2024 KM PROMISE AWARD WINNER: M-Files

Many companies contend that their technology is the best knowledge management solution. One of the greatest challenges for organizations perusing these technologies is determining which of these companies will deliver on this promise.

The KMWorld Promise Award is given to the organization that is providing innovative technology solutions for customers by implementing and integrating knowledge management practices into their business processes. The award-winning organization demonstrates how it goes beyond simply delivering technology to working with clients to ensure that both the technology and knowledge processes are embedded into the work processes. In other words, it helps organizations realize positive business results.

During the KMWorld 2024 conference, on Thursday November 21, 2024, M-Files was announced as the winner of the 2024 KM Promise Award.

With M-Files, knowledge workers can find information faster, work smarter, and achieve more. M-Files features an innovative metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence. This enables customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate security and compliance.

M-Files Technology

M-Files’ knowledge work automation platform extends beyond traditional knowledge management solutions, offering flexible, intuitive solutions that power efficient workflows across the entire information management lifecycle. By seamlessly integrating cutting-edge generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology into its platform, M-Files is not just keeping pace with innovation—it's setting the standard.

At the heart of M-Files' platform is its unique metadata foundation, a sophisticated system that drives superior AI experiences for customers with connectivity, confidentiality and curation capabilities. By seamlessly integrating data from major storage systems and software solutions and automatically classifying it, M-Files ensures AI receives the highest quality data inputs necessary to allow organizations to extract real value from their information and ensures only authorized users access the right version of content and other information.

Challenge: Washington University Investment Management Company (WUIMC) Enhances Document Management with M-Files

WUIMC is responsible for building and managing a perpetual investment portfolio in support of Washington University in St. Louis. With an endowment pool valued at approximately $13.3 billion, WUIMC’s mission is to advance the university’s teaching, research, and patient care initiatives for current and future generations.

Under new leadership, WUIMC shifted to a bottom-up investment approach, emphasizing in-depth, on-the-ground research. This shift demanded robust document-driven workflows, with field workers requiring iOS access to documents. Historically, the team relied on a catch-all inbox in Outlook to manage tasks, but this approach lacked oversight, consistency, and redundancy. The legacy research management and accounting platform further compounded the problem with its bare-bones document storage, making metadata tagging cumbersome and inefficient.

Strategy

To address these challenges, WUIMC replaced its legacy software suite with M-Files, a dedicated knowledge work automation platform tailored for financial services. M-Files was selected after an extensive evaluation of multiple solutions, offering a balance of user-friendliness, reliable ingestion options, robust workflow automation, and flexible consumption across various devices. The platform also provided WUIMC extensibility through APIs, making it adaptable to the organization's specific needs.

Today, M-Files serves as both a digital mailroom and a centralized repository for WUIMC's official documents. All investment-related documents, including investor letters, capital statements, due diligence reports, and legal documents, are processed through M-Files. The platform's consistent workflows and custom views have significantly improved document oversight and exception management.

M-Files' metadata-driven architecture allows users to create tailored views that can be accessed offline on mobile devices, ensuring critical documents are available on the go. The platform's cross-platform availability—supporting Windows, web, iOS, and Android apps—ensures that users have the flexibility to access the documents they need, whenever and wherever they need them. This has resulted in enhanced document management efficiency and improved collaboration across WUIMC’s investment teams.