Content analytics comes front & center

Just hours before going to press with this issue of KMWorld, AIIM released the results of a study that are too important to wait another month to share. So, we wanted to highlight at least the key findings of “Content Analytics, Research Tools For Unstructured Content and Rich Media.”

Content analytics is not just another one of those IT marketing terms. Rather, it concentrates on “a range of search and reporting technologies that can provide similar levels of business intelligence and strategic value across unstructured data to that conventionally associated with structured data reporting.”

So acknowledging our limited space and time, here are the key findings:

• For 72 percent of respondents, it’s harder to find information owned by their organization than information not owned by them—i.e., on the Web.
• Of the 47 percent who find they frequently need to use advanced search options, more than half would like something more effective.
• 70 percent would find advanced analytic functions “extremely useful” or “very useful.”
• For most content types, the respondent’s ability to “research” is three to six times less than their ability to “search,” particularly for rich media files, but also office documents and e-mails.
• E-discovery, digital asset management (DAM), Web analytics and de-duplication are the better known technologies compared to sentiment analysis, copyright detection and digital forensics.
• There are strong plans to adopt DAM, faceted search, e-discovery and content assessment in the next 18 months.
• The biggest obstacle faced regarding content decommissioning is that it is “not clear which content is valuable and which is not.” There is also considerable “fear of the compliance and regulatory impact of deleting information.”
• Only 15 percent have an automatic way of finding and deleting duplicates in their content stores, with just eight percent able to analyze them automatically for relevancy and to delete irrelevant content.
• 50 percent would find it of “high” or “very high” commercial value to be able to link a customer/citizen/staff member search across structured (database) data and unstructured documents and case notes.
• 44 percent would find it of “high” or “very high” commercial value to be able to automatically redact sensitive information across forms, etc.
• 81 percent with digital assets to manage are not using a dedicated DAM system, but 14 percent are planning to implement one in the next 18 months; 48 percent store digital assets and rich media on ad hoc file shares. 
• 59 percent would find it of “high” or “very high” commercial value to use a faceted search across multiple metadata tags to cross-reference categories of rich media.
• Net spending on enterprise search, DAM and content analytics is set for a considerable increase in the next 12 months.

AIIM’s Doug Miles authored the study, which was underwritten by IBM, MediaBeacon and Allyis. To download the study, visit aiim.org/research.