction. For employees to experience the sheer ease of work that enables them to deliver their best each day, information bottlenecks must be removed and workflows streamlined, in a manner that makes collaboration much easier and simpler.

Given that at least 80% of enterprise data is unstructured and 70% is in the form of text, whether email, written documents or even comments, automation is emerging as a key factor in the longer-term impact of content services.

A content services platform that offers artificial intelligence, alongside machine learning, image recognition, voice recognition or even natural language processing capabilities can easily process unstructured data, categorise, classify, or analyse documents and deliver information in different formats, allowing staff to focus on higher-value, rewarding tasks.

But these unusual times are also the most opportune to start thinking of future-fit systems, which can also tackle some of the immediate issues. The expectations of both staff and customers are at an all-time high and factors, such as ease of access or scope for personalisation, will directly affect customer and employee experience (CX and EX). However, this requires a strategy that equips the workforce with tools that allow cross-functional teams to collaborate, innovate and deliver seamlessly.

To truly unlock the value of a powerful and effective content management system that goes beyond access, convenience or easy collaboration, enterprises would do well to study the impact it can have on bottom lines.

One of the key takeaways from the recent past is the positive impact smart solutions have had on the ability of organisations to embrace the hybrid model more rapidly, while also delivering exceptional customer service. With cloud storage, optimised security and automation underpinning other advanced features, content services continue to play a key role in driving modernisation and digital transformation.

For senior executives, it’s important to recognise that, in the future, the measure of a successful business will not be limited their past achievements, but how well they adapted and committed to technology solutions designed to deliver value today and longer term. Whether shaped by unknown or more predictable market factors, resilience and agility are likely to emerge as key factors to future success.

Tim Hood is Vice President – EMEA and APAC of Hyland. http://www.hyland.com/

The Forrester Consulting ‘Prepare For The Next Business Stress-Test With Content Services’ thought leadership paper, commissioned by Hyland, is available here.