A 2018 Forrester survey states “The cloud has fundamentally changed the way organizations operate in the digital economy”. And it’s hard to argue with that, the suggestion by CIO.com that “The cloud is no longer a question of yes or no, but rather of how”.

According to research, 66% of organisations place cloud initiatives at the top of their priority lists. Falling second only to security, the cloud is clearly considered a key investment for all businesses.

We all interact with cloud-based applications every day, thanks to innovation in:

• user experience (UX);

• artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning;

• blockchain;

• cloud containers;

• robotics automation; and

• the many APIs that connect systems on which we rely daily.

Digital workplace adoption: driven by the cloud

Businesses across the world are still working hard to drive adoption of the digital workplace, and they’re using cloud solutions to do so. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of content management.

The cloud has an uncanny ability to democratise once enterprise-only digital solutions and make digital transformation possible for most document-centric workflows.

That content could be customer-facing (such as account opening), or for internal use (for instance employee onboarding), but you’d doubtless be able to find other examples within your own business of documents that could be more easily managed via the cloud.

The potential of cloud-based document management has seen it achieve mainstream success, with many businesses valuing it as a competitive advantage.

Digital transformation and cloud content services are ultra-compatible because they share the same goals. They:

• deliver value - fast;

• automate content capture, storage and manipulation;

• offer savings across ecosystems;

• provide a super-easy user experience; and

• provide revealing analytics.

How Cloud SaaS benefits content management

Software as a Service (SaaS) has revolutionised content management.

By using a cloud service that helps you capture, store and share content, your document processes will benefit from some of the latest technological innovations including artificial intelligence, deep learning and predictability driven by robotics.

Match SaaS with content management, and you’ll enjoy constant connectivity to the documents you need the most, new efficiencies as you share them effortlessly and value-added analytics that reveal just how productive the operation is.

Solving document-centric challenges

Businesses that have several departments and environments in which they operate will be familiar with the challenges of combining analogue and digital workflows.

Digitally native content is now so popular that it has fuelled the need for more cloud-based solutions that solve specific business challenges.

For instance, some businesses might be able to drastically change the way new customers sign-up to a service, simply by using a web-based content management platform - even if paper is still sometimes required. For others, an internal process that was once entirely manual could be digitised and analysed far more easily thanks to the cloud.

What document-based challenges exist in your business, department or organisation?

This blog is based on a recent blog published by Xerox: Cloud Content Management Brings Structure to Digital Transformation