2019—The Year of Modernization

1. Business-Driven

Throughout the whole project the focus was on the business goals. Never did the project team deviate from why they were doing this. There were no technical egos at play, forcing particular tools or techniques into the project. The business goals were king.

2. Connected Content and Data

A core technical facet was that the vault needed to contain content and data from across the business, or more specifically, from across the legacy systems. That content and data did not necessarily need to be migrated into the new system but needed to be accessible from the new system. This subtle but important aspect enabled a gradual transition from old repositories to new and avoided the big-bang migrations of yesteryear.

3. Common Metadata

Content professionals know how valuable content is—data professionals know how important data is. But content and data typically live in separate worlds. Metadata is the marriage of the two, and the project team understood this. The value that can be gained from creating a common metadata layer to connect the two worlds is vital.

Conclusions

From a best practice perspective, the example cited above delivers some tremendous insight.

Many organizations rush blindly into digital transformation without ever asking what it really means for their business to transform digitally. At a minimum, an organization needs to truly understand what it is trying to achieve and how to change the way employees think about the business.

In many cases, the business change can be driven by the desire for enhanced customer experience—it is a very compelling driver in today’s world.

Collapsing the worlds of content and data into one is not for the faint of heart. But the benefits of creating a single, connected view of all of the “information” across an organization is immensely powerful—and a necessary step on the journey for any organization hoping to achieve digital transformation.

Only by having a solid information management infrastructure can an organization hope to perform against challenging and

ever-changing business requirements. But, given the consequences of not adapting, of not reacting to the rapidly changing needs of the market, what choice do organizations have?

As a result, 2019 truly does look like the year of modernization.