The 2019 KMWorld Readers’ Choice Awards Winners

The world of knowledge management continues to expand with the steady influx and evolution of innovative products and technologies to help organizations extract meaningful information when and where it is needed. The value of knowledge management solutions and services is reflected in growth projections for the global knowledge management market which was valued at about $206.9 billion in 2016, and is expected to reach more than $1,232 billion by 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate of more than 22%, according to Zion Market Research.

In this issue, KMWorld magazine announces the winners of the first annual Readers’ Choice Awards. The categories for the 2019 KMWorld Readers' Choice Awards are wide-ranging.

In all there were 15 areas in which products and technologies could be nominated and ultimately voted upon. They include business process management, cognitive computing and AI, customer service and support, e-discovery, knowledge graphs, text analytics and NLP, and more.

With a diverse array of products, services and technologies to consider and the stakes getting higher for information-driven success, it can be challenging to make the right choices. There are many ways to learn more about what is available, such as accessing white papers, research reports, and webinars, as well as consulting with experts and peers. We hope the KMWorld Readers' Choice Awards list provides an additional resource to help make the job of identifying solutions to investigate easier.

Although we are presenting the winner in each category, it is only fair that we also showcase the two finalists since often the competition was close.

Congratulations to all and thanks to everyone who submitted nominations and voted!

KMWorld 2019 Readers' Choice Awards: Best Business Process Management

Business process management, or BPM, is a discipline that emphasizes the organization and optimization of business operations and processes with an emphasis on defined, documented, and repeatable steps to improve efficiency and attain business goals.

In addition to helping organizations achieve greater efficiency, BPM tools can help bring business expertise into the application development process as part of a digital transformation strategy, can be used in conjunction with automation to enable automated processes, and be critical in enhancing customer interactions.

BPM can also provide critical capabilities in helping organizations adhere to the growing spectrum of compliance mandates governing information management. For example, processes are at the heart of GDPR compliance. Among the top priorities in implementation, for example, are developing and documenting processes for obtaining opt-in consent and reporting data breaches. In addition, most of the provisions, such as data portability and the right of individuals to access information about the processing of their data, entail business processes.

WINNER:

Kofax

FINALISTS:

Red Hat

OnTask by Accusoft

KMWorld 2019 Readers' Choice Awards: Best Cognitive Computing and AI

AI is not the stuff of science fiction anymore. And while many still think of self-driving cars, or the ability of a machine to come up with responses faster and more accurately than humanly possible on a game show, cognitive computing and AI technologies are finding their way into the world of business, manufacturing, healthcare, and other sectors.

The terms may vary, but whatever you call it, a range of related technologies—including AI, cognitive computing, machine learning, automation, and natural language processing—are poised to shake up the world as we know it and help to enhance human capabilities or provide entirely autonomous functionality. Whether it is helping to diagnose illnesses faster and pinpoint treatments for optimal outcomes, helping customer service teams to find information to answer questions faster, or identifying threats and opportunities at high speed in financial services, a range of products and services are being infused with AI and cognitive computing.

WINNER:

IBM Watson

FINALISTS:

Nuance Communications Project Pathfinder

ABBYY Vantage

KMWorld 2019 Readers' Choice Awards: Best Collaboration

The global team collaboration software market size is poised to reach $16.6 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5% during the forecast period. Surging demand for communication and conferencing solutions among enterprises is likely to drive the market.

The research also found that organizations are increasingly deploying voice-based virtual team members to assist employees in daily meetings and reporting as part of their efforts to ensure a comfortable workspace for employees. AI is also being used to develop innovative team collaboration software.

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are also being increasingly utilized for the development of team collaboration software.

The key findings include the following:

Cloud-based software is expected to witness substantial growth because it reduces the infrastructure cost and offers a centralized management system
Growing deployment of conferencing solutions is expected to supplement segment growth
The healthcare segment is projected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period due to increasing need for patient engagement and sharing real-time information with them

WINNER

Microsoft Office 365

FINALISTS:

Slack

Accusoft PrizmDoc Suite

KMWorld 2019 Readers' Choice Awards: Best Compliance and Information Security

Solutions for information compliance and security are critical to organizational success, in order to protect enterprise and government information and help address the need for alignment with government and industry requirements in physical and virtual systems.

Platforms, products, and services that enable users to manage, collaborate, and share content securely serves to improve productivity and also helps to ensure that critical information is shared only with users who are authorized for that access.

Security technologies that help protect against misuse by internal users, external hackers, and internal privileged users may include discovery and classification, activity monitoring and alerting, encryption, identity management, firewalls, reporting and auditing, and mandatory access controls.

WINNER

NetDocuments Learn more from NetDocuments

FINALISTS:

OpenText Information Management

IBM Guardium