KMWORLD Trend-Setting Products of 2013

The common thread running through all the products listed here is the unique value—and potential value—they offer the organization, its workers and their various constituencies. Not all have been implemented exclusively in business-related environments. And, in many cases, it is precisely the vision of the customers that implemented the products that qualifies them as trend-setting by opening markets not originally considered by the vendor. We have also identified products that have yet to gain traction, but we believe they deserve a long hard look by the market.

As we have in years past, we considered usability, flexibility, adoption rate and total cost of ownership. And we also recognized some vendors for their vision toward the future or for a collection of offerings, rather than a specific product or compelling new version of an existing one. As was the case when we first published our Trend-Setting Products list in 2003, this year's version has been assembled through consultation and collaboration with editorial colleagues, analysts, system integrators and a select group of users. This year, we considered more than 700 offerings from some 300 vendors.

In each and every case, the thoughtfulness and elegance of the software certainly warrant further investigation, and we're confident that a number of products listed here will dramatically boost the productivity of any type of organization.

Abbyy USA: ABBYY FineReader 11 Professional—OCR software that creates editable, searchable files and e-books from scans of paper documents, PDFs and digital photographs. Click here for more product details.

Accellion: Kitepoint—enables mobile business users to access, edit and save content in enterprise content management (ECM) systems and file shares located behind the corporate firewall, including SharePoint 2013 and Windows File Shares, without the need for a VPN.

Access Innovations: Machine Aided Indexer (M.A.I.)—a natural language processing tool that uses a rule-based system for interactive document indexing. Click here for more product details.

Accusoft: Prizm Content Connect—customizable, scalable content viewer. Click here for more product details.

Acrolinx: Acrolinx 3.0—content optimization software that works within an authoring tool flagging potential issues in terminology, spelling, style, tone and keywords.

Alfresco: Workdesk—component of its enterprise content management platform designed to streamline document-centric business processes, such as claims processing, HR employee on-boarding, mailroom automation, deal management and loan origination.

Altep: Inspicio—discovery review platform that supports focused document review and measurable efficiency.

AnyDoc Software: AnyDoc@EXCHANGEit—data transfer tool for moving data and document images from AnyDoc's data capture solution and featuring SharePoint 2013 support.

Appian: Appian Records—a single social interface allows business users to easily manage, access and update the data. 

Aptean: Knova Knowledge Management—full-featured knowledge management, e-service and network management software that integrates with case tracking and CRM solutions.

ASG Software Solutions: ASG CloudFactory—comprehensive cloud management. Click here for more product details.

AvePoint: DocAve Online—software platform for organizations using Office 365/SharePoint Online designed for organizations to give up control over their physical servers without sacrificing control over users, permissions and content.

BA Insight: Longitude Connectors—allow secure integration of more than 40 enterprise systems into Microsoft SharePoint and FAST Search.

Bamboo Solutions: Project Management Central—collaborative project management that allows project teams to manage tasks, resources, schedules and costs. Click here for more product details.

BP Logix: Process Director/Cloud Edition—Web-based business process management (BPM) solution featuring predictive BPM (pBPM) technology.

Bridgeline Digital: iAPPS 5.0—robust content management, e-commerce, e-marketing and Web analytics on a .NET platform. Click here for more product details.

Clarabridge: Clarabridge 6.0—customer experience platform designed for listening to, analyzing, operationalizing and measuring the voice of the customer.

Code 42: CrashPlan—private and public cloud-based endpoint backup solutions for consumers, businesses and enterprises. Click here for more product details.

Colligo: Email Manager 6.0—a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook that integrates Colligo's caching technology with its e-mail management technology on any device.

Comintelli: Knowledge Xchanger Version 8—enterprise platform for knowledge management and competitive intelligence.

Comperio Search: Comperio Front—business logic software for search solution.

Concept Searching: conceptClassifier for SharePoint—semantic metadata generation, automatic document classification and enterprise-grade taxonomy management.

Connotate: Agent Community—software and services that provide an interface for highly accurate data collection.

Content Analyst: Content Analyst Analytical Technology (CAAT) V. 3.14—deep analytics for unstructured data applications, including legal document review.

Coveo: Service & Support Knowledge Access—360-degree customer, product and case intelligence directly within a contact center CRM system, regardless of where the information resides.

Crafter Software: Crafter CMS—Web content and experience management software designed from the ground up to tap into disparate data sources such as social media, ERP, CRM, marketing campaign systems, etc. Click here for more product details.

Datawatch: Data Pump—allows moving individual information optimization systems into a high-performance production environment.

Dell Software: Toad Business Intelligence Suite—permits users to quickly combine data across multiple sources, locations and formats.

E-Spirit: FirstSpirit CMS—manages all company content, regardless of where it resides (corporate websites, online stores, enterprise portals, intranet or extranets).

Earley & Associates: Consulting Services—taxonomy and metadata, enterprise search, SharePoint, content management, digital asset management and usability testing.

eGain: eGain Customer Engagement Hub—complete suite of customer service and contact center software to help organizations transform their traditional call centers into multichannel customer interaction hubs.

EMC: EMC Documentum Connector for Microsoft SharePoint—integrates robust content governance and process management into the SharePoint user experience.

Empolis: Smart Diagnostics—platform in which content is processed and appropriately provided specifically for the desired publication channel. Click here for more product details.

Exsys: Corvid—development software allowing non-programmers to build interactive Web applications.

FTI Technology: Ringtail 8.3—complete e-discovery platform with integrated visual analytics and redesigned interface that can be accessed and managed in a secure, self-serve private cloud. Click here for more product details.

Fuze Digital: Fuze Suite—Blending knowledge sharing, online community and gamification technologies to deliver high-quality answers to stakeholders.

HiSoftware: Compliance Sheriff—enterprise compliance automation enabling repeatable and enforceable processes for all types of content governance.

HP/Autonomy: Autonomy Marketing Cloud—comprehensive set of marketing optimization offerings designed to help organizations increase market share, optimize marketing spend and increase revenue across all channels.

Hyland Software: OnBase Online—integrates document management, business process automation and records management.

IBM: Customer Experience Suite—integrates social and mobile technologies with content and analytics to help anticipate customer needs and build brand loyalty.

Integrify: Integrify 6.0—maintains the focus on rapid process creation and user adoption by providing further flexibility in how process apps can be published and deployed from within the Integrify Platform.

IntelliResponse: VOICES—voice of the customer solution designed to help enterprises visualize and derive actionable insight from customer questions posed on digital channels.

Intralinks: VIA—a secure and scalable SaaS platform for content sharing and collaboration within and beyond the corporate firewall.

Jive Software: Mobile Apps—social business applications enabling content creation, expertise/answer location and search.

KANA: KANA Express—mid-market customer service suite that securely manages phone, e-mail, live and automated chat, and social and Web self-service channels.

Kapow Software (a Kofax company): Kapow Enterprise 9.2—enables rapid integration of any legacy data or big data, making it actionable and accessible across the organization.

kCura: Relativity 8—e-discovery suite with key improvements, including e-mail threading; faster search speeds; easier calculation of precision, recall and F1 in Relativity Assisted Review; and the ability to process EnCase Logical Evidence Files. Click here for more product details.

KnowledgeLake: KnowledgeLake Capture—allows users to capture documents and photos from an iPhone's camera, tag content with searchable metadata and connect mobile workers to centrally hosted business processes and systems.

Metalogix: Content Matrix Migration Express—focused migrations and upgrades to SharePoint 2010, 2013 and Office 365 from SharePoint 2003, 2007 and 2010.

Mindbreeze: Insite—module kit that allows creating customized search applications without requiring any programming knowledge. Click here for more product details.

Noetix: Generator for QlikView—automates and greatly simplifies the process of setting up QlikView to access the data structures within Oracle E-Business Suite. Click here for more product details.

Perceptive Software: Perceptive Process—integrated suite of products designed to support delivery of the right information to the right place at the right time.

Pingar: Taxonomy Generator Service—enables enterprises to generate instant taxonomies from an analysis of the content of large internal document sets.

Q-Sensei: Q-Sensei Enterprise—easy-to-deploy, customizable and open platform makes it relevant for any industry sector and for all types of users.

Recommind: Decisiv Search—crawls and indexes information from any source, including document management systems, intranets, e-mail archives, contact management databases and websites.

RSD: RSD GLASS—platform used to power corporate information governance programs for electronic and physical content.

SDL: Tridion 2013—Web content management solution designed to manage global online brands. Click here for more product details.

Search Technologies: Aspire—a content processing system specifically designed for unstructured data. Click here for more product details.

Sitefinity: Sitefinity 6.0—robust Web content management featuring a new HTML5 Mobile App Builder.

Smarsh: Email Management Suite—a hosted e-mail archiving and compliance solution that captures all e-mails and attachments (as well as internal messages) that enter or leave the organization and preserves them in evidentiary-quality form in a central repository.

Smartlogic: Semaphore 3.6—content intelligence platform, further extending its value to big data projects as well as offering more features to enhance enterprise search, drive content, improve records management and streamline business workflows.

Snowbound Software: VirtualViewer HTML5—Web-based document viewer with expanded JavaScript API support enabling file retrieval through a universal Web application.

Socialtext: Collaboration Platform—new capabilities give users the ability to upload, view and edit Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word files within a Socialtext browser window.

SpringCM: Content Cloud Services—cloud-based enterprise content, document and workflow management.

Summit 7 Systems: Compliance QuickStart for Microsoft SharePoint—platform strategy to protect confidential information and ensure regulatory compliance within SharePoint.

TallyFox: Cluster—secure cloud-hosted communities with integrated team workspaces and a collaboration toolset.

Thomson Reuters: Policy Manager—an enterprisewide solution that directly connects an organization's internal policies with the governing external regulations.

TIBCO: Nimbus Control 9—business process improvement solution that enables entire workforces to capture, collaborate and communicate with each other.

Traction Software: TeamPage—enterprise wiki software that integrates action tracking, Twitter-style status, threaded discussion, collaboration, social networking and search.

Wall Street Network: WSN Insight—knowledge management for SharePoint.

X1: X1 Suite—e-discovery and enterprise search solutions specifically designed for IT, electronic discovery and legal professionals.